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| Sidon |
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Source: Matson Collection. |
Sidon with Harbor and
Gardens, Aerial View
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Old Sidon, named by the grandson of Noah, and styled Great Zidon by Joshua, is,
perhaps, the oldest living city in the world, and claims the honour of being
mentioned both in the book of Genesis and in the Homeric poems . . . .The town
is situated on the north-western slope of a low promontory extending down to the
sea. In front of the sea wall a chain of island rocks runs from north to south,
formerly enclosing a harbour large enough to hold fifty galleys; but the Druse
prince, Fakhr ed Dīn, filled it up with stones and earth to prevent the entrance
of Turkish ships, and now only the little shakhtūrs of Kozta Jiz and his fellow
sailors can find anchorage in the shallow waters. Sidon is a walled town, and,
unlike Beirūt, which has overleaped its walls and spread for miles around, it
keeps closely pent up within its narrow limits. A more compact city could hardly
be imagined, for not only are the streets too narrow to allow loaded camels to
pass each other with facility, but the houses are to a great extent built on
arches over the streets, so that one can ride or walk from one end of the town
to the other under dark, gloomy tunnels. (Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3,
p. 42, 43.) |
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Sidon |
Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, facing
p. 42. |
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The Sidonians were already a commercial
nation when the Egyptians expelled the
shepherd kings, and from the first half of the
seventeenth till the end of the thirteenth
century B.C., the Sidonians were subject to
the Egyptians . . . .The Sidonians supplied
the mercantile and military navy of Egypt, and
during this period, when no rival navy
existed, Sidonian trade and commercial
prosperity reached their highest point . . . .The commerce of Solomon between Ophir and
his ports of Elath and Ezion Geber was carried
on by Tyrian sailors, the descendants of the
old Sidonian navigators . . . .The ancient
city, so often built, destroyed, and re-built,
is now a town of nine thousand inhabitants,
and in its want of business life and
enterprise, a typical oriental city . . . .
Beirūt has destroyed the commerce of Sidon,
and the caravans, bringing the wheat and
butter of the Haurān to Beirūt and carrying
back the wares of Europe, pass by Sidon,
outside the walls. (Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, pp. 42-43.) |
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Source: Earthly Footsteps of the Man of Galilee, p. 310. |
Sidon from the Sea |
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Sidon was the Divine City, which gave gods to
the Phoenicians, and through them to Greece,
Italy, and Carthage. It was the Jerusalem of
Baal worship. Here was worshipped that divine
couple of the Phoenician religion, Baal Sidon
and Ashtaroth, the same which at Gebal (Jebeil)
was called Thammuz and Baalath, at Carthage
Baal Hamon and Tanith, among the Hittites Shed
and Shedath, and in Damascus Hadad and
Atargath . . . .The hardy navigators of Sidon
and Tyre, in pushing their adventurous prows
into the Euxine, the Ęgean, and beyond the
Pillars of Hercules, carried with them their
religion and their peculiar divinities. Their
Ashtaroth became Aphrodite in Greece, and the
temple of Thasos in the Ęgean was dedicated to
Melkarth, the Tyrian Hercules. In the island
of Malta a dedicatory inscription speaks of
"the lord Melkarth, Baal of Tyre." (Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, p. 42.) |
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Sidon Crusader Castle |
Source:
Photographs of Charles Lee Feinberg. |
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During the Crusades, Sidon was alternately
in the hands of the Franks and the Muslims,
and suffered terribly from capture and
re-capture by the hostile armies . . . .The
Kŭl'at el Bahr, or Castle on the Sea, stands
on a small island connected with the land by a
bridge of nine arches. It was built in the
thirteenth century, the large blocks belonging
to a more ancient structure. The island on the
west and south-west was once covered by a
massive sea-wall, protecting the harbour from
the waves, but after the destruction of the
harbour by Fakhr ed Din, the huge blocks were
removed for building purposes, and in rough
weather the sea makes a clean breach over the
rocks into the little harbour (Source:
Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, pp. 43, 46-47.) |
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See
Baalbek,
Beirut,
Tripoli,
Tyre,
or
Paul in Damascus |
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