History
In Ancient Egypt, the city was known as Tamiat, but it became less important in the Hellenic period after the construction of Alexandria.
The Abbasids used Alexandria, Damietta, Aden and Siraf as entry ports to India and the Tang Empire of China. Damietta was an important naval base during the Abbasid, Tulunid and Fatimid periods. This led to several attacks by the Byzantine Empire, most notably the sack and destruction of the city in May 853.
Damietta was again important in the 12th and 13th centuries during the time of the Crusades. In 1169, a fleet from the Kingdom of Jerusalem, with support from the Byzantine Empire, attacked the port, but it was defeated by Saladin.
During preparations for the Fifth Crusade in 1217, it was decided that Damietta should be the focus of attack. Control of Damietta meant control of the Nile, and from there the crusaders believed they would be able to conquer Egypt. From Egypt they could then attack Palestine and recapture Jerusalem. When the port was besieged and occupied by Frisian crusaders in 1219, Francis of Assisi arrived to peaceably negotiate with the Muslim ruler. The siege devastated the population of Damietta. In October 1218 reinforcements arrived including the Legate Pelagius with the English earls Ranulf of Chester, Saer of Winchester, and William Aubigny of Arundel together with Odonel Aubigny, Robert Fitzwalter, John Lacy of Chester, William Harcourt and Oliver the illegitimate son of King John. In 1221 the Crusaders attempted to march to Cairo, but were destroyed by the combination of nature and Muslim defenses.
Damietta was also the object of the Seventh Crusade, led by Louis IX of France. His fleet arrived there in 1249 and quickly captured the fort, though he refused to hand it over to the nominal king of Jerusalem, to whom it had been promised during the Fifth Crusade. However, Louis too was eventually captured and defeated and was forced to give up the city.
Because of its importance to the Crusaders, the Mamluk Sultan Baibars destroyed the city and rebuilt it with stronger fortifications a few kilometres from the river in the early 1260s, making the mouth of the Nile at Damietta impassable for ships.
Read more about this topic: Damietta
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)