Beirut Castle
33°53′58″N 35°30′25″E / 33.89944°N 35.50694°E
Beirut Castle was a major
History
Beirut's city walls are mentioned by
When Mamluk troops captured the city from the Crusaders in 1291, they partly demolished the fortifications, but the Mamluk Sultan Barquq built a new tower on the site in the late 14th century.[1]: 332 In the 1770s, Jazzar Pasha destroyed part of the castle but then rebuilt the tower again. In 1840 during the Egyptian–Ottoman War, the castle was bombed and damaged by a British fleet.[1]: 335 As evidenced by maps of that period, the old castle by then was known as "land castle" and the tower on an islet known as "sea castle."[2]
In 1887, following decades of rapid economic expansion driven by trade liberalization and silk exports,[3] the Municipality of Beirut obtained authorization from the Ottoman Empire to enlarge and modernize the Port of Beirut.[4] All castle structures and the promontories on which they were built were entirely flattened between 1889 and 1895 to construct a road and railway that served the new port facilities, now Avenue Charles Helou. The area that had laid at the foot of the castle promontory became a market for bulk trade in grains, sugar, rice, coffee and tea, known as Souk Mal-al-Qabban.
Excavations conducted in 1995 in the context of development of Beirut Central District uncovered remains of the Beirut (Land) Castle’s basement.[1][5]
Description
The castle was built upon a promontory on the sea, to the north of the
For centuries, sailors found safe access to the Beirut harbor by setting a course that kept Burj al-Musallah in line with Burj al-Kashef on Martyrs’ Square.[citation needed]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h Patricia Antaki (2001–2002), "Le château croisé de Beyrouth : Étude préliminaire", ARAM, 13
- ^ "Medieval topography of Beirut. Map annotated and based on the British Army map of 1841 and on data from the various excavations in Downtown Beirut (Davie 1987: figure 3; el-Masri 1999: 1–79)".
- ^ Y. Eyüp Özveren (Fall 1993). "Beirut". Port-Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean 1800–1914. Review (Fernand Braudel Center). Vol. 16, no. 4. Research Foundation of State University of New York.
- ^ "Archaeology". Solidere.
- Associated Press News. 7 June 1995.
- S2CID 213424544.
Further reading
- Badre, Leila (1998) “BEY 003 Preliminary Report, Excavations of the American University of Beirut Museum, 1993–96”, Bulletin d’ Archéologie et d’ Architecture Libanaises 2: 6–94. [1]