Muslim invasion of Egypt

After the Muslim invasion of Egypt in 641, Rashidun commander Amr ibn al-As set up Fustat just north of Coptic Cairo. At Caliph Umar's demand, the Egyptian capital was shifted from Alexandria to the new city on the eastern side of the Nile.

The reach of the Umayyads was wide, extending from western Spain all the way to eastern China. However, they were conquered by the Abbasids, who moved the capital of the Umayyad Empire itself to Baghdad. In Egypt, this shift in power engaged moving control from the Umayyad city of al-Fustat slightly north to the Abbasid city of al-‘Askar. Its full name was مدينة العسكري Madinatu l-‘

Askari "City of Cantonments" or "City of Sections". Planned primarily as a city large enough to house an army, it was laid out in a grid pattern that could be easily subdivided into separate sections for different groups such as merchants and officers.

The crest of the Abbasid dynasty happened during the reign of Harun al Rashid, together with increased taxes on the Egyptians, who emerged in a peasant revolt in 832 during the time of Caliph al-Ma'mun. Local Egyptian governors gained rising autonomy, and in 870, governor Ahmad ibn Tulun declared Egypt's independence (though still under the rule of the Abbasid Caliph). As a symbol of this self-government, in 868 ibn Tulun founded yet another capital, al-Qatta'i, a little further north of al-‘Askar. The capital remained there until 905, until the city was shattered, and the administrative capital of Egypt then returned to al-Fusṭāṭ.

Al-Fusṭāṭ itself was destroyed by a vizier-ordered fire that burned from 1168 to 1169, at which time the capital shifted to almost al-Qāhirah (Cairo), where it has stayed to this day. Cairo's bounds grew to ultimately include the three earlier capitals of al-Fusṭāṭ, al-Qatta'i and al-‘Askar