Its history, including Ancient Egyptian, Hellenistic, Roman and Arab periods, has not yet received the full attention of scholars.

The village of Bani Hasan al Shurruq houses 390 rock-cut decorated tombs and chapels from the Middle Kingdom (2000–1580 BC, especially the sixteenth dynasty).

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.

[9] 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.

[10][11] In May 2020, Egyptian-Spanish archaeological mission headed by Esther Ponce revealed a unique cemetery consist of one room built with glazed limestone dating back to the 26th Dynasty (so-called the El-Sawi era) at the site of ancient Oxyrhynchus.

[12][13][14][15] In 1981, the Basic Village Service Program (BVS) of USAID, had several water, and road projects, going on in several markazes in the Minya Governorate.

[16] In 2013, The United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security helped farmers in Minya by doing consultation work with them and taking soil samples.

Among its principal crops are sugarcane, cotton, beans, soybeans, garlic, onions, vegetables of various sorts, tomatoes, potatoes, watermelons, and grapes.

Among the leading local industries are food processing (especially sugar and the drying and grinding of onions), spinning and weaving of cotton, perfumes, oils and fats, cement-making, quarrying (especially limestone), and brick-making.