THE" DISAPPEARED " COPTIC CHRISTIANS OF FAYYUM 1

The article examines the testimony of the Ayyubid official Abu 'Uthman al-Nabulusi al-Safadi al-Shafi'i (1192-1261) in the book" History of Fayyum and its districts "(Kitab tarikhal-Fayyum wa Biladiha) relative to the population of Fayyum. The author of the article suggests that the settled inhabitants in the work of an-Nabulusi are understood as Copts who lived in Fayyum. Their number was 1,142 people. Based on the fact that the Christian population of the oasis at the time of the Arab conquest in the 7th century was estimated at 70-120 thousand people, the author of the article tries to explain how such a significant reduction could have occurred. Three possible causes are considered: the Islamization of Egypt, during which the country, which was Christian in the seventh century, turned into a Muslim country with a Coptic minority by the fourteenth century; natural disasters; and the "Bedouinization" of Fayyum, during which the Copts could be physically displaced from the fertile lands of the province.

Keywords: medieval Egypt, Fayyum, Copts, Bedouins, an-Nabulusi ,Kitab tarikh al-Fayyum.

"DISAPPEARED" COPTS-CHRISTIANS OF FAIYUM

The author studies a reference from "The History of Faiyum and its Villages" (Kitab Ta'rikh al-Fayyum wa-biladihi) written by a high ranking Ayyubid official Abu 'Uthman an-Nabulusi al-Safadi al-Shafi'i (1192-1261) concerning the population of the Faiyum province. The author supposes that the majority of settled hadar communities mentioned by an-Nabulusi were Christians. Their population in the Faiyum by 1243 when an-Nabulusi composed his work, was 1142 adult males. Keeping in mind that by the seventh century when Egypt was conquered by the Arabs the Christian population of the Faiyum was something between 70 000 and 120 000 the author tries to answer the question of what the reasons were for such significant decrease, and considers three possible factors: Islamization of Egypt, when the country which was Christian in the seventh century turned by the fourteenth century into Muslim with a Coptic minority; natural disasters; "Bedouinization " of Faiyum, when the Copts might have been physically pushed out of the fertile lands of the province.

Keywords: Medieval Egypt, Faiyum, Copts, Bedouins, an-Nabulusi, "Kitab Tarikh al-Faiyum".

Alexey A. KROL-Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher, D. N. Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Moscow State University, alexikrol@mail.ru.

Alexey KROL PhD (in History), Senior Research Fellow, Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, alexikrol@mail.ru.

1 The author is grateful to T. A. Zhdanova for her help in finding literature to write this article, and to D. A. Morozov for his help in translating Arabic texts.

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The most detailed extant work describing Fayyum in the Middle Ages is the "Book of the History of Fayyum and its Districts" (Kitab tarikhal-Fayyum wa Biladiha). It was written by a high-ranking official, Abu ' Uthman ibn Ibrahim al-Nabulusi al-Safadi al-Shaf'i, 2 who was sent to Fayyum in 1243 during the reign of Ayyubid Sultan Najm al-Din (1240-1248) in order to compile a report on the tax potential of the oasis and find out the reasons for the decline in agricultural production in the province [Keenan, 2003, p. 203]. This work of the regional geography type mainly describes the settlements of Fayyum in 10 chapters. The nine small chapters serve only as an introduction to the last chapter, which provides a complete list of the province's more than 100 villages in alphabetical order. For general information, the author presents data on the climate of Fayyum and its population. An outline of the hydrographic system of the province and the communications of the Fayyum channels with the Nile is somewhat more specific [Krachkovsky, 2004, p. 347].

The greatest value is the tenth chapter of the essay. The general description starts with data about the size of the village: small, medium, and large. The following contains information about the location of the village in relation to Madinat al-Fayyum: An-Nabulusi indicates the time it takes for a rider to reach the place from the provincial capital. Then the author provides data on the inhabitants of the village, water sources, indicates the names of the owners of ikta (ikta'), the number of mosques, churches, monasteries, reports on taxes paid by the village, both in money and in natural products, gives a list of agricultural crops grown by the villagers.3
In the fifth chapter of the introductory section, entitled " On his (Fayyuma. - A. K.) population and its division into nomads (Badu) and sedentary (Hadar) " an-Nabulusi writes:

"I say, and may the Lord agree with me, that when I was ordered to carry out an errand concerning Fayyum and its population, I traveled from village to village and recognized their population, and if I had not been afraid that they would notice me, I would have counted their numbers. I found that the largest tribe in terms of population is the Arabs, divided into families and tribes. As for the settled inhabitants, their number is extremely small and they live in two or three villages. They are protected by the Arabs, who charge them a fee from their income or take part of their land.

2 The biography of al-Nabulusi can be found on the website of the Rural Society in Medieval Islam project: http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/ruralsocietyislam/register/47477.html.

3 Based on an-Nabulusi's essay, Salmon compiled a list of the cultures mentioned in the "Book of the History of Fayyum..." [Salmon, 1901, p. 29-77].

4 In this case, the phrase that the Khadar live in two or three villages is clearly a figure of speech intended to show that the number of settlements inhabited by settled farmers is insignificant. According to the description in the tenth chapter of the work, Christians (the settled population) lived in eight villages.

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and they trample on their laws and commit violence against them. All the Arabs who live there are divided into three tribal unions - Bani kilab, Bani 'ajlan and al-lawatiin" [al-Nabulusi, 1899, p. 12-13]5.

As for the number of people living in Fayyum, unfortunately, according to the data provided by al-Nabulusi, it cannot be determined with certainty. The official gave only the exact number of non-Muslims (dhimma). There were one thousand one hundred and forty-two adult tax-paying men in the province [Tarikh al-Fayyum, 1898, p. 24]. More than half of them lived in eight Christian villages, which was less than 10% of the total number of settlements in the province. Two hundred and ninety-three people out of one thousand one hundred and forty-two non-Muslims were listed as having left their original places of residence and living in other places of Upper (139 people) or Lower (154 people) Egypt [Tarikh al-Fayyum, 1898, p. 24] 6.

Some of the non-Muslim population was Jewish. Traveller of the second half of the XII century. Benjamin Tudelsky writes that two hundred Jews lived in Fayyum (Adler, 1907, p. 69) .7 Sources also mention about five hundred Syrian Jews who moved to Fayyum in the 12th century and began to grow mulberry trees and silkworms there (Semenova, 1974, p. 64).

In my opinion, the settled farmers (Hadar) and non-Muslims (Dhimma) mentioned in an-Nabulusi's work are mostly the same people. This is indicated by the attitude of the Arabs (aka Badu) described by the official towards the Hadar, whom they "protect" and at the same time commit violence against them, i.e. they behave exactly as in the Middle Ages Muslims often behaved towards the Dhimma (ahl al-kitab), who were under their patronage [Cahen, 1991, p. 227-231]. However, it is possible that among the Hadar there were also Muslims who settled in Fayyum in former times. In other words, all the zimmas in an-Nabulusi are hadar, but not all the hadar are zimmas. In the title of the fifth chapter of his book, the official uses the terms Badu and Hadar to contrast the Bedouin and the settled population, regardless of their beliefs. However, from the subsequent description of the Fayyum settlements, it becomes clear that many of the Bedouins by the middle of the XIII century. they've already settled to the ground.

The question arises as to how much the Christian population decreased from the seventh century, i.e., from the time of the conquest of Egypt by Arab troops, to the middle of the thirteenth century, when the work of an-Nabulusi was written, because it is obvious that in the middle of the seventh century, when the richest province of the Byzantine Empire was included in the Caliphate, the population of Fayyum.

V. Claris and D. Thompson, based on the data of the population census conducted during the Ptolemaic rule in the middle of the third century BC, believe that in Fayyum, including the provincial capital, there were 85-95 thousand people with a population density of 60 people per 1 square meter. km [Clarysse and Thompson, 2006, p. 95].

According to D. Rathbone's calculations, in the Ptolemaic period, thanks to large-scale irrigation projects of the Macedonian dynasty in Fayyum, the area of land suitable for agricultural cultivation increased and amounted to 1,200 square kilometers (Rathbone, 1990, p. 111) .8 At the same time, the population density in Egypt during the Greco-Roman period, according to Rathbone, was approximately 120 people per 1 sq. km [Rathbone, 1990, p. 109]. Thus, it turns out that the population of Fayyum in times of prosperity was about 144 thousand people. In another place, d. Rathbone, speaking about the population of the Fayyum oasis in the third century AD, when the country was still recovering from the effects of the Antonine plague, writes that at the end of the third century, the population density in the province

5 The means of subsistence that God sends to people (provisions, provisions, food) [Lane, 1968, p. 1077].

6 According to researcher S. Tsagitaka, most of these 293 people were seasonal workers who were forced to leave their villages to earn money (Tsagitaka, 1997, p. 185).

7 Other translations indicate 20 people, not 200 [Three Jewish Travelers, 2004, pp. 176-177].

8 The figure of 1500 sq km is also given [Bagnall and Rathbone, 2008, p. 128].

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there were 58-83 people per 1 sq. km. This means that between 70 and 100 thousand people lived in Fayyum at that time (Rathbone, 1990, p. 132).

By the time of the Arab conquest in the middle of the sixth century, the population of Fayyum, taking into account the capital's population (about 25 thousand people), according to D. Rathbone, was between 90 and 170 thousand people, i.e. an average of about 120 thousand people. 9
According to the researcher Issavi, at the end of the X-beginning of the XI century. the number of inhabitants of Egypt is close to 5 million. [Issawi, 1981, p. 384], in other words, to the absolute maximum that the country's population reached in prosperous times. E. Ashtor (1976, p. 200-202) wrote about the steady growth of the population in the late tenth and first half of the eleventh centuries.

However, between 1066 and 1074, the population declined rapidly as a result of internal strife, epidemics, and famine [Brett, 2005, p. 12]. Cannibalism has been reported in cities [Brett, 2005, p. 13]. After that, the population of Egypt began to grow steadily, which continued until the plague epidemic in the middle of the XIV century.

Taking into account the fact that, according to sources, in the middle of the XIII century. no natural or political cataclysms shook Egypt, we can assume that at the time when al-Nabulusi was in Fayyum, the population in this province was about 120 thousand people. However, even if we assume that the number of inhabitants of Fayyum was minimal and amounted to 70 thousand people in accordance with the figures given above, this would mean that the Christian population of the province from the VII century to the middle of the XIII century decreased by almost 70 times.

This paper examines what caused such a significant decline in the Christian population of Fayyum, and examines three possible factors: the Islamization of Egypt, during which the country that was Christian in the seventh century turned into a Muslim country with a Coptic minority by the fourteenth century; natural disasters; and the "Bedouinization" of Fayyum, during which the Copts probably became Muslim., may have been physically displaced from the fertile lands of the province.

Numerous studies are devoted to the problem of Islamization and Arabization. Here are just the main results.

According to Y. Lev, the process of Islamization in Egypt lasted for 7 long centuries and ended in the middle of the XIV century. During this period, Coptic Christians were relegated to an ethno-religious minority, which lost its language and written language [Lev, 2008, p. 73-74]. The process of mass conversion to Islam by Copts did not begin until the Abbasids came to power in 750 [Mikhail, 2014, p. 76], as the Umayyads did not encourage conversion to the new faith. For example, those who converted to Islam were not exempt from paying the poll tax (jizya) [Mikhail, 2014, p. 64].

M. Brett believes that the process of Arabization and Islamization occurred not so much due to the conversion of Copts to Islam, but due to a significantly higher birth rate among the Muslim population. Islamization, therefore, was not a consequence of the voluntary conversion of Christians to Islam or the desire for economic gain, but rather a natural process of reducing the number of Coptic people in the country due to the low birth rate compared to Muslims. The reason for this was the loss of national identity. An important factor in the gradual Islamization of the country was the mass departure of Coptic men and women to monasteries, followed by the adoption of a vow of celibacy [Brett, 2005, p. 21].

According to Mikhail, the main reason for converting to Islam for the majority of Copts was the desire to gain a new social status among the dominant part of the country's population and get an exemption from paying poll tax [Mikhail, 2014, p. 77].

9 Personal message from D. Rathbone.

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According to I. Lapidus, the turning point in the Islamization of Egypt was the IX, not the VII century. This was largely the result of numerous "Coptic uprisings" between 725 and 832. The researcher thought that the uprisings were primarily a response to the increased tax burden, i.e. their causes were mostly economic, and not religious or other [Lapidus, 1972, p. 256]. I. Lapidus noted that after the suppression of the revolt of 829-832, the Bedouins looted many churches and monasteries, especially in Upper Egypt. According to the author, the systematic persecution of the Coptic clergy and the persecution of lay Copts destroyed the identity of the Christian community and served as one of the reasons for the mass conversion to Islam. I. Lapidus referred to the words of al-Makrizi, according to which after the defeat of the uprising of 829-832, most villages in Egypt became Muslim [Lapidus, 1972, p. 257].

Nevertheless, in some regions of the country, even after the ninth century, there continued to be islands of Coptic civilization, where Christians made up the majority of the population. First of all, these were the major cities of Alexandria, Dumyat, Tinnis. Copts were mainly engaged in textile production, primarily in the manufacture of10 [Lev, 1991, p. 181], and they still played an important role in the central and local administration [Lev, 1991, p. 190; Lapidus, 1972, p. 260].

Fayyum probably also remained one of the islands of the Christian world in the IX-XI centuries. The population of the province was mainly engaged in the production and processing of flax - one of the main types of export goods. It can be assumed that the central government was interested in preserving this "Coptic enclave". According to the text of the tenth-century contract for the acquisition of land in Fayyum, published by G. Frantz-Murphy, this document was read out to the parties participating in the contract in Arabic, and then explained "in a foreign language" (Frantz-Murphy, 1981, p. 212). According to the scholar, the need to translate spoken Arabic indicates a slow pace of Arabization in Fayyum [Frantz-Murphy, 1991, p. 16].

During the Fatimid dynasty, the process of Islamization slowed down [Lev, 1991, p. 181]. Leo called this period a golden age for Jews and Christians. Under the patronage of the dynasty ,the "people of the book" gained access to high state positions, including the position of vizier [Lev, 1991, p. 190-191]. According to the researcher, even the persecution of Christians and Jews by Caliph al-Hakim (996-1021) did not significantly affect the process of Islamization [Lev, 1991, p. 187].

With the latter statement, however, it is difficult to agree. The persecution, which lasted with varying intensity for about seven years, caused the destruction of a significant number of monasteries and churches [Walker, 2009, p. 209-214]. Many Christians, both lay and clergymen, were forced to leave their homes and flee to Byzantium, Ethiopia, and Nubia. There was a large number of converts to Islam [Semenova, 1972, p. 128-129]. According to the report of a scribe from Fayyum who took refuge in the monastery of Wadi an-Natrun, many Christian churches in the province were destroyed by 1013 [Mikhail, 2014, p. 175, p.80].

The data presented in the work of an-Nabulusi suggest that, in addition to the steady process of Arabization and Islamization, the decline in the population in Fayyum could have been the result of drought and famine and the subsequent epidemic that struck the country during the reign of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir (1036-1094). Poverty and disease depleted Egypt at short intervals for about twenty years (1060-1070) [The Cambridge History of Egypt, 2008, p. 152]. Al-Makrizi describes this time as follows::

Tiraz -10 from Persian. taraz (decoration). Originally, the word meant embroidery, sewing on clothes. Later-ceremonial garments or fabrics richly decorated with embroidery, in particular inscriptions. Tiraz also meant a workshop where similar fabrics were produced (Rabbat, 1999, p. 534).

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"During the reign of al-Mustansir, there was a famine, the consequences of which were terrible, and the memories of it are still terrible. It lasted seven years. It was caused by the weakness of the government, problems in the functioning of the state, the presence of rebellious officials in power, incessant clashes between Bedouins, weak floods of the Nile and the fact that the land was not sown after the waters of the river subsided. This disaster began in 457 AH (1065): prices soared and famine began to be felt, followed by an epidemic, while most of the land remained untilled. The disaster became general, and it was no longer safe to travel by river or land. It got to the point where you couldn't move from one place to another without a large escort without putting yourself in great danger. There was a shortage of food, and people began to suffer from hunger. We ate cats and dogs; the dogs were almost gone. The famine reached the point where people began to eat each other. Some set up ambushes. They climbed onto the roofs of their homes, armed with ropes with hooks at the end, with which they grabbed passers-by, dragged them in, butchered and ate them. Al-Mustansir, under the pressure of hunger, was forced to sell everything that he had in the palace: jewelry, fabrics, furniture, weapons and many other things. He himself was sitting on a mat, his court no longer existed, and his prestige declined" (Wiet, 1962, p. 25-27).

The caliph's attempt to extract grain in Byzantium was not successful [Semenova, 1974, p. 102]. Al-Maqrizi also reports that many peasants left their villages and moved to cities. This led to the desolation of the countryside and further increased hunger; the townspeople, fleeing from natural disasters, fled the country [Wiet, 1962, p. 23; Ashtor, 1976, p. 206-207]. According to Ashtor, the crisis of al-Mustansir's reign was one of the turning points in the demographic history of Egypt. After a long period of population growth, the country began a long period of depopulation [Ashtor, 1976, p. 206-207].

In addition, the rivalry between the Turkic and Sudanese mercenaries who made up the Egyptian army during these years resulted in an open military confrontation, which in Arabic sources was called the" Great Calamity " (ash-shidda) [The Cambridge History of Egypt, 2008, p. 152; Semenova, 1974, p.10]. Sudanese soldiers, being expelled from Cairo, terrorized Upper Egypt, while Mamluks of Turkic origin actually held the Caliph hostage, plundered the treasury and robbed Cairo several times [Filshtinsky, 2006, p. 210]. The arbitrariness of the mercenaries reached the extreme; the Christian monasteries of the Middle (Wadi an-Natrun)were looted and Upper Egypt [Semenova, 1974, p. 102]. The massacre of Christians was carried out by Bedouins, in particular Berbers from the Lavata tribe (al-lavatiin) [Lev, 1991, p. 188]. E. Ashtor wrote that during this period the Lavata tribes occupied the coastal regions of Egypt [Ashtor, 1976, p.206]. It was only after the caliph turned to the ruler of Acre, Badr al-Jamali, for help to put an end to the arbitrariness of mercenaries [The Cambridge History of Egypt, 2008, p. 153; Semenova, 1974, p.102].

The years of the "Great Calamity" could thus have been a turning point in the depopulation of the Christian population of Fayyum. The province, whose water supply was directly dependent on the water level in the Nile, probably suffered from drought earlier than other parts of Egypt, since due to its remoteness, water came here "on a residual principle". The ensuing pestilence worsened the shortage.

Another reason for the near-total disappearance of Copts from Fayyum may have been the peaceful or forcible occupation of the oasis's fertile land by Bedouins. The rich population of Fayyum has apparently been attacked by Bedouins at all times, especially during periods of weakening of the central government. In the Description of Egypt, compiled from the materials of Napoleon's expedition of 1798-1801, there is an observation concerning Fayyum: "The isolated situation of this province is a great evil for it, since foreign Arabs never miss an opportunity to take advantage of this circumstance to plunder its inhabitants" [Description de l'Egypte, 1812, p. 204].

However, the oasis attracted the Bedouins not only by the defenselessness of the settled Christian population living there, but above all by its comfortable natural surroundings-

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in the future. The climate, topography, proximity to the desert and abundance of water resources and pastures for livestock made Fayyum an ideal place for conducting a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, resembling the oases of the Arabian Desert-the homeland of most Bedouin tribes who moved to Egypt. A. Saleh notes that the Bedouins preferred to settle in the border areas of Egypt-areas of sand, swamps, hills [Saleh, 1978, p. 47]. According to G. A. Mcmitchel, the Nile Valley did not provide the nomads with ideal living conditions. That is why many Arab tribes sought to settle in the southern regions of Upper Egypt, south of Aswan and in northern Sudan, where the climate and nature were the same as in the Hejaz lying on the other side of the Red Sea (Macmichael, 1928, p. 8).

According to an-Nabulusi, the entire territory of the oasis was divided between two large Arab tribes: the Bani Kilab, who inhabited the central, southern and western regions of the oasis, and the Bani 'Ajlan, who lived in the north and east; and the much smaller Berber tribe of Lawatiin (lawata), who lived in the north and east of the oasis. It lived near the Lahun dam (Keenan, 1999, p. 292).

It is difficult to determine exactly when these tribes settled on the territory of Fayyum. Previously, they lived in Egypt for a long time. According to al-Maqrizi, the Bani Kilab tribe migrated to the Nile Valley in 109 AH (727 AD) (Saleh, 1981, p. 10). Kalkashandi specifies that they were in the service of the Ayyubid ruler al-Ashraf Musa (1250-1254) and settled on his lands in Fayyum (Saleh, 1981, p. 10). Al-Nabulusi, as mentioned above, writes about the Bani Kilab tribe, which by the time of his inspection of Fayyum was already living in the province. Thus, it seems impossible to determine the exact time of settlement of Bani kilab in Fayyum from sources. This happened between 727 and 1243.

The large Berber tribe Lavata is believed to have been first mentioned in ancient Egyptian texts of the 13th century BC (Lewicki, 1986, p. 694). At the time of the Arab conquest, the tribe lived on the territory of the historical region of Cyrenaica, modern Libya, but later settled in the northern part of Tunisia, some areas of Algeria and Morocco (Lewicki, 1986, p. 695). Sources indicate that the Lavata tribe lived in the vicinity of Cairo and Alexandria in the tenth century (Lewicki, 1986, p. 695). The lavata also roamed oases and Upper Egypt (Semenova, 1974, p. 118). During the troubles of 1065-1073, this Berber tribe occupied the Mediterranean coast of the country (Ashtor, 1976, p. 206).

By the beginning of the 19th century, according to available evidence, the territories located along the outer perimeter of the oasis, especially in the west, were inhabited by Bedouins who lead a semi-nomadic lifestyle [Rathbone, 1997, p. 9]. The Description of Egypt mentions the Sammalu tribe, by which we should obviously understand the Banu Samalus, which, according to an-Nabulusi, belongs to the Banu 'Ajlan tribal alliance:

"The Sammalu are the only Arabs who have permanent residence in Fayyum. They are very ancient and very powerful, often at war with foreign tribes that invade the province. These are the dafeh of Beni Suef, which pass through Taimea. They are also Ferghana, who live in the deserts of Alexandria and Baheira, and who, penetrating through Qasr Qarun, make frequent raids, during which they plunder the villages of Sammalu "[Description de l'Egypte, 1812, p. 210].

Probably, the outlying areas of the oasis were inhabited by nomadic or semi-nomadic Bedouin tribes in the middle of the XIII century, when al-Nabulusi compiled his description of the province. This is evidenced, in particular, by the fact that according to the map of settlements compiled by I. Rapoport and I. Shahar in the framework of the project "Rural Society in Medieval Islam", settlements were concentrated mainly in the central part of Fayyum [http://www2.history.qmul.ac.uk/ruralsocietyislam].

It can be assumed that the province, depopulated during the years of the "Great Calamity", became easy prey for nomads in the 1070s.

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it could have happened not after the oasis villages were emptied as a result of lack of food and epidemics, but at the very beginning of a famine. In search of food, nomads, who probably first began to feel the effects of crop failure, could have moved to a rich oasis already in the first hungry years. At the same time, it is not difficult to assume how they treated the local, mostly Christian population. At least after the plague pandemic that wiped out a large part of Egypt in 1348, the surviving Egyptians were subjected to regular predatory raids by Bedouin tribesmen from the Bani Hiram and Bani Wa'il tribes (Tucker, 1981, p. 221).

However, recently the researcher I. Rapoport expressed a hypothesis that offers a different explanation for the" disappearance " of Copts from Fayyum. According to the scholar, there is no indication in al-Nabulusi's work that the province was inhabited by semi-sedentary nomads or nomads who had recently moved to the province and were in the process of transitioning to sedentary agriculture. The researcher believes that in his book the official did not mean nomads at all by badu, but Muslims, while the term hadar in his work does not mean a settled population, but non-Muslims, mainly Christians [Rapoport, 2004, p. 12].

Rapoport raises the question of how such a dramatic population change could have occurred in the province, which is similar in scale to the migration of the Bani Hilal and Bani Sulayim tribes to the Maghreb (Rapoport, 2001, p. 13). However, sources do not report such a mass migration of nomads to Fayyum province (Rapoport, 2001, p. 13). The researcher believes that such demographic changes could be the result of the gradual conversion of Fayyum Christians to Islam. At the same time, I. Rapoport specifies, the Copts adopted not only the religion and spoken language of the victors, but also their tribal social organization, their identity, disappearing among the newcomer Bedouin tribes [Rapoport, 2001, p. 13].

This point of view raises serious doubts primarily because it contradicts the data of archeology and written sources. The work of an-Nabulusi mentions several settlements located in the southern part of the Fayyum oasis, which were abandoned in the second half of the XI century. In particular, the settlement of Tutun, which, according to many researchers, arose after the inhabitants left the ancient city of Tebtyunis [Bjornesjo, 1993, p. 238], which is referred to by an-Nabulusi as Tutun Datrt-Abandoned Tutun:

"(Tutun) This name means a small settlement, before which there was the village of Abandoned Tutun and (was) it large and populated and is known as winter fields. Between it and the city of Fayyum is a road that can be covered in three hours on horseback " [al-Nabulusi, 1899, p. 86].

The city of Tebtyunis has been known since the Middle Kingdom. It is currently the archaeological site of Tell Umm al-Barigat. Excavations have been carried out here since 1899 (Gayraud, 1992, p. 32). In the course of recent studies, it was established that the city existed until the end of the XI - first half of the XII century. This date was suggested by R.-P. Gayraud based on the analysis of ceramics and fragments of fabrics found on the monument (Gayraud, 1992, p. 38-39). In particular, the researcher discovered ceramics of the so-called Fayyum type (Gayraud, 1992, p. 38). This term defines glazed polychrome ceramics, first discovered during the excavations of Tebtunis in 1933 and since then called "fayyum", despite the fact that it is found on many other monuments in Egypt, as well as in Nubia and Italy [Francois, 1999, p. 22]. This type of pottery in relation to Egypt dates back to the X-XI centuries [Lizwa, 2002, p. 187; Francois, 1999,

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p. 22]. At the same time, white earthenware found on Tell Umm al-Barigat, decorated with a blue pigment based on cobalt, as well as ceramics that represent an Egyptian imitation of celadon (Gayraud, 1992, p. 38).

Another village abandoned during the reign of al-Mustansir was the village of Talit. An-Nabulusi writes:

"(Tallit). (Takes water from) the Tabtuiha canal. This village refers to a new, sparsely populated village that has young palm trees that are not yet bearing fruit, and plantings of young fig trees that are already bearing fruit. And this city was large and populous. It became desolate, as they say, because of the high cost under al-Mustansir. And then the sand took hold of him and filled him. New houses were built on the outskirts of this land" [Tarikh al-Fayyum, 1898, p. 128].

At the end of chapter VI of his work, an-Nabulusi lists 20 abandoned villages located south of the Tabtuiha Canal [Tarikh al-Fayyum, 1898, p. 17], which probably flowed in the vicinity of the ancient Tebtunis (Tutun) [Bjornesjo, 1993, p. 236-237].

It can be assumed that many residents of Fayyum may have left the province in search of a better life in other parts of the country or abroad. Al-Makrizi cites the words of ' Umar al-Kindi11, who wrote about Fayyum that if in any given year the Nile overflowed lower than usual, then an entire village went to Cairo [Semenova, 1974, p. 84]. L. A. Semenova writes that the size of state land ownership increased many times as a result The "great calamity" under Caliph al-Mustansir, when the lands of thousands of Egyptians who died of famine or plague or fled to Syria and Iraq were ceded to foreign states. This is probably why most of the lands of Fayyum, according to an-Nabulusi, were located in ikta.

There is another important circumstance that allows us to say with confidence that the period between the second half of the XI century and the first half of the XIII century was in many ways a turning point not only for demography, but also for the economy of Fayyum. The ninth-century historian al-Ia'qubi wrote:: "In the old days, they used to say "Egypt and al-Fayyum" because of the fame and magnificent prosperity of al-Fayyum; it [grows] glorious wheat and makes coarse linen canvases " [al-Ia'qubi, 2011, p. 88].

According to Ibn Haukal, a geographer and traveler of the tenth century, "... in Fayyum there are large magnificent cities, and glorious tiraz, and large possessions of the sultan and the population" [Semenova, 1974, p. 222]. Elsewhere, Ibn Haukal noted that "rice is the main crop that is grown in Fayyum" (Tsagitaka, 1997, p. 209). The tenth-century geographer al-Muqaddasi (al-Maqdisi) wrote that "Fayyum is a province where excellent rice is grown and wonderful linen products are produced" (Tsagitaka, 1997, p. 208-209). It is obvious that in Fayyum during the Fatimid period, to which the evidence of al-Muqaddasi and Ibn Haukal refers, they obtained excellent rice in the summer (since rice was grown in Egypt during the summer months), and flax in the winter (Tsagitaka, 1997, p. 208). According to the Coptic Agricultural Code

11 Author of Fada'il Misr [Boyko, 1991, pp. 103-107].

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According to the calendar, the rice crop was harvested at the end of October, and flax was sown in mid-November to be reaped at the end of February [Semenova, 1974, p. 48-49].

As is known, flax cultivation was an important component of agricultural production as early as in Pharaonic Egypt, and then in antiquity and in the Byzantine period [Lombard, 1978, p. 47]. The situation did not change even after Egypt became part of the Caliphate. In the Muslim world, during the rule of the Tulunids and Fatimids, Egypt was the world's leading producer and exporter of flax and linen fabrics [Lombard, 1978, p. 44-59]. Flax was grown all over the country, but mostly in the delta. The main centers for the production of linen fabrics were also located there. The fabrics produced in Tinnis and Doumyat were the most delicate and white. These two centers were known throughout the Islamic world and, more broadly, throughout the Mediterranean. In Fayyum, however, according to M. Lombard, low-quality flax grew, mainly used for the production of coarse cloth [Lombard, 1978, p. 49], which was not exported, but mainly met the internal needs of the region [Lombard, 1978, p. 50].

The American researcher G. Frantz-Murphy came to the conclusion that the basis for the prosperity of the Egyptian economy in the Middle Ages was precisely textile production, and not transit trade, as previously stated [Frantz-Murphy, 1981, p. 274, 289]. An analysis of written monuments from the time of the Tulunid and Fatimid reigns allowed us to conclude that flax was the main agricultural product grown for sale (commercial crop) in these epochs (Frantz-Murphy, 1981, p. 280, 295). In fact, flax was as much a monoculture in the fields of Egypt as cotton was in the nineteenth century.

In the 11th century, flax production met not only the needs of Egypt itself, but also the growing demand of other Mediterranean regions: Europe, Spain, and North Africa. In this century, the development of Mediterranean trade led to flax becoming the main commercial agricultural crop and the main export item [Udovitch, 1999 (1), p. 269]. About 5-6 thousand tons of flax were exported from the country per year (Udovitch, 1999 (2), p. 687).

One of the largest centers where flax of the best quality was produced was al-Bahnasa, the ancient Oxyrhynchus. It is this settlement and its environs that are most often mentioned in Geniza documents in Fustat (Udovitch, 1999 (1), p. 269-270).

The demand for textiles was high in all sectors of society. The answer to this question in the Egyptian society of the XI century was the specialization of work in the production of fabrics. Entire regions and cities (for example, Tinnis) were engaged in manufacturing certain types of textile products [Udovitch, 1999 (1), p. 268]. According to documents from Geniza, at least 28 different types of flax are known. The Faiyum species is also mentioned among them (Gil, 2004, p. 84).

However, in an-Nabulusi's History of Fayyum, flax is not mentioned among the main agricultural crops. According to A. Udovitch, this is due to the fact that during the Ayyubid era, the demand for Egyptian flax largely fell; this crop was grown in Europe, primarily in Italy [Udovitch, 1999 (1), p. 274].

It can also be assumed that flax ceased to be the main agricultural crop that was grown in Fayyum, due to the low level of flooding of the Nile for about 20 years, in the 1060-1070s12, which was a disaster for flax crops that require a large amount of water [Gil, 2004, p. 81].

According to F. According to Myerson, for thousands of years, until the incorporation of Egypt into the Caliphate, cereals, especially wheat and barley, were the main ones

12 joules. Russell writes that record low Nile floods were observed from 1022 to 1121 [Russel, 1966, p. 75, Fig. 1].

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crops grown in the country. During the Roman period, Egypt supplied one-third of the grain needed by the Empire (Mayerson, 1997, p. 201).

After the conquest of Egypt by Arab forces, the cultivation of grain, primarily wheat, remained the mainstay of agriculture. Egypt exported wheat to the Hejaz and other areas of the Caliphate. The sources note the high quality of Egyptian wheat. This crop was mainly grown in Upper Egypt, but also in Fayyum and some areas of the delta (Ashtor, 1976, p. 42-43).

The situation probably changed during the reign of the Tulunid dynasty, whose founder Ibn Tulun tried to establish a monopoly on flax production. It was then that flax, which was in high demand both in Egypt and abroad, replaced cereals as the main commercial product [Mayerson, 1997, p. 204]. The author believes that the sad consequence of this was a series of famines and subsequent epidemics caused by the low level of the Nile flood (in the Middle East). 928-929, 967, 1025, 1066-1072, 1201, 1202, 1264 years) [Mayerson, 1997, p. 206].

In support of this hypothesis, I would like to add that in Egypt, according to the Coptic agricultural calendar dating back to the Pharaonic era, flax, wheat, and barley are sown and reaped at the same time, between November and April [Semenova, 1972, pp. 48-49]. Thus, it was possible to grow either one or the other crop.

According to an-Nabulusi's "History of Fayyum", in the 1240s wheat and barley, beans and rice were grown in the province as the main crops (Tarikh al-Fayyum, 1898, p. 23). Sugar cane cultivation was an important part of agricultural production [Tarikh al-Fayyum, 1898, p. 23; Keenan, 1999, p. 293]. Rice, cumin, sesame, peas, and grapes also grew in the oasis.

Such a drastic change in crops could have been caused by a prolonged shortage of water for proper irrigation of flax crops, a long-term famine that forced the population to grow cereals or legumes that could be consumed for food, or a lack of export demand for Egyptian flax. But we can assume that in Fayyum they stopped growing flax, because as a result of famine and epidemics in 1066-1074, there was simply no one to plant it. It is possible that during the years of the disaster, the tradition of growing and processing flax was temporarily interrupted.

Later, however, flax once again became one of the crops grown in Fayyum. Thus, the German Orientalist J. M. Vansleb, who visited Fayyum in 1672, mentions large flax crops around the villages, but notes that its quality is lower than in other parts of the country [Vansleb, 1678, p. 161].

All of the above seems to allow us to formulate a hypothesis about the cause of the" disappearance " of the Copts from Fayyum.

Probably, as in the whole country, the decline of the Christian population here occurred gradually. At least three times during the period from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, the pace of this process was significantly accelerated. This happened during the so-called Coptic uprisings in the 8th-9th centuries and in the early 11th century during the persecution of Christians and Jews during the reign of Caliph al-Hakim. However, famine and epidemics during the reign of Caliph al-Mustansir were most likely crucial to the depopulation of the Fayyum Copts. It was probably then that most Copts either became extinct or left the province. Perhaps at the very beginning of the "Great Calamity" or at its end, when Fayyum became a depopulated territory, Bedouins of two Arab and one Berber tribes moved to these lands. If this happened at the very beginning of the famine years, then the migration of nomads was probably accompanied by looting and violence against the inhabitants of the province. This is indicated by the evidence that has come down to us about the turmoil in the reign of al-Mustansir, in which a significant role was played

13 In the 13th-14th centuries, sugar became an important export item to European countries [Tsagitaka, 1997, p. 215].

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the Bedouins were playing. By the middle of the 13th century, when al-Nabulusi wrote a description of the province, most of the Bedouins who moved to Fayyum in the 1060s and 1070s had already settled on the land, which is reflected in the description of the village population in Kitab Tarikh al-Fayyum.

The hypothesis I put forward about the time of the" disappearance " of the Copts from Fayyum suggests that most of the archaeological sites of the Greco-Roman and Coptic times, such as Dayr al-Banat 14, Fag al-Gamus (Saila), Qom Tifih, Qom Talit and Tell Umm al-Barigat, are located mainly in the marginal areas of the oasis First of all, in its southern part, they were abandoned at the end of the XI century.

As for the hypothesis of I. Rapoport, according to the work of an-Nabulusi, the" Great Calamity " of 1066-1074 led to the fact that many settlements were abandoned, which clearly could not be the result of the mass conversion of Copts to Islam. In addition, it was at this time, as a result of the misfortunes that befell the province, that the economic model of development changed. If earlier the fields of Fayyum were used for flax cultivation, since it was the main crop that brought income to the treasury due to the export of raw materials and finished linen products, then from the work of an-Nabulusi it follows that in the middle of the XIII century flax did not play any significant role. Nor can this be attributed to the conversion of the Fayyum Copts to Islam.

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