It is located approximately 245 km (152 mi) south of Cairo on the western bank of the Nile River, which flows north through the city.

The city's Arabic name comes from the Coptic, rendered in as ⲧⲙⲱⲛⲏ in Bohairic and ⲧⲙⲟⲟⲛⲉ in Sahidic, which in turn came from Ancient Greek: μονή, lit.

During the Predynastic Period (before 3100 BC), the area encompassing modern day Minya and its surrounding lands formed the 16th nome (district).

Towards the end of the Second Intermediate Period when the Theban Pharaohs started their struggle to expel the Hyksos out of Egypt, Oryx nome was the site where the first major battle of this conflict took place.

In 1552 BC, Kamose, the last Pharaoh of the 17th dynasty marched his Medjay troops north to Nefrusy few miles to the south of Minya and there he defeated the army of a man called Teti son of Pepi, who is said to have transformed Oryx into a "nest of the Asiatics".

Antinoöpolis was built in 130 A.D. by the Roman emperor Hadrian in memory of his eromenos Antinous, who drowned on the banks of the Nile river and was considered a God following Egyptian tradition.

Its church was built by Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, in 328, on one of the sites where the Holy Family is believed to have stayed during its Flight into Egypt.

During the rule of the Abbasids, Minya's name became attached to Ibn Khasib, the appointed benevolent and almost legendary ruler of Egypt in the early 9th century.

During the rule of the Fatimid Caliphate in the 10th and 11th centuries, Minya continued to expand and it included large mosques, schools, a bazar, and public baths.

Minya was noted and regarded with high praise in Ibn Battuta's account of his travels called The Rihla because of the school it used to have when he visited the city.

Improvement of the transportation network, particularly the introduction of the building of bridges across the Ibrahimiya, permitted developments of housing to grow haphazardly on private agricultural lands of the west suburban banks of the canal.

The influx of wealth created a new wealthy upper class that consisted of native land lords, senior officials and merchants.

Utilities, serving mainly the new developments, were introduced under long-term franchises granted to foreign enterprises: a courthouse in 1927, the fire department in 1931, the city council and the administration building in 1937.

[14] Following the revolution of 1952, the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the subsequent nationalization of many industries from 1957, the vast majority of Greek and Armenian communities of Minya left Egypt.

In the 1960s, Ard AL-Mowled was developed as a public housing scheme to accommodate the exploding population growth of lower income residents of the old city.

[15] In February 2019, fifty mummy collections wrapped in linen, stone coffins or wooden sarcophagi dated back to the Ptolemaic Kingdom were discovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the Tuna El-Gebel site.

[16][17] Egypt's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of the collective graves of senior officials and high clergies of the god Djehuty (Thoth) in Tuna el-Gebel in January, 2020.

[18][19] In May 2020, Egyptian-Spanish archaeological mission head by Esther Ponce uncovered a unique cemetery dating to the 26th Dynasty (so-called the El-Sawi era) at the site of ancient Oxyrhynchus.

Archaeologists found tombstones, bronze coins, small crosses, and clay seals inside eight Roman-era tombs with domed and unmarked roofs.

While hail or snow are extremely rare due to Minya's low precipitation averages, frost will occasionally form on cold winter nights.