Kura or Koura ( ar, كورة) was a term used by
Muslims to describe the political administrative units of
Egypt, equivalent to the
nomes of pre-Islamic times. These administrative units are smaller than the modern
governorates of Egypt.
In Egypt
The Arabized word is of Greek origin ( gr, χώρα; la, chora), meaning "territory" or "province". The is not exactly the same as the ancient
pagarchy, because the refers to an administrative unit in general, while the pagarchy is a religious administrative unit. The Arabs also kept the names of these units, citing their
Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
origin, which was taken from the
Pharaonic origin (not the Roman or Greek), after they distorted some of them and translated others in accordance with the Arabic language.
Ibn Duqmaq mentioned in his book ''Al-Intisar li-Wasita Aqd al-Amsar'' that the 33 s of
Lower Egypt
Lower Egypt ( ar, مصر السفلى '; ) is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, from El Aiyat, south of modern-day Cairo, and Dahshur. Historically, ...
included the s of
al-Hawf al-Sharqi, which are:
[Ibn Duqmaq, ''الانتصار لوساطة عقد الأمصار,'' The Grand Printing Press in Boulaq, 1310 AH/1893 AD, section two, pp. 42-43.]
And the ''kuras'' of Batn al-Rif, which are:
And the s of al-Jazira min asfal al-ard, which are:
And the s of al-Hawf al-Gharbi, which are:
As for the s of
Upper Egypt, they are 22, which are:
The remained the chief administrative unit of Egypt well into the Middle Ages. It was not until the 1070s that the
vizier Badr al-Jamali, the de facto ruler of the
Fatimid Caliphate
The Fatimid Caliphate was an Isma'ilism, Ismaili Shia Islam, Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the ea ...
, abolished them and replaced them with 23 provinces (14 in Lower Egypt and 9 in Upper Egypt), which in broad outlines survive to the present day, as the Egyptian governorates.
In al-Andalus
The term was also used for the provincial districts of the
Emirate of Córdoba, in
al-Andalus.
References
{{Reflist
Former administrative divisions of Egypt
Arabic words and phrases
1070s disestablishments
Government of the Fatimid Caliphate
Medieval Egypt