Egypt and the dark ages and islam

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Feb 1, 2013 at 07:37

Ianus wrote

Hello, dhimmi no more! You wrote :> ... I remember one time having a chat with an Egyptian historian while visiting the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria the question of the Greeks legacy in Alexandria v. the Turks and their imperialism in Egypt came up and his answer was how can you compare Hellenism and barbarity!

We really did not discuss it but there are indeed many historians in Egypt that are examining the early archaeological evidence of early Islam and not just the Arabic language literary sources which are very late and the results are really amazing as it seems that the evidence reveals that Egypt was also dragged into what is called the dark ages from the 7th century (when the Arabs invaded Egypt) until about the 10th century with complete destruction of many cities in the Egyptian Nomes (provinces) and the peasants abandoning the land and the towns (eg: the archaeological evidence from the city of Jeme in Upper Egypt) and revolting against the Arabs that invaded Egypt (eg: The Bashmour uprising) and the decline of Alexandria that was very fast and just imagine a city in 642CE that had a population of 600,000 shrinking to a small city of a few thousands but the most destructive event was that the invading Arabs made Arabic the official language of Egypt which led to the death of the Greek language in Egypt by the 9th century and this was indeed the final blow to Greek learning and Hellenism in Egypt

So the picture that emerges from Egypt by the 10th century is an Egypt that was wealthy and the bread basket of the ancient world to a very poor underpopulated country deep into the dark ages and one can only blame the Arabs and their invasion of Egypt

What is most surprising is that if you examine let us say buildings built by Muslims in the 1st three centuries of Arabian and islamic imperialism you discover that this so called golden age of the umma the Arabs built only one mosque and that is the mosque of Amr Ibn al-As in today's Cairo and historians now believe that the Ibn Tulun Mosque was not built until the 10th century so you get the picture

Now if your question do Egyptian historians talk about all of the above now? the answer is these findings are left to the realm of academia. However there are exceptions as in the case of the great Egyptian historian Sayyed el-Qimni who was brave enough to tell Egyptians that the Arab venture in Egypt was no more than imperialism and colonialism that was destructive to Egypt and its economy and that Egyptians should not call it futuh masr or the opening of Egypt as we are told by the Islamic historical tradition and to quote him: Egypt after all was not closed

http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%AF_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D9%85%D9%86%D9%8A

But he had to leave Egypt for a period because of threats on his life

I hope I helped

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