Arab conquest of Egypt

Arab conquest of Egypt
Part of the Arab–Byzantine wars
Roman Theater in the city of Alexandria, Egypt
Date 639–642 Location Egypt, Libya Result Rashidun victory Territorial changes Rashidun Caliphate annexes Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Tripolitania
Belligerents
Rashidun Caliphate	Byzantine Empire Kingdom of Makuria
Commanders and leaders
Umar ibn al-Khattab Amr ibn al-As Uqba ibn Nafi Zubayr ibn al-Awwam Miqdad ibn Aswad Ubadah ibn al-Samit Kharija ibn Hudhafa Busr ibn Abi Artat Abu Rafi' al-Qibti	Emperor Heraclius Cyrus of Alexandria Theodorus Domentianus Theodosius Anastasius Aretion Constans II

The Arab conquest of Egypt, led by the army of 'Amr ibn al-'As,^[1] took place between 639 and 642 AD and was overseen by the Rashidun Caliphate. It ended the seven-century-long Roman period in Egypt that had begun in 30 BC and, more broadly, the Greco-Roman period that had lasted about a millennium.

Shortly before the conquest, Byzantine (Eastern Roman) rule in the country had been shaken, as Egypt had been conquered and occupied for a decade by the Sasanian Empire in 618–629, before being recovered by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. The Caliphate took advantage of Byzantines' exhaustion to invade Egypt.

During the mid-630s, the Romans had already lost the Levant and its Ghassanid allies in Arabia to the Caliphate. The loss of the prosperous province of Egypt and the defeat of the Byzantine armies severely weakened the empire, resulting in further territorial losses in the centuries to come.^[2]