ABSTRACT
When ‘Amr Ibn el-’As’ the Arab general, entered the eastern Delta in 639, the leading Church officials were Cyrus (‘el-Muqawqas’ in Arabic), the Melkite patriarch in Alexandria and one of the worst oppressors of Egyptian Christians, and Benjamin the Coptic patriarch in residence at Wadi Natrun. There were allegedly some 200,000 Christians loyal to the former, and some two million Copts formed the nucleus of a widespread national movement hostile to the government in far distant Constantinople. The fact that there were warring factions was not lost on General ‘Amr. The Arabic word Rumi (Roman) was adopted to identify the Melkites, while Egypt was referred to as dar el-Qibt (‘home of the Copts’).
