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Coptic Cairo recalls the millennial interlude between pharaonic and Islamic civilization, and the enduring faith of Egypt's Copts. Though not a ghetto, the quarter's huddle of dark churches suggests a mistrust of outsiders - an attitude of mind that has its roots in the Persian conquest and centuries of Greek or Roman rule. Perhaps as early as the sixth century BC, a town grew up in this area, built around a fortress intended to guard the canal linking the Nile and the Red Sea. Some ascribe the name of this settlement - Babylon-in-Egypt - to Chaldean workmen pining after their home town beside the Euphrates; another likely derivation is Bab il-On, the "Gate of Heliopolis". Either way, it was Egyptian or Jewish in spirit long before Emperor Trajan raised the existing fortress in 130 AD. Resentful of Greek domination and Hellenistic Alexandria, many of Babylon's inhabitants later embraced Christianity, despite bitter persecution by the pagan Romans. Subsequently, after the emperor Constantine's conversion, the community was further oppressed by Byzantine clerics in the name of Melkite orthodoxy. Thus when the Muslim army besieged Babylon in 641, promising to respect Copts and Jews as "People of the Book", only its garrison resisted.
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