Contrary to the newly conquered Christians in the Byzantine Empire, Christians of Levant and Egypt had long been subjugated by the Muslim force and faced threat of extinction. Alexandria was home to St Mark and Antioch St Peter (prior to Rome). Jerusalem's importance in the Christian world does not need any more explanation. Syria, Palestine and Egypt was full of Christians prior to the Muslim occupation and among them were the best of scholars of the Roman empire, but the sheer number of them had decimated during more than 7 centuries of Muslim dominance; however, these communities managed to survive even in the worst situation possible.

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        The saying that Islam does not force conversion was an utter myth. In the early stages of Muslim rule (7th, 8th centuries) in Levant and Egypt, the Caliphate issued an edict that required all Christians of Egypt should offer almost all of their yearly income except for basic livelihood, and even then, did the local Emirs of Egypt force the Coptic Christians to wear stone crosses, one that could easily be over one kilogrammes. Modern day Egyptian Muslims still use a racial slur descended from this period, as angry Muslim kids say to their Coptic counterparts: “Adma zarqa! We ain’t playing with none of you lots.” “Adma Zarqa” means “blue bone”, referring to the bruise on Copts’ neckbones caused by the stone cross (Morgan 57). Expulsions were almost none, for the Emirs and Caliphs needed quasi-slaves, civil servants and punchbags from time to time, but anytime they wanted a little more coins, they once again turned to the Christians and Jews, offering the latter two with a three-way multiple choice: give up your faith and walk away with your head, give up your head and walk away with your faith (if you can), or give up your wealth and walk away intact. Due to excessive political and economic disadvantage, Many of the Christian and Jewish population converted to Islam since Muslims did not have to pay the poll tax that all quasi-infidels needed to contribute (Morgan 178). 

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       Native cultures in Levant and Egypt also suffered decline along with the population. The literary and native languages of the Middle East, Greek, Syro-Aramaic, Coptic, had ceased to be spoken largely in the metropolitan areas, and suffered occasional ban by the Arabic-speaking government. Greek, the former lingua franca of the Roman empire, with significantly less indigenous population, soon fell out of use in Egypt and Syria; Coptic died out in speech at around 10th century A.D. but kept its liturgical importance. Syro-Aramaic, the spoken tongue of Jesus Christ himself, survived to this day but lost completely its former co-official status as Spanish of California or French of Switzerland. Spoken dialects of Syro-Aramaic are still used in day-to-day life in small pockets of Syrian and Mesopotamian mountains, and the literary classical Syriac in the Syrian Churches. With the collapse of native languages, the Christians of the Middle East started to utilise the language of the Qur'an, Classical Arabic "Fus'ha" to compose literature and theological treatises. With most of the Holy Scripts already translated into Arabic, these Christians could still hang on to their traditions in face of massive assimilation (Panchenko 243). 

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       Arabic-speaking Christians in the city were among the most successful scholars, merchants, medics, and civil servants, despite being constantly looked down upon by the Muslim population (Panchenko 400).