Lower Egyptian

Lower Egyptians are the Arabic-speaking people of the Nile Delta, the fertile country between Cairo and the Mediterranean that medieval Arab writers called Miṣr as-Suflā. Their vernacular, Egyptian Arabic, or Masri, took shape in Fustat, the first Islamic capital, on the site of modern Cairo, and carries a large Coptic substrate inherited from the Egyptians who adopted Arabic after the conquest of 641; Coptic-Arabic bilingualism in the delta lasted more than three centuries.

Cairo was founded by the Fatimids in 969 and remained the seat of power under the Ayyubids and the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt from the mid-thirteenth century until the Ottoman conquest of 1517. Under Ottoman rule Egypt became a province largely run by Mamluk beys, while Alexandria and Damietta remained its Mediterranean ports.

French troops occupied Cairo from 1798 to 1801, and after their withdrawal Muhammad Ali Pasha seized power in 1805, making the delta the heartland of a quasi-independent Egyptian state.