Damietta

Damietta wears many hats: Egypt’s cheese factory, confectionery shop, fish market and shipbuilding yard. Although it started life as a strategic city on the Nile delta overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the meteoric rise of Alexandria in antiquity pushed Damietta into the shadows where it stayed until the Arab Conquest in 638 CE. Under the new Arab Muslim patrons, Damietta thrived as a commercial hub with a magnificent mosque - believed to be the second built in Egypt - named after the Commander of the Faithful: Amr ibn el-As. Centuries later in 1218, Crusaders besieged the city in a bid to secure a launching pad to Jerusalem and capitalize on the waterway routes. Their stay would be short-lived, however; Muslim fighters crushed the Crusader armies in 1221 and forced them out of Egypt.