In the Nile Delta, the Copts rebelled against the government and refused to pay the taxes that Abd al-Malik had levied on them, forcing the governor to send troops which engaged the insurgents in a bloody battle.
[2] Around the same time, an anti-Umayyad revolt broke out in the eastern Hawf district; Abd al-Malik dispatched another army to Bilbeis to deal with them, but on this occasion the two sides were able to agree to a reconciliation and refrained from fighting.
[3] In the midst of these disturbances, Marwan II himself arrived in Egypt in June 750, having fled there from Syria in the aftermath of his defeat against the Abbasids at the Battle of the Zab earlier that year.
Within a short time of his arrival he found much of the country was against him, with various rebels taking up the Abbasid black in the Hawf, Alexandria, Upper Egypt, and Aswan, and the Copts continuing to be in a state of revolt.
Marwan eventually opted to depart from Fustat, destroying the Gilded Palace and city bridges as he did so,[4] and sent his armies to retake Alexandria and Upper Egypt.