(in Arabic, Sur), a city and port in Lebanon, on the Mediterranean Sea, in the muhafaza (province) of South Lebanon. Population, 14,000(1971).
Tyre is linked by rail and highway with Beirut. It is a center of cottage-industry production of handicrafts.
Tyre apparently arose in the fourth millennium B.C. as a Phoenician city-state. In the third and second millennia it was an important handicraft and commercial center of Phoenicia. At various times during the second millennium it was a dependency of Egypt. In the late second and early first millennia, Tyrians established Phoenician colonies on the islands of Cyprus and Sicily, in northern and western Africa (Utica, Carthage, Leptis Magna), and in Spain (Gades and others). The kingdom of Tyre and Sidon was formed under the aegis of Tyre in the tenth century B.C. and exercised hegemony over the entire coast of Phoenicia until the end of the century. Tyre was captured by Assyria in 722 B.C. and by the New Babylonian Empire in the 570’s B.C. From 539 to 332 B.C. it was under the rule of the Achaemenids, only formally retaining its sovereignty and internal autonomy.
In 332 B.C., after a prolonged siege from land and sea, Tyre was taken by Alexander the Great. In the Hellenistic period it was part of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid states, and in 64–63 B.C. it became part of the Roman province of Syria. Tyre was part of Byzantium from the end of the fourth century A.D. to the early 630’s, when it was captured by the Arabs.
Archaeological excavations were conducted in Tyre by the French orientalist J. E. Renan in the second half of the 19th century and the archaeologist A. Poidebard in the 1940’s. Ancient Tyre had two ports: the northern, which is still functioning, and the southern, of which only the main mole and other sections from Roman times have been preserved. Near the port there are traces of a Hellenistic street, with fragments of paving stones and foundations. Tyre has an archaeological museum and numerous tourist attractions.
I. SH. SHIFMAN