(also Al Fayum, El Faiyum), a city in Egypt, in the Al Fayyum oasis; administrative center of the muhafazah (governorate) of Fayyum. Railroad station. Population, 150,900 (1970). Industries include cotton ginning and milling, wool and leather processing, and the production of tobacco goods. Al Fayyum is the center of an agricultural region producing cotton, grains, and legumes.

(also Al Fayum, El Faiyum), an oasis in Egypt, in the eastern part of the Libyan Desert. The administrative center is the city of Al Fayyum. The oasis is located in a tectonic basin that is 43 m below sea level. In its center is Birket Qaran, a lake with saline water, linked to the Nile by the Bahr Yusuf watercourse. The chief occupation of the population is the irrigated farming of cotton, grains (corn, wheat, rice), and legumes. Date-palm groves dot the oasis. There are small enterprises of the textile, food-processing, and leather-processing industries. Various handicrafted goods are also produced.

Traces of Paleolithic and Neolithic habitation sites (the Fayyum settlements) have been found in the oasis, which is also the site of the Fayyum portraits, painted funerary portraits first discovered in 1887.