Egypt
The Fayyum is a large oasis basin in Egypt's Western Desert, about 100 km southwest of Cairo, watered from the Nile by the Bahr Yusuf canal and bordered on the north by a lake, Birket Qarun (ancient Lake Moeris). Twelfth-Dynasty pharaohs developed it; Ptolemy II reclaimed land from the lake and brought in Greek settlers, and its Graeco-Roman towns have yielded thousands of papyri and the famous Fayum mummy portraits. Its chief town, Medinet el-Fayyum, stands on ancient Shedet (Crocodilopolis, later Arsinoe), a cult centre of the crocodile god Sobek.
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Fayyum through the eras
Saadia ben Joseph, called al-Fayyumi, was born in the village of Dilaz in the Fayyum (882 or 892). In his youth Egypt was ruled by the Tulunid dynasty (868-905) and then directly by the Abbasid caliphate; he left Egypt by about 915 for Palestine and later Babylonia, decades before the Fatimids took Egypt in 969.
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