The South of Lebanon 🇱🇧 ❤️ // Pictured is city of Tyre in Southern Lebanon shown from the air in 1930
Part 3 of our History of Lebanon series // One of the oldest cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for over 4,700 years, Tyre was initially an island city that slowly connected to the mainland through years of human material build up.
It was a major maritime and trading power, renowned for its production of purple dye from murex shells, which gave rise to the term “royal purple.” Tyre played a key role in spreading Phoenician culture and founding colonies, including the famous city of Carthage. Such was Tyre’s maritime dominance that the Mediterranean Sea became known as the Tyrian Sea.
The island was first turned into a peninsula by Alexander the Great during the Siege of Tyre in 332 BC when he built a kilometre-long two hundred foot-wide causeway.
As the southern most large Lebanese city, Tyre has been consistently attacked by Israel for over 70 year - with the first attack being 1948, 2 months after Israel came into existence.
Pictures are:
1. Tyre in the 1930s
2. A street in Tyre around 1900
3. Tyre as seen from the Isthmus in 1839
4. Tyre in the 1930s
5. Tyre form the mainland in the 1950s
6. Tyre in the 1950s