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Famine, the result of the exceptionally low Nile of 967, added to the misery of the country; plague, as usual, followed in the steps of famine; over six hundred thousand people died in and around Fustat, and the wretched inhabitants began in despair to migrate to happier lands.
The origin of Cairo dates back to the Muslim invasion in 640; the original Arab settlement was called Fustât, the "Town of the Tent," which is substantially the old Cairo of to-day. Here was erected almost at once the first mosque, that of Amr, sometimes called Amru.
The name of the Abbasside caliph was at once expunged from the Friday prayers at the old mosque of Amr at Fustat; the black Abbasside robes were proscribed, and the preacher, in pure white, recited the Khutba for the imam Moizz, emir el-muminin, and invoked blessings on his ancestors Ali and Fatima and all their holy family. The call to prayer from the minarets was adapted to Shiah taste.
A herald, bearing a white flag, rode through the streets of Fustat proclaiming the amnesty and forbidding pillage, and on August the 5th the Fatimite army, with full pomp of drums and banners, entered the capital. That very night Gawhar laid the foundations of a new city, or rather fortified palace, destined for the reception of his sovereign.
Forcing the passage of the river, with the help of some boats supplied by Egyptian soldiers, the invaders fell upon the imposing army drawn up on the other bank, and totally defeated them. The troops deserted Fustat in a panic, and the women of the city, running out of their houses, implored the sherif to intercede with the conqueror.
But they had reckoned without their host; the troops at Fustat would not listen to such humiliation, and there was a strong war party among the citizens, to which some of the ministers leaned. The city prepared for resistance, and skirmishes took place with Gawhar's army, which had meanwhile arrived at the opposite town of Giza in July.
Here it is used in the sense of "fortune" or "fate ;" like "days" and "days and nights." See my Pilgrimage, etc. Ali was slain with a sword-cut by Ibn Muljam a name ever damnable amongst the Persians; Mu'awiyah escaped with a wound and Kharijah, the Chief of Police at Fustat or old Cairo was murdered by mistake for Amru. After this the sectarian wars began.
She asked me to translate it, the night she dug it up at Fustat " "Dug " "And when I'd read as far as, 'Beautiful Queen, Star of my Heart, be my wife, she snatched the paper away, and put it inside her dress, saying she'd look up the rest in one of my books." "Good heavens! You must have changed places at Fustat. That letter couldn't have been for her!" "It couldn't have been for any one else.
They lived at the new capital, Fustat, which grew up on the site of the conqueror's camp, and very near the modern Cairo; for Alexandria, the symbol of Roman domination, was dismantled in 645 after the Emperor Manuel's attempt at reconquest. If they did not do much active good, they did little harm, and Egypt pursued her immemorial ways.
The word fustian has also come to be used figuratively to describe a showy manner of speaking or writing, or anything which tries to appear better than it is. The word comes from Fustat, a suburb of Cairo.
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