Tyre is a city in Lebanon, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, and Carthage's founder Dido (Elissa). The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1984. The historian Ernest Renan described it as "a city of ruins, built out of ruins". Tyre is the fifth-largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, and Baalbek. It is the capital of the Tyre District in the South Governorate. There were approximately 200,000 inhabitants in the Tyre urban area in 2016, including many refugees, as the city hosts three of the twelve Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: Burj El Shimali, El Buss, and Rashidieh.
Territory
Tyre juts out from the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and is located about 80 km (50 mi) south of Beirut. It originally consisted of two distinct urban centres: Tyre itself, which was on an island just 500 to 700 metres (yards) offshore; and the associated settlement of Ushu on the adjacent mainland, later called Palaetyrus (Greek: Παλαίτυρος), meaning "Old Tyre" in Ancient Greek. The fortified city was on top of a rock from which its name was inherited, as S'r is the Phoenician word for "rock". It had two ports, the "Sidonian port" to the north, still partly existing today, and the "Egyptian port" to the south which very recently has perhaps been discovered.
From prehistoric times onwards, all settlements in the Tyre area profited from the abundance of fresh water supplies, especially from the nearby springs of Rashidieh and Ras Al Ain in the South. In addition, there are the springs of Al Bagbog and Ain Ebreen in the North as well as the Litani River, also known as Alqasymieh. The present city of Tyre covers a large part of the original island and has expanded onto and covers most of the causeway built by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. This isthmus increased greatly in width over the centuries because of extensive silt depositions on either side. The part of the original island not covered by the modern city of Tyre is mostly of an archaeological site showcasing remains of the city from ancient times. Four municipalities contribute to Tyre city's 16.7-square-kilometre (6+7⁄16 sq mi) built-up area, though none are included in their entirety: Sour municipality contains the heart of the city, excluding the Natural and Coastal Reserve; Burj El Shimali to the East without unpopulated agricultural lands; Abbasiyet Sour to the North without agricultural lands and a dislocated village; and Ain Baal to the South-East, also without agricultural lands and dislocated villages. Tyre's urban area lies on a fertile coastal plain, which explains the fact that as of 2017 about 44% of its territory was used for intra-urban agriculture, while built-up land constituted over 40%. In terms of geomorphology and seismicity, Tyre is close to the Roum Fault and the Yammouneh Fault. Though it has suffered a number of devastating earthquakes over the millennia, the threat level is considered to be low in most places and moderate in a few others. However, a tsunami following an earthquake and subsequent landslides and floods pose major natural risks to the Tyrian population. Vast reserves of natural gas are estimated to lie beneath Lebanese waters, much of it off Tyre's coast, but exploitation has been delayed by border disputes with Israel.
Etymology Early names of Tyre include Akkadian Ṣurru, Phoenician Ṣūr (𐤑𐤓), and Hebrew Ṣōr (צוֹר). In Semitic languages, the name of the city possibly means 'rock' after the rocky formation on which the town was originally built. The predominant form in Classical Greek was Týros (Τύρος), which was first seen in the works of Herodotus but may have been adopted considerably earlier. It gave rise to Latin Tyrus, which entered English during the Middle English period as Tyre. The demonym for Tyre is Tyrian, and the inhabitants are Tyrians.
Climate
Tyre has a Hot-summer mediterranean climate (classified as Csa under the Köppen climate classification), characterized by six months of drought from May to October. On average, it has 300 days of sun a year and a yearly temperature of 20.8°C (69.5 °F). The average maximum temperature reaches its highest at 30.8 °C (87.5 °F) in August and the average minimum temperature its lowest at 10 °C (50 °F) in January. On average, the mean annual precipitation reaches up to 645 mm (25½"). The temperature of the sea water reaches a minimum of 17 °C (63°F) in February and a maximum of 32 °C (90°F) in August. At a depth of 70 metres (200') it is constantly at 17–18 °C (63 to 64°F). Meanwhile, rising sea levels due to global warming threaten coastal erosion to Tyre's peninsula and bay areas.
History
The ancient city of Tyre is located along the coast of Phoenicia in modern Lebanon. The site has been occupied since the Bronze Age. The city became a prominent Phoenician city-state between the 9th and 6th centuries BC, settling prestigious colonies around the Mediterranean Sea, such as Carthage and Leptis Magna. It came under Babylonian rule in 572 BC, before being conquered by siege by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. Eight thousand Tyrians died in the massacre that followed, against only 400 Macedonian deaths; 30,000 surviving Tyrians were sold into slavery. Monumental archaeological remains dated from the subsequent Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Medieval periods led to its inscription on its archaeological remains on the UNESCO World's Heritage list in 1984. The Roman historian Justin wrote that the original founders arrived from the nearby city of Sidon in the quest to establish a new harbour. The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC) visited Tyre around 450 BC at the end of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BC), and wrote in his Histories that according to the priests there, the city was founded 2300 years earlier (around 2750 BC), as a walled place upon the mainland, now known as Paleotyre (Old Tyre).
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