ABSTRACT
At the time of the Muslim conquest in 641 CE, Egypt was a Greek-and Coptic-speaking province of the Byzantine Empire. e idea that there existed a clear dichotomy between a Coptic-speaking, Monophysite majority living in the countryside and a Hellenised, Greek-speaking, Chalcedonian (and Jewish) minority dominating the urbanised areas has in recent research been called into serious question. e situation was more nuanced, with Coptic and Greek being used both in and outside the cities by all religious communities, whether once foreign, consciously Hellenised or convinced Egyptian.1 On the other hand, the whole of the Egyptian population was clearly not fully bilingual or linguistically consistent. Several Coptic dialects were in use, of which the Upper Egyptian Sahidic was the most important. In Upper Egypt, located furthest from the Byzantine capital in Alexandria, Greek was much less well entrenched than in the Delta and the Fayyūm oasis further north – circumstances that would inuence linguistic developments under Islam.
