Quote Originally Posted by Hax View Post
That is mostly because the Mamelukes were elite soldiers trained by the different Caliphates to fight against eachother, because Islam forbids Muslims to fight eachother, they trained young captives (non-Muslims) to fight eachother.

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The reason why you can find fair-haired people in modern-day Egypt has to do with the fact that the Ptolemaic kings used Galatians extensively in their army, due to a severe lack of manpower (the amount of Hellenes and Makedonians living in Aigyptos was low), so they trained the Galatians as elite shock troops. In return, they gave the Galatians a nice big kleros (tract of land) to live in, and since they stayed there for about 2000 years, this is one of the reasons why there are still fair-haired and light-skinned people in modern-day Egypt.
Quote Originally Posted by Moros View Post
Quite alot moved over to Egypt and lived there. Of course also because of hellenes as some hellenes actually had blond hair too. Alexander and Cleopatra VII both were blond if I'm not mistaken. There were also red haired hellenes, like Phyrrhos if I'm not mistaken.

Edit: I should have said one of the reasons.
Also Alexander wasn't blond but had rather fair hair. I guess I've got someone else in my mind I guess.
Edit2: Wait yes he was. Gah! I need to sleep more often and longer Gah! My memory is like Swis cheese lately.
Edit3: Forgot to add the 'Edit:'
I could have sworn there was a discussion about this a while back and it was decided that not enough Celts moved to the region to seriously affect the gene pool.