Cairo of To-day
Year: 1914
Type: article
Abstract: in his treatise a very useful summary of the information at present available with regard to the organisation, distribution, and composition of the military forces in Egypt during the last two centuries of "Roman" rule.The details are largely drawn from the Byzantine papyri at Cairo which he himself has edited and from the collection of the British Museum, and the fresh evidence obtained from these sources has enabled him to place the Arab conquest of Egypt in a new light, so far as the numbers and character of the forces opposed to the invasion of 'Amr are concerned.According to M. Maspero, it would appear that there was no organised army available to stop the Arab advance: the so-called imperial troops were merely local bodies of military police, under leaders who were practically civilians: even in numbers they were not greatly superior to the invaders, and their fighting value was nothing.At the end of his last chapter-the whole of which is a most interesting estimate of the character of the Byzantine military system in Egypt he ascribes the downfall of Byzantine rule there mainly to the incapacity of the army, after all allowance had been made for the exhaustion of the empire after the Persian campaign, the religious quarrels, and the hatred between Copts and Greeks.Perhaps he rates the fighting material to be found in the Egyptian peasanlt rather too low: the responsibility for the collapse before the Arabs, so far as contemporary accounts show, rested more with the leaders than with the rank and file, who seem to have done fairly well when decently commanded: and, after all, the Byzantine army in Egypt did not cut a much worse figure than most other Byzantine armies against the Arabs and later Muslim troops, who were only effectually checked by the Micklegard-Byzantium itself.But, though we may draw from M. Maspero's facts conclusions which differ somewhat from his own, we owe him a great debt of gratitude for his thorough and systematic presentation of these facts, which will be of value to future workers in this field of history.
DOI: 10.2307/3853529
Author: Eustace Reynolds-Ball
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4240875245