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Damietta In The Old Times :

A group of Roman travelers have joined the native people of Damietta for the purpose of trading , they came through the Mediterranean sea which was close to Damietta in the old times , they came there in the year OF 27 B.C. and then they colonized there . And with the falling of the Roman Empire Damietta submitted to the Byzantine Empire which kept it’s ruling to it till the Islamic pervasion of Egypt. When Islam appeared in the Arabic Island and Amro Ebn El_Aas took over Egypt and it turned to be under the Arabic rule, a lot of Arabians emigrated to Egypt for the fertile of its land . Delegations from some of the tribes colonized in the village of Kafr El_Arab which impacted upon the life of the native inhabitants of Damietta, they mixed with its people to trade with them and to teach them the principles of Islam, so the Arabian tongue mixed with the Coptic tongue .

The name of Damietta and the Arab age

The name Damietta is a corruption of the ancient Coptic "Tamiatti".
Damietta was an important city of ancient Egypt and was formerly closer to the sea than at the present. It declined with the development of Alexandria (after 322 BC).
In AD 638 the Arab made it a commercial center famous for textiles.
Frequently attacked by the crusaders, it was briefly in their hands (1219-21; 1249-50).
The settlement's vulnerability to sea attacks led the Mamluk Sultan (Baybars I reigned 1260-77) to rase the town and fortification, block access to the river, and erect a new Damietta 6.5 km inland on the present site.
During both Mamluk and Ottoman periods the center was used as a place of banishment.
After the construction of Mahmudiyah canal in 1819, which diverted much of the Nile trade to Alexandria, Damietta lost mush of its important as a trade center, although it retained some trade, principally with Syria.
In modern times dredging of the channel has revived Damietta 's port; construction has taken place to upgrade the port facilities to relieve the overcrowding at Alexandria.
The center's industries include leatherworking, flour milling, and fishing, with a sardine-canning factory at 'Izbat al-Burj on the Damietta mouth.
*The city has several fine mosques.


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Last update June 2001