[281] Lüttke (1), vol. i. pp. 30, 35. Dr. Andrew Watson writes: “No year has passed during my residence of forty-four years in the Nile valley without my hearing of several instances of defection. The causes are, chiefly, the hope of worldly gain of various kinds, severe and continued persecution, exposure to the cruelty and rapacity of Moslem neighbours, and personal indignities as well as political disabilities of various kinds.” (Islam in Egypt: Mohammedan World, p. 24.) [282] Severus, pp. 122, 126, 143. One of the very first occasions on which they had to complain of excessive taxation was when Menas, the Christian prefect of Lower Egypt, extorted from the city of Alexandria 32,057 pieces of gold, instead of 22,000 which ʻAmr had fixed as the amount to be levied. (John of Nikiu, p. 585.) Renaudot (p. 168) says that after the restoration of the Orthodox hierarchy, about seventy years after the Muhammadan conquest, the Copts suffered as much at its hands as at the hands of the Muhammadans themselves. [283] Maqrīzī mentions five other risings of the Copts that had to be crushed by force of arms, within the first century of the Arab domination. (Maqrīzī (2), pp. 76–82.) [284] Renaudot, pp. 189, 374, 430, 540. [285] Id. p. 603. [286] Id. pp. 432, 607. Nāṣir-i-Khusrau: Safar-nāmah, ed. Schefer, pp. 155–6. [287] Renaudot, pp. 212, 225, 314, 374, 540. [288] Renaudot, p. 388. [289] Id. pp 567, 571, 574–5. [290] Wansleben, p. 30. Wansleben mentions another instance (under different circumstances) of the decay of the Coptic Church, in the island of Cyprus, which was formerly under the jurisdiction of the Coptic Patriarch: here they were so persecuted by the Orthodox clergy, who enjoyed the protection of the Byzantine emperors, that the Patriarch could not induce priests to go there, and consequently all the Copts on the island either accepted Islam or the Council of Chalcedon, and their churches were all shut up. (Id. p. 31.) [291] Renaudot, p. 377. [292] Renaudot, p. 575. [293] Relation du voyage du Sayd ou de la Thebayde fait en 1668, par les PP. Protais et Charles-François d’Orleans, Capuchins Missionaires, p. 3. (Thevenot, vol. ii.) [294] Caetani, vol. iv. p. 520. [295] Ishok of Romgla, pp. 272–3. [296] Idrīsī, p. 32. [297] Maqrīzī (2), tome i. 2me partie, p. 131. [298] Maqrīzī, pp. 128–30. [299] Burckhardt (1), p. 494. [300] About twelve miles above the modern Khartum. [301] Artin, pp. 62, 144. [302] Becker, Geschichte des östlichen Sūdān, p. 160. [303] Vol. iv. p. 396.