History of Alexandria

• 1. Introduction

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  Alexandria was founded on the Egyptian coast in 331 BC, and from that single act of deliberate city-building sprang one of the most consequential urban histories on earth. Alexander the Great chose a narrow strip of land behind the island of Pharos, far enough from the Nile's silt to protect a harbour, yet close enough for a canal to feed the city with fresh water. His chief architect, Dinocrates, laid the plans. When Alexander left Egypt a few months later, he would never return. Yet the city he sketched out in grain on the ground would grow, within a century, into the largest in the world.

  What kind of place did it become? A city of towering monuments and violent ethnic tensions. A port that funnelled the spices of India and the ivory of Africa into European hands. A place where the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, where the circumference of the Earth was first calculated, and where a tsunami struck in 365 AD. And a city that fell from global metropolis to small fishing village before rising again. The questions ahead are: how did it reach such heights, who controlled it along the way, and what finally broke its long dominance over Mediterranean commerce?

• 2. Before Alexander

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  Long before Dinocrates drew his first line, the stretch of coastline that would become Alexandria was already alive with human activity. As early as the seventh century BC, two significant port cities stood just east of the future city's site, at the western edge of what is now Abu Qir Bay. Canopus and Heracleion both flourished there, fed by the Canopic branch of the Nile Delta, which remained active and widely used for shipping at that time.

  Heracleion has since slipped beneath the water and was only recently rediscovered by archaeologists beneath the bay. Part of Canopus still stands above the shoreline today and has been studied the longest. A smaller town, Menouthis, also occupied the area. On the shore where Alexandria itself would rise, there was already an Egyptian settlement called Rhakotis. Behind it, according to the Romance of Alexander, five villages were scattered along the strip between Lake Mareotis and the sea. The Nile Delta had long attracted traders from across the ancient world, since it was the natural entry point for anyone wishing to do business with Egypt. The site Alexander chose was therefore not empty land but inherited ground, already shaped by centuries of commerce.

• 3. Foundation and Early Ptolemies

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  Arrian, the historian, recorded one of the more grounded accounts of the city's founding: lacking chalk, Alexander sketched its general plan on the ground using grain. More elaborate foundation myths accumulated over the centuries and were gathered in the Alexander Romance, where medieval historians found them and passed them along.

  After Alexander departed for the East, his viceroy Cleomenes continued the city's expansion. In the struggle among Alexander's successors, the general Ptolemy managed to bring Alexander's body to Alexandria, and the tomb became one of the ancient world's most visited sites. Julius Caesar himself made the pilgrimage. The Ptolemies actively cultivated this association, using the symbols of both the tomb and the Lighthouse to reinforce their claim to rule.

  Monumental construction proceeded across the third century BC. Ptolemy I oversaw the Heptastadion, a causeway connecting Pharos Island to the mainland, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Serapeum. Ptolemy II added the Museion. Ptolemy III Euergetes expanded the Serapeum. Ptolemy IV built mausolea for Alexander and the Ptolemaic line. The Library and Musaeum together attracted scholars from across the Hellenistic world. Among those associated with the Musaeum were Euclid, the geometer and number theorist; Hipparchus, the astronomer; and Eratosthenes, who calculated the Earth's circumference, developed an algorithm for finding prime numbers, and served as head librarian.

  Strabo placed Alexandria alongside Tarsus and Athens as one of the world's leading centres of learning, noting that it both welcomed foreign scholars and sent its own residents abroad to study further.

• 4. Ethnic Fault Lines

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  Greek, Jewish, and Egyptian residents shared Alexandria's streets, and the early Ptolemies worked deliberately to keep those communities separate. Alexandrian Greeks placed a strong emphasis on Hellenistic culture, partly as a mechanism for excluding non-Greeks from power. The city's law was rooted in Attic Greek tradition. Two institutions existed specifically to preserve and promote Greek culture, and non-Greek texts could only enter the Library once they had been translated into Greek.

  Alexandrian poetry rarely acknowledged Egypt or native Egyptians at all; when Egyptians did appear in that poetry, one of the few surviving references describes them as muggers. Religious processions in the streets displayed Ptolemaic wealth and power while openly celebrating Greek superiority in front of anyone who was watching.

  Alexandria also hosted the largest Jewish community in the ancient world. Jews occupied two of the city's five quarters and worshipped at synagogues. It was in Alexandria that the Septuagint was produced: a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, including the Torah and other writings.

  The fractures between communities eventually became open wounds. Serious turbulence began under Ptolemy Philopater, who reigned from 221 to 204 BC. The reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon, from 144 to 116 BC, brought purges, civil warfare, and the expulsion of intellectuals, among them Apollodorus of Athens. The intrigues surrounding Physcon's wives and sons deepened the instability further.

• 5. Roman Rule and Its Violence

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  Ptolemy Alexander's will placed Alexandria formally under Roman jurisdiction in 80 BC, formalising an influence that had been accumulating for more than a century. Julius Caesar was besieged in the city in 47 BC while courting Cleopatra, pressed by her brother and rival. Mark Antony later drew the city into his own political gamble, and Alexandria paid dearly for it when Octavian prevailed at the Battle of Actium. Octavian made Egypt his personal imperial property rather than a standard Roman province, appointing a prefect who reported directly to him rather than to the Senate.

  Octavian visited Alexander's tomb while in the city. When offered a viewing of the tombs of the pharaohs, he declined. His recorded words were: "I came to see a king, not a collection of corpses."

  Alexandria remained a crucial grain supplier for Rome, and this economic function was one of the chief reasons Octavian kept it under direct imperial control. Jewish-Greek tensions under Roman administration produced riots in AD 38 and again in 66. The Kitos War of AD 115 brought burning buildings, and the damage gave Hadrian and his architect Decriannus the opportunity to rebuild.

  In 215 AD the emperor Caracalla visited Alexandria. Some inhabitants had directed satirical insults at him, and his response was extreme. He ordered his troops to kill all young men capable of bearing arms, and according to the historian Cassius Dio, the massacre that followed claimed more than 20,000 lives. By the third century AD, Alexander's tomb had been closed to the public; its location is now lost.

• 6. Christian Transformation and Decline

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  As Alexandria's pagan intellectual tradition faded, a new identity took shape around Christian theology. Arianism rose to prominence there, and Athanasius mounted his sustained opposition to it from the same city, exerting influence on Christianity that extended well into the following centuries. Persecution of Christians under Diocletian began in AD 284, a moment the Coptic calendar marks as the beginning of the Era of Martyrs.

  In 365, an earthquake off Crete generated a tsunami that struck Alexandria directly. A generation later, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples in 391. The Patriarch Theophilus complied, and the Serapeum of the Great Library was destroyed in the process, an event that may represent the final destruction of the Library itself. The philosopher Hypatia, a neoplatonist, was murdered by a Christian mob in the streets.

  Archaeology at Kom El Deka has recovered the Roman quarter of Alexandria beneath a layer of graves from the Muslim era. The remains, dated roughly to the fourth through seventh centuries AD, include workshops, storefronts, houses, a theatre, a public bath, and lecture halls, as well as Coptic frescoes. The bath and theatre date from the fourth century, with smaller buildings constructed around them, pointing to a period of urban renewal in the wake of Diocletian's persecutions. By the fifth century, however, the Brucheum and Jewish quarters were already desolate, and the Soma and Museum had fallen into ruin.

• 7. Arab Conquest and Medieval Commerce

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  In 619, Khosrau II, King of Persia, seized Alexandria. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius recovered it, but in 641 the Arab general Amr ibn al-As captured the city decisively after a siege lasting fourteen months. No aid came from Constantinople: Heraclius was dead and his successor, Constans II, was barely twelve years old. A Byzantine fleet retook the city in 645, only to lose it again the following year. With that second fall, 975 years of Greco-Roman control over Alexandria came to an end.

  Between 814 and 827, Andalusian pirates held the city before Arab control was restored. In 828, Venetian merchants stole what was said to be the body of Mark the Evangelist, an event that eventually gave rise to the Basilica of Saint Mark. Earthquakes struck the city in 956, 1303, and 1323. The Lighthouse, one of the ancient world's most celebrated structures, was destroyed by earthquakes in the fourteenth century.

  Despite this turbulence, medieval Alexandria became a major commercial hub. The Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela called it a trading market for all nations. Goods from Arabia, India, South-East Asia, and Africa, including incense, spices such as pepper, cloves, and cinnamon, precious stones, pearls, ivory, and exotic woods like brazilwood, passed through Alexandria after travelling up the Red Sea to the port of Aydhab and then by caravan and river to the city.

  Latin merchants from Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Aragon, and Provence set up funduqs in Alexandria from the twelfth century onward, each a fortified compound containing an inn, a chapel, a notary, warehouses, and sometimes workshops. In 1290, Genoa signed a treaty with Sultan Qalawun securing preferential tariffs for Genoese merchants; the same treaty confirmed the Genoese right to maintain their funduq. The Mamluk sultans actively courted European trade, partly because it brought revenue, partly because European merchants could supply wood and iron, and in the fourteenth century also because they could source mameluks, the slave-soldiers often sold by Genoese traders. When Portugal opened its Cape route in 1498, that entire commercial architecture began to collapse.

• 8. Napoleon, Revival, and Modern Alexandria

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  French troops stormed Alexandria on the 2nd of July 1798 as part of Napoleon's Egyptian expedition. Two French scholars assessed the city's population at that moment and arrived at estimates of 8,000 and 15,000, figures that suggest how drastically it had shrunk from its ancient peak. The British defeated the French at the Battle of Alexandria on the 21st of March 1801 and took the city on the 2nd of September that year, holding it within their sphere of influence for around 150 years.

  Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, began rebuilding the city around 1810. By 1850 Alexandria had returned to something resembling its former prominence. In July 1882 the city became the site of the first battle of the Anglo-Egyptian War, when the Royal Navy bombarded and occupied it; large sections were damaged or destroyed in the fighting and subsequent fires.

  In July 1954, Alexandria was a target of an Israeli bombing campaign that later became known as the Lavon Affair. Only months after that, Manshia Square in the city was the site of a failed assassination attempt on Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Egyptian coup of 1952 had already seen the army occupy Alexandria and force King Farouk from his residence at Montaza Palace.

  Alexandria also carries a literary legacy from the twentieth century. The poet Constantine P. Cavafy, ethnically Greek, made the city his home. E. M. Forster worked there for the International Red Cross during World War I and wrote two books about the city, helping to bring Cavafy's work to wider attention. Lawrence Durrell, working for the British in Alexandria during World War II, published The Alexandria Quartet between 1957 and 1960 to international success. In July 2018, archaeologists led by Zeinab Hashish announced the discovery of a 30-ton black granite sarcophagus, more than 2,000 years old, containing three damaged skeletons and a small gold artifact along with three thin sheets of gold; archaeologist Mostafa Waziri described the arrangement as resembling a family burial.