page_title: Tyre, Lebanon
section_title: Mamluk period (1291–1516)
hierarchical_section_title: Tyre, Lebanon / History / Mamluk period (1291–1516)
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration of the ruins of Tyre in the 17th century by the Dutch traveller and artist Cornelis De Bruyn (1652?-1727?) العربية: رسم توضيحي للمسافر والفنان الهولندي كورنيليس دي بروين (1652؟ -1727؟)؛ يصور فيه أطلال صور في القرن السابع عشر، فقد زار الفنان الهولندي المشرق في سبعينيات القرن السابع عشر وأوائل ثمانينات القرن الثامن عشر.
context_page_description: Tyre is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a tiny population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido. The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1984.
  The historian Ernest Renan noted:
  One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins.
  Today Tyre is the fifth largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli, Aley and Sidon, 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.
context_section_description: In the same year of Dame Margaret's retirement – in 1291 – Tyre was again taken, this time by the Mamluk Sultanate's army of Al-Ashraf Khalil. Reportedly, the whole population had evacuated the city by ship on the day that Acre as one of the last Crusader strongholds had fallen after two months of siege, so that the Mamluks found Tyre mostly empty. Amalric, the last Lord of Tyre, escaped as well.
  Sultan Khalil had all fortifications demolished to prevent the Franks from re-entrenching. The Crusader cathedral, which had been damaged before by the 1202 earthquake, got further destructed by the conquerors as well. The city was subsequently governed from Acre and thus became part of Palestine.
  The traditional pottery and glassware industry in Tyre continued its production of artful objects during the early Mamluk period. However, the purple dye industry, which had been a major source of income for the city throughout its previous history, did not get started again, since new dyes entered the market that were cheaper, like for example Turkey red.
  While the sultanate was rocked by factional struggles after Khalils death in 1293 and political instability, Tyre – "the London" or "New York City" of the Old World –  lost its importance and "sank into obsurity." When the Moroccan explorer Ibn Batutah visited Tyre in 1355, he found it a mass of ruins. Many stones were taken to neighbouring cities like Sidon, Acre, Beirut, and Jaffa as building materials.
  
  In 1610, the English traveller George Sandys noted about his visit to Tyre:
  "This once famous Tyre is now no other than a heap of ruins; yet have they a reverent respect: and do instruct the pensive beholder with their exemplary frailty."
caption: Illustration of the ruins of Tyre, by Dutch artist Cornelis De Bruyn who travelled the Levant in the 1670s and early 1680s
exif: {}