S ituata 45 km south of Beirut, Sidon (Saida in Arabic) is the largest city southern Lebanon.
According to the Bible was founded by a great-grandson of Noah, in the fifteenth century. BC was, with Shooting , one of the most important ports in the Phoenicians, home of wealthy businesses including the famous purple, a dye extracted from the shell of a precious mollusk of the genus Murex.
In 1110 it was conquered by the Crusaders of Baldwin, who regarded its strategic port for landings and subsequent advance to the Holy Land. He remained under the rule of the Knights Templar to the end of the thirteenth century.
Today this troubled part of its history remains the Castle of the Sea (Qal'ah al-bahr) built in 1228, imposing well-preserved Crusader fortress built on an island to defend the port, which incorporates elements of its walls Roman columns.
This fortress, however, did not stop to regain the Mamluks, in 1291, along with Sidon to Tyre and Acre.
The castle was connected to shore by a bridge partly fixed and partly mobile. Only the pier to the north, closer to the castle, comes from the other two cells rostrum, destroyed by a storm in 1936 are contemporary as part of the bridge near the shore. This building, izing materials stolen from the ancient monuments, was built at different times between 1227 and 1291.
Its current state presents important works dating from the Mamluk era, particularly in the west tower.
As for the small mosque next to the chapel cross, can be attributed to the Ottoman era and should be back to 1840, the date of the bombing of the castle by the British navy.
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