1884 Perron map TYRE SUR, LEBANON (#141) |
Nice small map titled Tyr, from wood engraving with fine detail and clear impression, nice hand coloring. Overall size approx. 19 x 13 cm, image size approx. 10.5 x 6.5 cm. From La Nouvelle GĂ©ographie universelle, la terre et les hommes, 19 vol. (1875-94), great work of Elisee Reclus. Cartographer is Charles Perron.
Tyre,
modern SUR, coastal town, southern Lebanon. It was a major
Phoenician seaport from about 2000 BC onwards through the Roman period.
Tyre, built on an island and the neighbouring mainland, was probably originally
founded as a colony of Sidon (modern Sayda) to the north and was mentioned in
Egyptian records of the 14th century BC as being subject to Egypt. It became
independent when Egyptian influence in Phoenicia declined and soon surpassed
Sidon as a trade centre, developing commercial relations with all parts of the
Mediterranean world. In the 9th century BC colonists from Tyre founded in
northern Africa the city of Carthage, which later became Rome's principal rival
in the West. The town is frequently mentioned in the Bible as having had close
ties with Israel. Hiram, king of Tyre, furnished building materials for
Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem (10th century), and the notorious Jezebel, wife of
King Ahab, was the daughter of Ethbaal "king of Tyre and Sidon." In the 10th and
9th centuries Tyre probably enjoyed some primacy over the other cities of
Phoenicia and was ruled by kings whose power was limited by a merchant
oligarchy.
For much of the 8th and 7th centuries the town was subject to Assyria, and in
585-573 it successfully withstood a prolonged siege by the Babylonian king
Nebuchadrezzar II. Between 538 and 332 it was ruled by the Achaemenian kings of
Persia. In this period it lost its hegemony in Phoenicia but continued to
flourish. Probably the most famous episode in the history of Tyre was its
resistance to the army of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, who took
it after a seven-month siege in 332, using floating batteries and building a
causeway to gain access to the island. After its capture, 10,000 of the
inhabitants were put to death, and 30,000 were sold into slavery. Alexander's
causeway, which was never removed, converted the island into a peninsula.
Tyre was subsequently under the influence of Ptolemaic Egypt and in 200 became
part of the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom; it finally came under Roman rule in 68
BC. It was often mentioned in the New Testament and was famous in Roman times
for its silk products and for a purple dye extracted from snails of the genus
Murex. By the 2nd century AD it had a sizable Christian community, and the
Christian scholar Origen was buried there (c. 254). Under Muslim rule from 638
to 1124, Tyre grew prosperous as part of the kingdom of Jerusalem, a crusader
state in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Holy Roman emperor Frederick I
Barbarossa, who died on the Third Crusade, was buried in its cathedral (1190).
Captured and destroyed by the Muslim Mamluks in 1291, the town never recovered
its former importance.
The silted up harbour on the south side of the peninsula has been excavated by
the French Institute for Archaeology in the Near East, but most of the remains
of the Phoenician period still lie beneath the present town. Pop. (1982 est.)
23,000.