Sidon

Sidon has been inhabited since very early in prehistory. The archaeological site of Sidon II shows a lithic assemblage dating to the Acheulean, whilst finds at Sidon III include a Heavy Neolithic assemblage suggested to date just prior to the invention of pottery.[6]

Around 1350 BC, Sidon was part of the Egyptian Empire and ruled by Zimredda of Sidon. During the Amarna Period, Egypt went into decline, leading to uprising and turmoil in the Levant. There was rivalry between Lebanese coastal city-states fighting for dominance, with Abimilku of Tyre in the south, and Rib-Hadda of Byblos in the north. Byblos became significantly weakened as the dominant city on the Lebanese coast. Further north, the Akkar Plain rebelled and became the kingdom of Amurru with Hittite support. The Mitanni Empire, an ally of the Egyptians, had dominated Syria but now fell apart due to the military campaigns of Suppiluliuma I of Hatti. Tutankhamun and his general Horemheb scrambled to keep Egyptian control over southern Levant, as the Hittites became overlords in the north.

The oldest testimony documenting words in the Phoenician language of Sidon, is also from this period. The Book of Deuteronomy (3, 9) reads: "the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion". In other words: Mount Hermon was called "Sirion", in (the Phoenician language of) Sidon.

Persian style bull protome found in Sidon gives testimony of the Achaemenid rule and influence. Marble, 5th century BC

Sidon was one of the most important Phoenician cities, and it may have been the oldest. From there and other ports, a great Mediterranean commercial empire was founded. Homer praised the skill of its craftsmen in producing glass, purple dyes, and its women's skill at the art of embroidery. It was also from here that a colonising party went to found the city of Tyre. Tyre also grew into a great city, and in subsequent years there was competition between the two, each claiming to be the metropolis ('Mother City') of Phoenicia.

Glass manufacturing, Sidon's most important enterprise in the Phoenician era, was conducted on a vast scale, and the production of purple dye was almost as important. The small shell of the Murex trunculus was broken in order to extract the pigment that was so rare it became the mark of royalty.[7][8]

In AD 1855, the sarcophagus of King Eshmun’azar II was discovered. From a Phoenician inscription on its lid, it appears that he was a "king of the Sidonians," probably in the 5th century BC, and that his mother was a priestess of ‘Ashtart, "the goddess of the Sidonians."[9] In this inscription the gods Eshmun and Ba‘al Sidon 'Lord of Sidon' (who may or may not be the same) are mentioned as chief gods of the Sidonians. ‘Ashtart is entitled ‘Ashtart-Shem-Ba‘al, '‘Ashtart the name of the Lord', a title also found in an Ugaritic text.

Nebuchadnezzar II subjugated the city to be part of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.[10] At the end of the Persian era, in 351 BC, Phoenicia was invaded by Artaxerxes III.

Tomb of the Mourning Women, Hellenistic necropolis of Sidon, now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums

Like other Phoenician city-states, Sidon suffered from a succession of conquerors, first by the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC, ending with its occupation by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, and the start of the Hellenistic period of Sidon's history. The Persian influence seems to have been profound, as is observed in the change of the architectural style of the city. Under the Diadochi or successors of Alexander, it enjoyed relative autonomy and organised games and competitions in which the greatest athletes of the region participated. In the Hellenistic period necropolis of Sidon, important finds such as the Alexander Sarcophagus, the Lycian tomb and the Sarcophagus of the Crying Women were discovered, which are now on display at the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul.[11]

When Sidon fell under Roman domination, it continued to mint its own silver coins. The city was embellished by Herod, king of Judaea. By the First Jewish–Roman War, Sidon sheltered enough Jews that local pagans hesitated to attack them during the broader massacre of Jews in Greco-Syrian towns in 66 CE, as documented by Josephus.[12]

The Peutinger Table showing the location of Tyre and Sidon within the Roman Empire

The Romans also built a theater and other major monuments in the city, and an underground Mithraeum was discovered. In the reign of Elagabalus, a Roman colony was established there. During the Byzantine Empire, when the great earthquake of AD 551 destroyed most of the cities of Phoenice, the law school of Berytus took refuge in Sidon. The town continued quietly for the next century, until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 636.

Sidon Sea Castle, built by the Crusaders in AD 1228

On 4 December 1110, Sidon was captured after the siege of Sidon, a decade after the First Crusade, by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem and King Sigurd I of Norway. It then became the center of the Lordship of Sidon, an important vassal-state of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin captured it from the Crusaders in 1187, but German Crusaders restored it to Christian control in the Crusade of 1197. It remained an important Crusader stronghold until it was destroyed by the Ayyubids in 1249. In 1260, it was again destroyed by the Mongols led by Kitbuqa.[13] The remains of the original walls are still visible.

In the 12th century, Benjamin of Tudela noted the presence of approximately twenty Jews, possibly families, in Sidon, which he described as a "large city."[12]

After Sidon came under Ottoman Turkish rule in the early 16th century, it became the capital of the Sidon Eyalet (province) and regained a great deal of its earlier commercial importance.[14]

In 1521, Moses Basola encountered twenty families of Musta'rabi Jews during his visit to Sidon.[12]

Starting in the 18th century the city was dominated by the Hammud family of notables, who monopolized the production and exporting of cotton in the region and built numerous palaces and public works in the city. The Hammuds also served as government customs agents and tax collectors for various Ottoman religious foundations.[14] In 1738, r. Chaim Yosef David Azulai discovered a thriving Jewish community in Sidon.[12]

During the Egyptian–Ottoman War, Sidon, like much of Ottoman Syria, was occupied by the forces of Muhammad Ali of Egypt. His ambitions were opposed by the British Empire, which backed the Ottomans. The British Admiral Charles Napier, commanding a mixed squadron of British, Turkish and Austrian ships, bombarded Sidon on 26 September 1840, and landed with a column. Sidon capitulated in two days, and the British went on to Acre. This action was recalled in two Royal Navy vessels being named HMS Sidon.

The 19th century brought significant changes to the Jewish community of Sidon. By 1830, the community, comprising around twenty-five families of primarily Arabic-speaking merchants, had customs akin to those of Judean Jews. Starting in 1850, the community witnessed growth as Maghrebi Jews, initially settled in the Chouf Mountains above Beirut, migrated to Sidon and Beirut amidst escalating Druze-Maronite tensions and the ensuing 1860 war. With roots in mountain traditions, they introduced citrus cultivation on the outskirts of Sidon, leading to the construction of a new synagogue in 1860 to meet the needs of the expanding community.[12]

From 1887 the Royal necropolis of Sido was extensively excavated by the Ottomans, and its treasures transferred to Istanbul (like the Alexander sarcophagus). Sidon was a small fishing town of 10,000 inhabitants in 1900.

Sidon with a view of the Mediterranean coast

After World War I it became part of the French Mandate of Lebanon. During World War II the city, together with the rest of Lebanon, was captured by British forces fighting against the Vichy French, and following the war it became a major city of independent Lebanon.

Following the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, Palestinian refugees arrived in Sidon, as in other Lebanese cities, and were settled at the large refugee camps of Ein el-Hilweh and Mieh Mieh. At first these consisted of enormous rows of tents, but gradually houses were constructed. The refugee camps constituted de facto neighborhoods of Sidon, but had a separate legal and political status which made them into a kind of enclaves. At the same time, the remaining Jews of the city fled, and the Jewish cemetery fell into disrepair, threatened by coastal erosion.

On Easter Sunday, 19 April 1981, at least sixteen people were killed in Sidon after the (South Lebanon Army) SLA's long-range artillery indiscriminately shelled the city centre. It was reported that it was in response to a request from Bashir Gemayel in connection with ongoing Syrian attacks on Phalangist positions around Zahle. Israel denied involvement.[15]

After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon Sidon was occupied by the Israeli army for almost two and a half years.

On 18 August 1997, following a roadside bomb near Jezzine which killed of two teenage members of a SLA leader's family, SLA artillery shelled Sidon killing seven civilians and wounding thirty-five. Hizbollah responded the following day by firing 60–80 rockets into the security zone and northern Israel. According to UNIFIL observers the missiles appeared to be targeted at uninhabited areas. The attack on Sidon is credited with leading to a truce between Hizbollah and Amal and increased cooperation between the two groups and the Lebanese Army. This was evident in the Ansariya ambush the following month.[16]

On 8 June 1999 two gunmen entered the Palais de Justice, Sidon's main courthouse, and shot dead three magistrates and a chief prosecutor. The attackers escaped. No group claimed responsibility but suspicion focused on Osbat al-Ansar whose leader had been sentenced to death in absentia for the murder of the head of the Sufi Al-Ahbash movement and the attempted assassination of the mufti of Tripoli. He was believed to be in hiding in the Ain al-Hilwa refugee camp.[17]

Studies in 2000 showed a population of 65,000 in the city, and around 200,000 in the metropolitan area. The little level land around the city is used for cultivation of wheat, vegetables, and fruits, especially citrus and bananas. The fishing in the city remains active with a newly opened fishery that sells fresh fish by bidding every morning. The ancient basin was transformed into a fishing port, while a small quay was constructed to receive small commercial vessels. (Refer to the "Old City" and the "Architecture and landscape" sections below.)

Panorama of Sidon as seen from the top of the Sea Castle, 2009

Saida Municipal Stadium was inaugurated in 2000 for the Asian Football Confederation's Cup 2000.

Near the southern entrance to the city used to be a 'rubbish mountain' called at the time by the locals the Makab; namely, a 600,000 cubic metre heap that reached the height of a four-story building. It was originally created to dispose of the remains of buildings destroyed in Israeli air strikes during the 1982 invasion, but it then became the main dump for the city. Growing out of the sea, it became an environmental hazard, with medical waste and plastic bags polluting nearby fishing grounds.

Sidon politicians, including the Hariri family, failed for decades to resolve the Makab crisis—which has endangered residents health (especially during episodic burning). In 2004, Engineer Hamzi Moghrabi, a Sidon native, conceived the idea to establish a treatment plant for the city's decades-old chronic waste problem. He established the privately funded IBC Enviro and the treatment plant became operational in 2013.[20]

The Ministry of Environment came up with a $50,000+ plan to clean the whole area and transform the dump into a green space, along with other heaps in the country. Qamla beach in Sidon, a coast in close proximity to the Sea Castle, witnessed a large municipal cleanup in May 2011, as it was an easy target of rubbish being washed up by the Makab. These plans aim to revive the former glory of the city's coasts and attract tourists who avoided swimming in Sidon's sea before. The project of cleaning the region where the waste dump has already started, and currently a waves-barrier is being built, and the vast bulk of the waste dump being cleared.[21][22][23][24]

In the area of this ruined Crusader castle, recent excavations uncovered a late Early Bronze Age I (EB I) settlement on bedrock. Here, an uninterrupted sequence from EB I to EB III was found. A modest third-millennium BC settlement consisting of domestic installations and tombs was also uncovered.[30][31] Yet the following history of Sidon was not clarified. Very little has been known about the location, extent, and significance of Middle Bronze Age (MBA) Sidon until recently.

Since the early 21st century, Tell el-Burak excavations have helped significantly in this area, because it was an active settlement during MBA, and quite well preserved. Tell el-Burak is located along the coast 9 km south from Sidon. Previously, there was a big gap in the history of this whole coastal area from the end of the Early Bronze Age until the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, when Sidon is first mentioned in the historical texts.[32]

Archaeologists determined that Sidon was clearly the big power centre during MBA, controlling significant territory. So there appears to have been the "Kingdom of Sidon" that controlled el-Burak, and many other surrounding areas.[32]

The area around Sidon contains a number of important necropoli (below in order of age, and noting their principal excavators):[33]

• Dakerman (Roger Saidah, 1968–1969)
• Tambourit (Saidah, 1977)
• Magharet Abloun (Aimé Péretié, 1855; Ernest Renan, 1864; Georges Contenau, 1920)
• Ayaa (William King Eddy, 1887; Osman Hamdi Bey, 1892; Contenau, 1920)
• Ain al-Hilweh (Charles Cutler Torrey, 1919–1920)
• El-Merah (Contenau, 1920)
• Qrayé (Contenau, 1920)
• Almoun, (Conenau, 1924)
• El-Harah (Theodore Makridi, 1904; Contenau, 1924)
• Magharet Abloun, Greco-Roman part (Renan, 1864; Contenau, 1914–1924)
• Helalié/Baramié/Mar Elias (William John Bankes, 1816; Renan 1864; Contenau, 1914; M. Meurdrac & L. Albanèse, 1938–1939)

In indication of the high-profile of the old city of Sidon in archaeological expeditions, and mainly in the 19th century, in October 1860 the famous French scholar Ernest Renan was entrusted with an archaeological mission to Lebanon, which included the search for the antique parts of Sidon. The Phoenician inscriptions that he discovered, and his field data, were eventually published in his notebook the: Mission de Phénicie (1864–1874; Phoenician Expedition).

The St. Louis land-castle grounds were excavated in 1914–1920 by a French team. Then eastwards a new site was also excavated by another generation of French expeditions in the 1960s. This same site received renewed attention in 1998 when the Directorate General of Antiquities in Lebanon authorized the British Museum to begin excavations on this area of land that was specifically demarcated for archaeological research. This has resulted in published papers, with a special focus on studying ceramics.[34]

The archaeological fieldwork was not fully undertaken since the independence of the Lebanon. The main finds are displayed in the National Museum in Beirut. The fieldwork was also interrupted during the long civil war period, and it is now resumed but at a timid and slow scale, and not involving major international expeditions or expertise. Perhaps this is also indicative of the general lack in cultural interests among the authorities of this city, and almost of the non-existence of notable intellectual activities in its modern life. There are signs that the locals are beginning to recognize the value of the medieval quarters, but this remains linked to minor individual initiatives and not a coordinated collective effort to rehabilitate it like it has been the case with Byblos, even though the old district of Sidon contains a great wealth in old and ancient architecture.

The Hebrew Bible describes Sidon (צִידוֹן‎) in several passages:

• It received its name from the "first-born" of Canaan, the grandson of Noah (Genesis 10:15, 19).
• The Tribe of Zebulun has a frontier on Sidon (Genesis 49:13)
• It was the first home of the Phoenicians on the coast of Canaan, and from its extensive commercial relations became a "great" city (Joshua 11:8, 19:28).
• It was the mother city of Tyre. It lay within the lot of the tribe of Asher, but was never subdued (Judges 1:31).
• The Sidonians long oppressed Israel (Judges 10:12).
• From the time of David its glory began to wane, and Tyre, its "virgin daughter" (Isaiah 23:12), rose to its place of pre-eminence.
• Solomon entered into a matrimonial alliance with the Sidonians, and thus their form of idolatrous worship found a place in the land of Israel (1 Kings 11:1, 33).
• Jezebel was a Sidonian princess (1 Kings 16:31).
• It was famous for its manufactures and arts, as well as for its commerce (1 Kings 5:6; 1 Chronicles 22:4; Ezekiel 27:8).
• It is frequently referred to by the prophets (Isaiah 23:2, 4, 12; Jeremiah 25:22, 27:3, 47:4; Ezekiel 27:8, 28:21, 22, 32:30; Joel 3:4).
• Elijah sojourned in Sidon, performing miracles (1 Kings 17:9–24; see also in the New Testament, Luke 4:26).

• Jesus visited the region or "coasts" (King James Version) of Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 15:21; Mark 7:24) and from this region many came forth to hear him preaching (Mark 3:8; Luke 6:17), leading to the stark contrast in Matthew 11:21–23 to Korazin and Bethsaida. See the exorcism of the Syrophoenician woman's daughter, which takes place on the coast, in the region of Sidon and Tyre. Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis (Mark 7:31)
• From Sidon, at which his ship put in after leaving Caesarea, Paul finally sailed for Rome (Acts 27:3, 4).

Sidon is twinned with:

• Constanța, Romania
• Sofia, Bulgaria
• Sochi, Russia

Chronological list.

• Eumaeus, character from Greek mythology. In Homer, Eumaeus tells of having been kidnapped as child from Sidon, where his father was the king.
• Antipater of Sidon (2nd century BC), poet
• Zeno of Sidon (c. 150 – c. 75 BC), Epicurean philosopher born in Sidon
• Dorotheus of Sidon (1st century BC) Greek astrologer associated with Sidon
• Boethus of Sidon (c. 75 – c. 10 BC), peripatetic philosopher
• Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, Roman soldier who, according to his grave found in Germany in the 19th century, was born in Sidon
• Zenobius and his sister Zenobia, early-Christian martyrs executed around AD 290 under Diocletian
• Gymnasius (Γυμνάσιος), a sophist in the time of the Emperor Constantine[35]
• Euthymios Saifi (1643–1723), Melkite Catholic Bishop of Sidon and Tyre

• Ghaleb Kassab, co-founder of Visit Saida, and digital promoter of Saida.
• Adel Osseiran, co-founder of modern Lebanon, was a prominent Lebanese statesman, a former Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, and one of the founding fathers of the Lebanese Republic.
• Raymond Audi, international banker, and former Minister of Refugees in the government of Lebanon (Originally Palestinian)
• Ali Osseiran, Member of Parliament and Former Minister
• Afif al-Bizri, (Afif El-Bizri) former Chief of Staff of the Syrian armed forces with a high-standing military rank and political profile during the Syria-Egypt republican union of the Nasser era.
• Mousbah Baalbaki, contemporary male belly dancer
• The Four Brothers - Riad El Bizri's Sons:
  • Ahmad El-Bizri, Salah-Eddine El-Bizri (Mayor of Sidon from 1937 till 1951. Member of Parliament from 1951 till 1953), Ezzedine El-Bizri, Anwar El-Bizri.
• Hisham El-Bizri, filmmaker, producer, professor
• Nader El-Bizri, philosopher, architect
• Nazih El Bizri, longstanding politician: mayor of Sidon from 1952 till 1959, Member of Lebanese Parliament from 1953 till 1958 and from 1972 till 1992. Lebanese Minister of Health, and Minister of Social Affairs from 1955 till 1956, then from 1972 till 1973, and from 1980 till 1982.
• Rafic Hariri, former Prime Minister, billionaire and international businessman
• Bahia Hariri, former Minister of Education in the governments of Lebanon and philanthropist
• Saad Hariri, youngest former Prime Minister of Lebanon
• Bahaa Hariri, international businessman and billionaire, son of Rafic Hariri
• Ahmad Hijazi (born 1994), Lebanese footballer[36]
• Sheikh Mohamad Osseiran, Jaafari Mufti of Sidon
• Maarouf Saad, former deputy representing Sidon in the national parliament and founder of the Popular Nasserite Party
• Fouad Siniora, former Prime Minister of Lebanon, minister of finance, and member of parliament
• Riad Solh, former Prime Minister of Lebanon
• Sami Solh, former Prime Minister of Lebanon
• Fayza Ahmed (Al-Rawwass), Arab singer formerly based in Egypt
• Hassan Abdul Jawad (born 1996), Music composer and pianist, lived and grew in Sidon. He organized several prestigious concerts shedding light on two main sites (the castle and the ziri island) whilst bringing the national orchestra.
• Paul Watkins (born 1950), former Manson family member lived in Sidon during his childhood (d.1990)
• Hussein Zein (born 1995), Lebanese footballer[37]