The conquest of al-Bahnasa (as told in Futuh al-Sham)

The conquest of al-Bahnasa in Upper Egypt is the subject of the long account that closes the Futuh al-Sham ascribed to al-Waqidi, filling about a hundred pages of the second volume (pp. 198-292). ¹ It joins the conquest to the merits of the place, its cemetery and visitation, and is introduced by an Egyptian narrator who calls himself Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn al-Muhaddith al-Misri and says he selected it from the histories after visiting the al-Bahnasa cemetery. ^{2 3}

The account opens by saying that some exegetes held al-Bahnasa to be the hill on which God sheltered Jesus and his mother; it tells that they stayed there twelve years, and that a well in the temple there has water people take for healing. ^{4 5} It speaks of the Bahr Yusuf canal on whose bank the city lies, ascribes its digging to Joseph, and says the land of al-Bahnasa belonged to Ephraim son of Joseph. ^{4 6} It lists places where, it says, prayer is answered: the course of the pebbles where the torrent ends, the shrine of al-Hasan ibn Salih, and the martyrs' graves at the foot of the hill. ⁴

In the book's telling, Amr ibn al-As, after conquering Misr, Alexandria, Damietta and the Delta, wrote to Umar ibn al-Khattab asking leave to march on Upper Egypt or the west. Umar replied that Egypt held two cities, Ahnas and al-Bahnasa, the latter "stronger and better fortified", with a patrician called al-Batlius, and ordered that they not approach Upper Egypt until both were taken, Amr himself staying at Misr and sending out the troops. ^{3 7} Amr summoned the commanders scattered in Alexandria, Damietta, Rosetta, Bilbays and the Buhayra, and they gathered before him "on Wednesday the tenth of Rabi' al-Awwal of the year twenty-one of the Hijra, and it is said twenty-two". ⁸ He then placed Khalid ibn al-Walid over them; when the armies were complete in Rabi' al-Akhir of the same year, Amr reviewed them, sixteen thousand horsemen, and chose ten thousand. ^{8 9} The book names among this army al-Fadl ibn al-Abbas, al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam (may God be pleased with him), al-Miqdad ibn al-Aswad, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr and Abd Allah ibn Umar, among others. ⁹

Al-Batlius comes out to meet the Muslims with about fifty thousand horsemen, and the scouts tell Khalid of some two hundred thousand horse and fifty thousand foot of Nubians, Berbers and Beja. ^{10 11} The book dwells on al-Batlius's audience with al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba as envoy of the Muslims, saying there was no interpreter because al-Batlius knew Arabic, and that al-Mughira sat on the throne beside him and answered him on the oneness of God. ^{12 13} It tells of a whole month in which al-Batlius rode out each day on his horse seeking single combat, ¹⁴ and of the death of the commander Ziyad and his burial by the canal beneath the walls. ¹⁵

The book gives two versions of how the gate was opened, then records a note on a reading of the book in the Ghazzi Umari mosque, in which the shaykh corrected the reader: the sound report from Abu Mas'ud is that they cut timbers and set up a ladder as high as the wall, waited for night, and forty men climbed it and opened the gate. ¹⁶ Fighting then followed in the lanes and streets. ¹⁷

In the book's account the Muslims took the gold and silver vessels of al-Batlius's palace and his jewelled carpet, sending them with the fifth to Medina; they pulled down the palace and the church and built beside it a mosque on marble columns, "the first mosque, before al-Hasan ibn Salih built the present one". ^{18 19} It says the city had forty ribats, that Khalid stayed a month and then left with two thousand horsemen for Upper Egypt, leaving Muslim ibn Aqil in charge, after whom, in its account, came Muhammad ibn Ja'far and Ali ibn Abd Allah ibn al-Abbas. ^{19 20} It says that when conquered it had four hundred greengrocers, and that most of it fell into decay after the strife between the Umayyads and the Hashimites. ²⁰

The book places five thousand Companions in the soil of al-Bahnasa, says about seventy veterans of Badr were present at its conquest, and counts among its visitors Bishr al-Hafi, al-Sari al-Saqati, Malik ibn Dinar, Sahnun, al-Fudayl ibn Iyad and Abu Madyan; it closes with a dream of Dhu al-Nun al-Misri about its martyrs. ^{20 21}

• In this account Khalid ibn al-Walid commands the army in Egypt in 21 AH, and men such as Muslim ibn Aqil and al-Fadl ibn al-Abbas (may God be pleased with him) take part; these are details the book relates and are not compared here with other sources. ^{8 19}
• The account names Ibn Khallikan and al-Mas'udi among its sources, both later than al-Waqidi, and an academic study holds that the book was redacted between the 12th and 13th centuries CE, perhaps in Egypt or Syria. ^{5 2 22}