Amr ibn al-As launched the conquest of Egypt on his own initiative
In late 639 an Arab commander named Amr ibn al-As marched on Byzantine Egypt without waiting for full backing. Within two or three years Alexandria surrendered, the swiftest of the early Muslim conquests. He then founded Fustat, the garrison capital whose mosque still bears his name.
Amr came from a wealthy family of the Quraysh of Mecca and inherited a profitable estate with vineyards near Ta'if. His mother had been captured and sold before marrying his father. The most reliable accounts place his conversion to Islam around 629, alongside Khalid ibn al-Walid, though his own later testimony put it in Axum in Ethiopia. Muhammad soon gave him command of a raid into northern Arabia, recruiting among the Bali tribe, his grandmother's people, and later sent him as governor to Oman.
After Muhammad's death, the first caliph Abu Bakr used Amr to bring breakaway tribes back under Medina's authority, then made him one of four commanders sent into Syria in 633. As a former merchant he likely knew the caravan routes toward Gaza well. His troops beat Byzantine forces at Dathin in February 634, and he helped lead the decisive Arab victories at Ajnadayn and the Yarmuk, becoming governor of Palestine.
In Egypt, a treaty with the Byzantine governor Cyrus promised security to the population in return for a poll tax on non-Muslim men. Amr kept the Coptic-run bureaucracy in place and stayed on good terms with the Coptic patriarch Benjamin, then pushed west as far as Tripoli. He governed with considerable independence, grew rich and defended the interests of Fustat's Arab garrison against the capital. Caliph Uthman eroded his authority and dismissed him in 646.
His later career was shaped by civil war. After Uthman's assassination Amr sided with Mu'awiya against Caliph Ali, drawn by the promise of Egypt and its revenues, and acted as Mu'awiya's negotiator in failed arbitration talks. He then took Egypt from Ali's supporters and governed it again from 658, keeping the post under the new Umayyad dynasty until his death in 664. Sources describe him as short and broad-shouldered, with a large head and a long beard.
Source: Amr ibn al-As
