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The authorMaged S. A. Mikhail obtained a PhD in the History of the Near and Middle East from the University of California, Los Angeles, for which he received an Honourable Mention for the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award from the Middle East Studies Association of North America.He currently teaches at California State University, Fullerton.PresentationThe conquest of Egypt by Islamic armies under the command of Amr ibn al-As in the seventh century transformed medieval Egyptian society. Seeking to uncover the broader cultural changes of the period by drawing on a wide array of literary and documentary sources, Maged Mikhail stresses the cultural and institutional developments that punctuated the histories of Christians and Muslims in the province under early Islamic rule. From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt traces how the largely agrarian Egyptian society responded to the influx of Arabic and Islam, the means by which the Coptic Church constructed its sectarian identity, the Islamisation of the administrative classes and how these factors converged to create a new medieval society. The result is a fascinating and essential study for scholars of Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt.ContentsABBREVIATIONS ... viACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... viiiCHAPTER ONE Charting the CourseCHAPTER TWO The Conquest : Event, Text, and MemoryCHAPTER THREE Christian Elites : The Dialectic of Duty and FaithCHAPTER FIVE Language, Identity, and AssimilationCHAPTER SIX The Long Eighth Century : A Cultural BridgeCHAPTER SEVEN Muslim Elites, Urban Administration, and Rural JusticeCHAPTER EIGHT Metamorphosis of the Muslim CommunityCHAPTER NINE Ideologies and JurisdictionsCHAPTER TEN A Church and Community in TransitionCHAPTER ELEVEN Polemics and the Construction of Communal IdentitiesCHAPTER TWELVE Webs of significance