Sidon ( ), or Saida ( ; ), is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located on the Mediterranean coast in the South Governorate, of which it is the capital. Tyre, to the south, and the Lebanese capital of Beirut, to the north, are each about away. Sidon has a population of about 80,000 within the city limits, while its metropolitan area has more than a quarter-million inhabitants.
Etymology
The Phoenician name (, ) probably meant "fishery" or "fishing town". It is mentioned in Papyrus Anastasi I as ḏjdwnꜣ. It appears in Biblical Hebrew as () and in Syriac as (). This was Hellenised as (), which was Latinised as and entered English in this form. The name appears in Classical Arabic as () and in Modern Arabic as ().
As a Roman colony, it was renamed to honour its imperial sponsor.
During the Crusades, Sidon was known in Latin as and in Old French as , or .
In the Book of Genesis, Sidon was the first-born son of Canaan, who was a son of Ham, making Sidon a great-grandson of Noah.
History
In antiquity, Sidon was a significant Phoenician city. It was nestled on a mainland promontory and had two harbors. Throughout ancient history, Sidon had many conquerors: Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and finally Romans. Under Persian rule, it eclipsed Tyre to become the paramount city in Phoenicia. In the New Testament era, Herod the Great visited Sidon. Both Jesus and Saint Paul are said to have visited it, too (see Biblical Sidon below). The city was eventually conquered by the Arabs and then by the Ottoman Turks.
Prehistory 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.
Middle Bronze Middle Bronze IIA In late MB IIA, Sidon Level 4 became an important port trading with Egypt (late 12th and early 13th dynasties).Forstner-Müeller et al. 2006
Late Bronze Late Bronze II Amarna period. 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.
Iron Age
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.
During the Phoenician era, Sidon thrived on two pivotal industries: glass manufacturing and purple dye production. The city's glass production operated on an extensive scale, while the manufacturing of purple dye held nearly equal importance. The magnitude of Sidon's purple dye production was evident through a considerable mound of discarded Murex trunculus shells discovered near the southern harbor. These shells were broken to extract the precious pigment, so rare that it became synonymous with royalty.
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."Thomas Kelly, Herodotus and the Chronology of the Kings of Sidon, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 268, pp. 39–56, 1987 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. Sidon's navy played a significant role in the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC, aligning with the Persian fleet against the Greeks. From the mid-fifth century BC onward, warships became a prominent feature on the city's coinage. At the end of the Persian era, in 351 BC, Phoenicia was invaded by Artaxerxes III.
Persian and Hellenistic periods
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. In exchange for supporting his conquest of Egypt, King Cambyses II of Persia awarded Sidon with the territories of Dor, Joppa, and the Plain of Sharon.
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 (likely the tomb of King Abdalonymus rather than Alexander), the Lycian tomb and the Sarcophagus of the Crying Women were discovered, which are now on display at the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul.
Roman period When Sidon fell under Roman domination, it continued to mint its own silver coins. The city was embellished by Herod, king of Judaea, who built there a theatre. 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.
The Romans 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. The Philogelos, a Greek-language joke book written circa the 4th century AD, features a series of jokes about Sidonians, who are stereotyped as unintelligent and literal-minded. 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.
Crusader-Ayyubid period
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. The remains of the original walls are still visible.
During the 12th century, Benjamin of Tudela noted the presence of approximately twenty Jews, possibly Jewish families, in Sidon, which he described as a "large city."
Ottoman period 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. In 1521, Moses Basola encountered twenty families of Musta'rabi Jews during his visit to Sidon.
During 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.
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 .
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.
From 1887 the Royal necropolis of Sidon 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.
After World War I
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.Middle East International No 149, 8 May 1981; Publishers Lord Mayhew, Dennis Walters MP, Editor Michael Adams; John Bulloch pp.6-7. No 148, 24 April 1981; Jim Muir p. 3 After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Sidon was occupied by the Israeli army for almost two and a half years.