1.1. XXV. THE PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIAN ELEMENT ii

XXIII But to revert: the Persian armies were active in the sixth

century a.d. in the north as well as in el Yemen, and their pressure on Egypt steadily increased until in 6i6 a.d, that country and Asia Minor had been wrested out of the hands of the Romans.

The Persians themselves, as a race, had affinities with the Arme-

noid invaders of an earlier date^, but among their number were members of many Syrian and Arab tribes 2, and with these latter

their congeners already settled in Egypt were no doubt in active sympathy^.

XXIV The rule of Persia in Egypt only lasted for ten years. They had lost the support of the Arabs as a result of the Islamic move- ment, and by 626 Heraclius had driven them out.

But by now both Roman and Persian were enfeebled by con-

tinuous warfare and the Arabs began to swarm over the frontiers of

Egypt. For a while they were bought off by subsidies, but in 639 'Amr ibn el 'Asi led his forces into the country, defeated the prefect Theodorus at Heliopolis, and drove the Romans back into the Delta.

By 641 Babylon had fallen and Alexandria was besieged. Terms were then agreed upon, and in September 642, Alexandria was surrendered and Egypt passed under the domination of the Arabs.

Their immediate success cannot be credited wholly to religious

fervour, A proportion were no doubt inspired by the new faith, but many were with equal certainty animated by purely material con-

siderations ; and their task was the easier in that they were freeing from a foreign yoke a country in which numbers of the population

already consisted of their own kith and kin.

XXV We have thus seen that in pre- Islamic times there was a

direct current of Arab immigration into Egypt, and most probably

into Libya, through southern Syria, and a similar influx into the Sudan through Abyssinia, and a channel of trade from the mid- Red Sea coast to the Thebaid. It may therefore be regarded as more than probable that the ever-increasing infiltration of Arabs from these

three directions, and their converging movements up and down the common highway of the Nile, whether in search of trade or pasture, had by the beginning of the seventh century led to the implanting

at various points of a definite, if racially indeterminate, Arab strain

in the population of the northern Sudan.

Amakeetan. But they soon rebelled against them, and usurped the country.... Their government flourished for some time and their dominion extended to the very extremity of this tract of the earth; and Wadai and Bagharmee, as well as the country of Houssa...\vere in their possession." (See Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney, u, 446, 447.) ^ Von Luschan, p. 244.

* Butler, Arab Conquest, p. 8i note. ^ Milne, p. 114.