Lebanon
Who ruled Sidon?
Sidon dates from about 4000 BCE. On our historical maps, the ground it stands on has been drawn inside 23 different states, empires and peoples. Read the history of Lebanon.
The history of Sidon
Sidon, Saida in Arabic, is a port on the Mediterranean coast of southern Lebanon, about 40 kilometres from both Beirut and Tyre. One of the oldest and most important Phoenician cities, it was famous for glass and purple dye, competed with Tyre for leadership of Phoenicia, and was ruled in turn by Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders and Ottomans. It is now Lebanon's third-largest city and the capital of the South Governorate.
Bronze Age port
Stone tools from sites around the city show that people lived here deep in prehistory. In the Middle Bronze Age Sidon became a busy port trading with Egypt, and around 1350 BCE it was part of the Egyptian empire, ruled by a prince named Zimredda. The diplomatic letters of the Amarna period show him competing with the rulers of Tyre to the south and Byblos to the north as Egyptian power weakened. The city's Phoenician name probably meant "fishing town".
Phoenician metropolis
Sidon may have been the oldest of the Phoenician cities, and from its harbours merchants built a trading network across the Mediterranean. Tradition says that colonists from Sidon founded Tyre, and the two cities long disputed the title of mother city of Phoenicia; outsiders often called Phoenicians in general "Sidonians" or "Tyrians". Homer praised Sidonian craftsmanship. Glass and purple dye were the great industries, and a large heap of broken murex shells near the southern harbour still shows the scale of dye making.
The city later fell to the Assyrians and then to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Under the Achaemenid Empire it overtook Tyre as the leading city of Phoenicia; its fleet fought on the Persian side at Salamis in 480 BCE, and Cambyses II rewarded its help in conquering Egypt with Dor, Joppa and the Plain of Sharon. The sarcophagus of the fifth-century BCE king Eshmunazar II, discovered in 1855, names Eshmun and Astarte among the city's gods. Around 352 BCE Sidon rose against Persia; Artaxerxes III invaded Phoenicia and the city was destroyed. It passed to Alexander the Great in 333 BCE and enjoyed some autonomy under his successors. Its royal necropolis later yielded the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus, probably made for the local king Abdalonymus.
Romans, Crusaders and Ottomans
Under Rome Sidon kept minting its own silver coins, Herod of Judaea built it a theatre, and under Elagabalus it became a Roman colony. After the earthquake of 551 ruined most cities on the coast, the law school of Berytus moved here. Life in the town went on quietly until the Muslims conquered the Levant in 636.
On 4 December 1110 Sidon fell after a siege to Baldwin I, king of Jerusalem, aided by the Norwegian king Sigurd I, and it became the centre of an important lordship within the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin took it in 1187, German crusaders won it back in 1197, the Ayyubids destroyed it in 1249, and the Mongols under Kitbuqa did so again in 1260. The Sea Castle by the harbour was built by the Crusaders in the early thirteenth century.
After it came under the Ottoman Empire early in the sixteenth century, Sidon became the capital of a province and regained much of its trade. In the eighteenth century the Hammud family controlled the region's cotton exports and built palaces and public works. During the Egyptian–Ottoman war a British-led squadron bombarded the city on 26 September 1840, and it surrendered within two days. From 1887 the Ottomans excavated the royal necropolis and carried its treasures to Istanbul. By 1900 Sidon was a small fishing town of about 10,000 people.
Modern Sidon
After the First World War Sidon became part of the French Mandate, and after the Second it was a major city of independent Lebanon. Palestinian refugees who arrived after 1948 were settled in two camps, Ein el-Hilweh and Mieh Mieh, which grew into districts of the city with a separate legal and political status. During the civil war, shelling by the South Lebanon Army killed at least sixteen people in the city centre in April 1981, and after the 1982 Israeli invasion the Israeli army occupied Sidon for almost two and a half years. Today about 80,000 people live within the city limits and more than a quarter of a million in the wider urban area.
In pictures
1 images · scroll →Timeline
23 periods- 123,000 BCE – 10,000 BCENeanderthalMap of 123,000 BCE →
- 10,000 BCE – 5000 BCECoastal and Woodland Mesolithic Hunter-ForagersMap of 10,000 BCE →
- 5000 BCE – 4000 BCEGhassulMap of 5000 BCE →
- 4000 BCE – 2000 BCESemitesMap of 4000 BCE →
- 2000 BCE – 1500 BCECanaanMap of 2000 BCE →
- 1500 BCE – 1000 BCEHittitesMap of 1500 BCE →
- 1000 BCE – 700 BCENeo-Hittite statesMap of 1000 BCE →
- 700 BCE – 500 BCEPhrygiaMap of 700 BCE →
- 500 BCE – 323 BCEAchaemenid EmpireMap of 500 BCE →
- 323 BCE – 300 BCEEmpire of AlexanderMap of 323 BCE →
- 300 BCE – 200 BCEKingdom of AntigonusMap of 300 BCE →
- 200 BCE – 1 BCEPtolemaic KingdomMap of 200 BCE →
- 1 BCE – 300 CERoman EmpireMap of 1 BCE →
- 300 CE – 400 CERome (Diocletianus)Map of 300 CE →
- 400 CE – 700 CEEastern Roman EmpireMap of 400 CE →
- 700 CE – 800 CEUmayyad CaliphateMap of 700 CE →
- 800 CE – 1000 CEAbbasid CaliphateMap of 800 CE →
- 1000 CE – 1200 CEFatimid CaliphateMap of 1000 CE →
- 1200 CE – 1279 CECrusader statesMap of 1200 CE →
- 1279 CE – 1530 CEMamluke SultanateMap of 1279 CE →
- 1530 CE – 1920 CEOttoman EmpireMap of 1530 CE →
- 1920 CE – 1945 CESyria (France)under FranceMap of 1920 CE →
- 1945 CE – todayLebanonMap of 1945 CE →
Quick answers
- Who rules Sidon today?
- On the latest map, Sidon is in Lebanon.
- Who ruled Sidon the longest?
- On our maps, the Ottoman Empire, for about 390 years (1530 CE to 1920 CE).
- How many times has Sidon changed hands?
- Our maps show it passing to a new ruler 9 times since 1 CE.
- Who ruled Sidon in 1 CE, 1000, 1500 and 1900?
- In 1 CE: Roman Empire. In 1000: Fatimid Caliphate. In 1500: Mamluke Sultanate. In 1900: Ottoman Empire.
Dates are the years of our map snapshots, which are decades or centuries apart, so a change shown between two years happened at some point in that gap. The borders come from the historical-basemaps project and are approximate, especially for the ancient world and for peoples without fixed frontiers.
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