i6o THE PROGRESS THROUGH EGYPT 11.2.VI11.

of a total of twenty-two were from Kuraysh, the same number from Kays 'Aylan, one from Guhayna, two from Azd, three from HiMYAR, one from Lakhm, and one whose tribe is unrecorded.

Of the sixty-one different governors of Egypt who served an 'Abbasid Khah'fa between 750 and 856 the tribe to which at least thirty-three belonged is known. Of these thirty-three as many as fifteen were themselves members of the Beni 'Abbas, three were Beni Tamim, five from Azd', two from Tai, one from Lakhm, two from MuDHHiG, two from Bagila, two from Himyar, and one apparently an Armenian.

IX It would of course be those of the tribesmen who settled in the large towns or took to cultivation of the river banks who chiefly intermarried with the older Coptic population and remained in Egypt : the more nomadic tribes would naturally be more exclusive, and incidentally less eligible, in the matter of intermarriage, and such of them as penetrated in later years into the Sudan were probably still as purely Arab as when they entered Africa.

Half a century after the death of 'Amr (722) occurred the first of a long series of Coptic revolts. Few of these people had been converted to Islam and by now there were some 5,000,000 of them living in Egypt°.

As a set off to their power, the tribe of Kays 'Aylan was induced to immigrate to Egypt and settle round Balbays, and we have seen that by about 750 a.d. there were some 3000 of them in that locality and that, so far from strengthening the hand of the ruler of Egypt, they formed a hot-bed of revolt.

X Of the state of the countries south of Aswan at this period we have little news. Such as there is comes to us from Christian sources and consists of the following. About 737 a.d. the governor of Egypt Mostly Beni Ommayya, related to the reigning Khalffa.

Fahm, 'Abs, Fezdra and Bahila sections: all these in the first half of the eighth century.

* Including one of the Khazrag.

* One Asbahi, one Kelbi, and one Hadrami. The Beni Kelb are a section of the Kudd"a branch.

* ElHurr ibn Yusef (724-727). " A section of Mudr.

' Two belonged to the Khuzd'a division and two to the Muhallab.

* The Beni Tamlm, Azd.Tai, Lakhm, Mudhhig and Bagfla were all related to one another, being descendants of Kahldn (see Wiistenfeld, p. 4).

» "El Ruayni" and "El Kelbi." Lane-Poole, Hist. pp. 27, 28. " See Abu Sdlih, pp. 267-268: cp. also Lane-Poole, p. 27. Abu Salih places the incident "in the Khalifate of Marwan el Ga'adi, the last of the Ommayyad Khalifas" [i.e. between 744 and 750), but he is unreliable. The whole story is probably largely exaggerated. Abu Sdlih's account " is borrowed from the biography of the patriarch Khdfl in the compilation of Severus of El Ashmunayn; see Anc, Fonds Arabe, 139, p. 162 f. " (Evetts).