The Israelites in Egypt

Their history there begins with the story of Joseph and his brothers:

When they said, "Joseph and his brother are dearer to our father than we are, though we are a strong band. Truly our father is in manifest error. Kill Joseph or cast him out to some land, so that your father's face will be yours alone, and after that you will be a righteous people"

So they threw him into the depths of the well, where some travellers picked him up and sold him to the Aziz of Egypt. Joseph (peace be upon him) was then about seventeen years old. Plotting pursued Joseph (peace be upon him) at the hands of the Aziz's wife, who tried to seduce him, but he refused and held himself chaste. His reward was prison, where he remained for thirteen years, until Pharaoh brought him out to interpret his famous dream and put him in charge of the storehouses of the land, when he was not yet past thirty. Joseph (peace be upon him) succeeded remarkably in organising Egypt's provisioning and its economy. After nine years his brothers came to him from the land of Canaan seeking food; Joseph made himself known to them, then brought his father and all his brothers to live near him in the good land of Egypt.

Since the Israelites were herdsmen and keepers of livestock, Pharaoh settled them in the east of the Delta, in the place where the Sharqiyya governorate lies today. This was the place Joseph (peace be upon him) had advised, for he wanted his family to be near their original homeland and isolated from the rest of the population, so as to preserve their religion and their freedom to practise their worship and their particular customs undisturbed.

The entry of Jacob (peace be upon him) and his sons into Egypt was around the sixteenth century BC, in the time of the Sixteenth Dynasty, when Egypt was under the rule of the Hyksos, who had come upon it as invaders from Asia. Their occupation of Egypt lasted about four centuries, from the 14th Dynasty to the 18th or the 19th Dynasty.

The Israelites lived in Egypt for more than two centuries, enjoying security, prosperity and honour out of regard for Joseph (peace be upon him), who had no doubt become a national hero for saving Egypt and the whole region from the danger of drought and famine. Then the national current grew strong, the Egyptians gained in strength, and they expelled the Hyksos, or what are known as the Shepherd Kings, from all of Egypt under the leadership of Ramesses II, founder of the 19th Dynasty, whom historians regard as the Pharaoh of the oppression. For no sooner had he finished with the Hyksos than he turned to liquidating the Israelite community and its privileges, which in the eyes of the nationalists were bound up with the Hyksos. Pharaoh went so far in tormenting them as to order their males killed and their women taken captive. In that period Moses (peace be upon him) was born, whom God saved from Pharaoh's hand; indeed he grew up and was raised in his court, until he fled from Egypt to Midian for fear of being killed in retribution for killing an Egyptian who had attacked an Israelite. In Midian he married the daughter of a righteous man, said by some narrators to be Shu'ayb (peace be upon him), in return for ten years of service. When the term was over he set out with his family, and in Sinai revelation came to him as a messenger to the Children of Israel. Revelation charged him with a specific command: to call the Pharaoh of Egypt, Merneptah, who took the throne of Egypt after Ramesses and whom historians regard as the Pharaoh of the Exodus, to the oneness of God and to allowing the Children of Israel to leave Egypt. But Pharaoh, despite the signs that God displayed at the hands of Moses in confirmation of his claim, conceded neither matter, and persisted all the more in his arrogance and his persecution of the Israelites, until God commanded Moses to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt by night. Their departure was accomplished by the miracle of the parting of the sea, in which Pharaoh and his soldiers were drowned⁽⁴⁾.

Thus the history of the Israelites in Egypt came to an end. Many historians hold that the period they spent in Egypt, from their entry in the time of the 16th Dynasty to their departure in the time of the 19th Dynasty, was 215 years, which means that their exodus was in about the middle of the fourteenth century BC⁽⁵⁾.

(4) See the suras "Yusuf", "Ta Ha" and "Al-Qasas", and also the Book of Genesis. (5) Qisas al-Anbiya' (Stories of the Prophets), p. 202, Abd al-Wahhab al-Najjar, Mu'assasat al-Halabi, Cairo 1966.