Arwad
Arwad
أرواد Aradus | |
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Town | |
UTC+3 (EEST) | |
Area code(s) | Country code: 963, City code: 43 |
Climate | CSa |
Arwad (
Today, Arwad is mainly a fishing town. According to the
Etymology
| ||||||||
jrtw[4] in hieroglyphs | ||||||||
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Era: New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC) | ||||||||
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jrṯw[4] in hieroglyphs | |||||||
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Era: New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC) | |||||||
The original
Under the
Its site is also known as Ruad Island.
History
Ancient history
The island was settled in the early 2nd millennium BC by the Phoenicians. Located some 50 kilometres (31 mi) north of Tripolis, it was a barren rock covered with fortifications and houses several stories in height. The island was about 800 m long by 500 m wide, surrounded by a massive wall, and an artificial harbor was constructed on the east toward the mainland. It developed into a trading city in early times, as did most of the Phoenician cities on this coast. It had a powerful navy, and its ships are mentioned in the monuments of Egypt and Assyria. In the Bible, an "Arvad" is noted as the forefather of the "Arvadites", a Canaanite people.[8] The Phoenicians collected rain water in cisterns and shipped fresh water to the island, eventually discovering an undersea freshwater spring nearby.[9]
The city of Arwad seems to have had a sort of
Egyptian Period
Thutmose III of Egypt took it in his campaign in north Syria (1472 BC), and it is noticed in the campaigns of Ramesses II in the early part of the 13th century BC.[10]
It is also mentioned in the
About 1200 BC or a little later, it was sacked by invaders from Asia Minor or the islands, as were most of the cities on the coast.[12] but it recovered when they were driven back.
Assyrian Period
Its maritime importance is indicated by the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings.
Persian Period
Under the Persians, Arwad was allowed to unite in a confederation with Sidon and Tyre, with a common council at Tripolis.[14] The Book of Ezekiel refers to its seamen and soldiers in the service of Tyre.[15]
Hellenistic Period
When
The city has been cited[16] as one of the first known examples of a republic in the Levant region, in which the people, rather than a monarch, are described as sovereign. The island was important as a base for commercial ventures into the Orontes valley.
Arwad inaugurated a new civic era in 259 BC, when its traditional royalty disappeared, and it became a free independent city within the
Roman Period
In Roman times, Arwad fiercely resisted Mark Antony when he came to Syria to find money there. When the city refused to co-operate, it was besieged in 38 BC, then eventually surrendered, which marked the end of its independence in 34–35 BC.[18]
Bishopric
The city of Aradus, as it was then called, became a Christian
In 458, Atticus signed, as bishop of Aradus, the letter of the bishops of the province of
It was united to the see of Famagusta in Cyprus in 1295.[19][20][21] No longer a residential bishopric, Aradus is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.[22]
Medieval history
During the later part of the 13th century, in the time of the Crusades, the island of Ruad was used as a bridgehead or staging area by the Crusaders. It was the last piece of land that the Crusaders maintained in the Holy Land.
The Crusaders had lost control of the mainland in 1291 (see Fall of Acre), and the dwindling Kingdom of Jerusalem had been relocated to the island of Cyprus. In late 1300, in an attempt to coordinate military operations with the Mongol leader Ghazan,[23] the Cypriots prepared a land-based force of approximately 600 men: 300 under Amalric of Lusignan, son of Hugh III of Cyprus, and similar contingents from the Templars and Hospitallers.[23] The men and their horses were ferried from Cyprus to a staging area on Ruad,[23][24] from which they launched raids on Tortosa while awaiting Mongol reinforcements.[24][25] When the Mongols failed to arrive, the majority of the Christian forces returned to Cyprus, though a garrison was left on Ruad which was manned by rotating groups of different Cypriot forces. Pope Clement V formally awarded ownership of the island to the Knights Templar, who (in 1302) maintained a garrison with 120 knights, 500 bowmen and 400 Syrian helpers, under the Templar Maréchal (Commander-in-Chief) Barthélemy de Quincy.
In February 1301, the Mongols did arrive with a force of 60,000, but could do little else than engage in some raids around Syria. The Mongol leader Kutluka stationed 20,000 horsemen in the Jordan Valley to protect Damascus, where a Mongol governor was installed.[26] Soon however, they had to withdraw.
The
Contemporary era
During
Under the French Mandate the dungeons of the fortress were used as a prison for resisting opposers, as the captives' still-visible graffiti attest.[30][31]
In 1945, at the end of
During the later half of the 20th century and the 21st century, the island's economy became more reliant on tourism, fishing and boatbuilding.[9] This tourism focused economy was greatly impacted by the Syrian Civil War, due to the decreased travel to Syria. However, there has been no conflict on the island during the war, and it has been controlled by government forces since the beginning of the war. The COVID-19 pandemic has also affected the island's economy, further weakening the tourism industry, with many local businesses losing potential tourist related income.[32]
See also
- Arad, Bahrain
- Arvada, Colorado, named after the Syrian island
- Cities of the ancient Near East
- List of islands of Syria
References and sources
References
- ^ a b General Census of Population and Housing 2004. Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Latakia Governorate. (in Arabic)
- ISBN 2845868189.
- ^ Syrian Ministry of Tourism Arwad Regeneration Programme
- ^ a b c Gauthier, Henri (1925). Dictionnaire des Noms Géographiques Contenus dans les Textes Hiéroglyphiques. Vol. 1. p. 99.
- ^ Krahmalkov 2000, p. 71.
- ^ Krahmalkov 2000, p. 47.
- ^ Hazlitt, p. 53
- ^ Genesis 10:18.
- ^ a b "Arwad, Fortress at Sea". AramcoWorld. Retrieved July 22, 2022.
- ^ Breasted, Ancient Records.
- ^ 44 and 28, B.M. Tell el-Amarna Letters.
- ^ Paton, Syria and Palestine, 145.
- ^ Rawlinson, Phoenicia, 456-57.
- ^ Ibid, 484.
- ^ Ezekiel 27:8 and 11.
- ^ Bernal, p. 359
- ISBN 978-3-406-56244-0.
- ^ Maurice Sartre (1867). Strabon, Géographie, Livre XVI, 2, 14 (in French and Greek). Paris. pp. 464–465.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link). - ^ Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Leipzig 1931, p. 434
- ^ Michel Lequien, Oriens christianus in quatuor Patriarchatus digestus, Paris 1740, Vol. II, coll. 827–830
- ^ Konrad Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, vol. 1, p. 92; vol. 2 Archived 2018-10-04 at the Wayback Machine, p. XII and 89
- ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1), p. 836
- ^ a b c Schein, p. 811
- ^ a b Demurger, p. 147
- ^ The Trial of the Templars, Malcolm Barber, 2nd edition, page 22: "In November, 1300, James of Molay and the king's brother, Amaury of Lusignan, attempted to occupy the former Templar stronghold of Tortosa. A force of 600 men, of which the Templars supplied about 150, failed to establish itself in the town itself, although they were able to leave a garrison of 120 men on the island of Ruad, just off the coast.
- ^ Jean Richard, p.481
- ^ Demurger, p.156
- ^ "Nearly 40 of these men were still in prison in Cairo years later where, according to a former fellow prisoner, the Genoese Matthew Zaccaria, they died of starvation, having refused an offer of 'many riches and goods' in return for apostasizing"" The Trial of the Templars, Malcolm Barber, p.22
- ISBN 9781472830012.
- ^ Prisoners at Arwad Island Prison Retrieved March 22, 2023.
- ^ Historical buildings of Arwad island Retrieved March 22, 2023.
- ^ "Feature: Syrian island escapes war, but caught by tough economic situation – Xinhua | English.news.cn". www.xinhuanet.com. Retrieved 2022-01-28.
Sources
- Malcolm Barber, Trial of the Templars
- Martin Bernal, Black Athena Writes Back (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 359.
- Lawrence I Conrad, ‘The Conquest of Arwād: A Source-critical study in the historiography of the early medieval Near East’, in The Byzantine and early Islamic Near East: Papers of the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam, edited by Averil Cameron and Lawrence I Conrad, Studies in late antiquity and early Islam, 1, vol. 1, Problems in the literary source material (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1992), 317–401.
- Alain Demurger, The Last Templar
- Hazlitt, The Classical Gazetteer, p. 53.
- Lebling, Robert W. 2016. "Arwad, Fortress at Sea". Aramco World. January February 2016. Volume 67, no. 1. Pages 34–41.
- ISBN 978-0-425-21533-3.
- Jean Richard, Les Croisades
- Sylvia Schein, "Gesta Dei per Mongolos"
- Dave Eggers, Zeitoun
- Krahmalkov, Charles R (2000). Phoenician-Punic dictionary. Peeters Publishers.
External links
- L'île d'Arwad, Suggestion to have Arwad recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site, in 1999
- Hazlitt's Classical Gazetteer
- Hundreds of pictures of the island
- Google Earth location
- Small Islands in the Near East
- http://www.tartous-city.com
- Syrian Ministry of Tourism Arwad Regeneration Programme