174 THE PROGRESS THROUGH EGYPT ii. 2. xxviii.

proceeded to overrun the Delta, and the Turks looted everything of

value that could be found^. A seven years' famine followed and unheard of atrocities were perpetrated. However, in 1074, with the

aid of Arab and Armenian troops from Syria the Khalifa managed to

restore order, subdued the rebellious Berbers in the Delta and re- conquered the country as far as Aswan, so that a period of twenty

years of prosperity followed.

XXIX The latter half of the eleventh century saw the subjugation of

Syria by the Selguk Turkmans and the first Crusade. The Fatimite power now began to decline and it was supplanted in 1171 by the

Sultanate of the 'Ayyubite Kurds under "Saladin" [Salah el Din^].

XXX The histories of the Fatimite period are so concerned with

foreign wars, court intrigues, murders, rebellions, and extravagances

of successive governors that there is little to be gleaned as to the nomad

Arabs. In the large towns the population must have gradually become more and more mixed with Turkish and negro elements, and a certain number of the Arabs joined this heterogeneous medley and adopted

a sedentary life. These, of course, would tend to lose very quickly

all racial purity and even tribal distinctions : they were merged into

the Egyptians and do not concern us here.

The nomads, on the other hand, remained practically unaffected.

It is a striking, but not in the least surprising, fact that the tendency

of each successive dynasty that ruled Egypt was increasingly to regard

the Arabs, that is the nomads, not so much as forming an integral

part of the state as an element of danger and unrest hovering on the

borders of the country, to be made use of when convenient but never

entitled to more consideration than they had the power to extort. The place they occupied, for instance, in Saladin's regard is not

inaptly illustrated by the following quotation from Makrizi^:

The Sultan [Saladin] proceeded to Alexandria for the following reason

:

there was a surplus population at Alexandria and at the same time money

from the king of Nubia "on account of the exactions from which he suffered at the hands of the Government and of the Luata" (Abu Sahh, p. 270).

In the patriarchate of Cyril (1078-1093 (sic), see Evetts, ap. Abu Salih, p. 137), we are told, died Solomon, a king of Nubia who abdicated in order to lead a life of asceticism and was brought to Cairo and received there with honour and finally buried at the monastery of el Khandak in the suburbs of Cairo (Abu Salih, pp. 270,

271).

^ The most serious loss of this reign of terror was the destruction or dispersal of the Khalifa's priceless library of 100,000 books (see Lane-Poole, p. 149).

^ Saladin was the first man to be styled Sultan in Egypt. However, both he and his sons and collaterals who succeeded him styled themselves only "Malik" on their coinage, though calling themselves "Sultan" in their building inscription and being commonly known as such. (Lane-Poole, Quart. Rev. April, 191 5) ^ Kitdb el Seluk (ed. Blochet), pp. 105, 106 (translated from French).