Port Said

Port Said, in Arabic Bur Sa'id, is a seaport on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt at the northern end of the Suez Canal, on its western bank. The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives its position as latitude 31 degrees 16 minutes north and longitude 32 degrees 19 minutes east, and says it is joined to Cairo, 233 km away, by a standard-gauge railway built in 1904 via Zagazig and Isma'iliyya, and also to Damietta and Alexandria. ¹ After the canal was built it became Egypt's second seaport after Alexandria, and it is now the chief town of a governorate of the same name. The 1986 estimate gave 382,000 inhabitants for the governorate and 374,000 for the town. ¹

The article says Port Said was founded in 1859, as soon as the canal had been decided on, in the reign of the viceroy Sa'id Pasha, and was named after him. Except for a strip of sand 200 to 300 yards wide between Lake Manzala and the Mediterranean, the site was under water. A party of engineers under Laroche and de Lesseps chose it, not because it was the nearest point across the isthmus to Suez but because the depth of the water suited the planned canal best. ¹ The article on Sa'id Pasha confirms that the seaport at the northern end of the canal was named for him. ³

When work began, five wooden houses were built above the water on massive piles, with a bakery and a water distillery for the pioneers. A year later dredgers began to deepen the new harbour, and the mud they raised was used at once to raise ground for workshops and buildings. Because this did not keep pace with the town's rapid growth as work advanced towards Isma'iliyya, and because there was no stone quarry within reach, artificial stones able to resist sea water began to be made by Messrs. Dussaud in 1865. They weighed about 22 tons each and were used for the two large breakwaters of the outer harbour and for further building ground; the article refers to 'Ali Pasha Mubarak's Khitat (x, 38-40) for details of the process. ²

In 1865 mail boats sailed up the canal to Isma'iliyya, the breakwaters were finished in 1868, and the canal was completed in 1869. The town was then thronged with consuls and representatives of many nations, and its population reached 10,000. ²

By the end of the nineteenth century, says the article, Port Said was the world's largest coal bunkering station, mainly for canal traffic, and in the early twentieth century it was the export point for cotton, rice and other produce of the eastern Delta and a centre of fish processing. Its public buildings included the headquarters of the Suez Canal Company, and by 1907 it had 49,884 inhabitants. The outer harbour covered 570 acres; between 1903 and 1909 new docks were built on the eastern bank, and a new town named Port Fu'ad after King Fu'ad I grew up there for the dock workers. ²

Khedive Isma'il ordered four lighthouses at the expense of the Egyptian government, at Rosetta, Burullus, Burdj al-'Izba near Damietta and Port Said. The Port Said light was 174 feet high, with a beam distinct from the others and visible at 20 miles. At the end of the western mole stood a colossal statue of de Lesseps by E. Fermiet, unveiled in 1899. ²

In 1956 President Gamal Abd al-Nasser nationalised the canal. In the war of Britain, France and Israel against Egypt in late October and early November, Port Said was severely damaged by air attacks and by the British and French landings, and the statue of de Lesseps was destroyed. After the war the damage was repaired and the canal reopened. In the war of June 1967 Israeli forces reached the canal's eastern bank, and the canal stayed closed for several years. The article says that after the Camp David Accords of 1978 and the peace treaty of 1979 the canal revived, that transit dues became a significant part of Egypt's income, and that Port Said was returning to something of its former prosperity. ²

The article names as its chief contemporary source 'Ali Pasha Mubarak's al-Khitat al-Tawfikiyya, Cairo (Bulaq) 1305-6 AH, and lists annual statistical returns of the Egyptian government and the Suez Canal Company. ² The museum has not consulted those works, and this record covers Port Said only as the article presents it, to the 1980s.