Qūṣ

Qus lies on the east bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt, at the head of the desert roads to the Red Sea. The Copts called it Kos Birbir, the burning Kos, and the Greeks called it Apollonopolis Parva, the little city of Apollo. In the thirteenth century a new trade route to the Red Sea made it the main commercial centre for trade with Africa, India and Arabia, taking the place of Qift, and it became the second most important Muslim city of medieval Egypt after Cairo.

Pilgrims and merchants went from Qus by camel to Aydhab on the Red Sea, as Ibn Jubayr had done in the twelfth century, and took ship from there to Jeddah. In 1326 Ibn Battuta tried to reach Mecca by this route but was turned back by a rebellion near Aydhab. In 1426 the Mamluk sultan Barsbay destroyed Aydhab to secure for Egypt the exclusive rights over the Red Sea trade between Yemen and Europe, and the desert road from Qus lost its main seaport.