Muslim Conquest of Egypt

The Muslim conquest of Egypt was the campaign by which the Rashidun Caliphate, under the general Amr ibn al-As, took control of Byzantine Egypt between 639 and 646 CE, ending more than six centuries of Roman and Byzantine rule over the province. Amr's forces, numbering only a few thousand at the outset, advanced from the Sinai to capture the fortress of Babylon in 641 and then the great city of Alexandria after a lengthy siege, securing a peace treaty that transferred the province's administration to the caliphate. Amr founded the garrison city of Fustat near the old fortress of Babylon as the new administrative capital, a settlement that later grew into part of modern Cairo. A brief Byzantine attempt to retake Alexandria by sea in 645 was reversed the following year, after which Egypt remained under Muslim rule and gradually underwent linguistic and religious Arabization and Islamization over the following centuries.