TYRE, a famous seaport of Phoenicia, now in the State of Great Lebanon, in French mandated territory (mod. Sur) ; pop., 5,700. Tyre is built on a peninsula, formerly an island, has nar row streets and evident traces of antiquity in the material of its buildings. Of the two harbours which it formerly possessed, the northern, or Sidonian, still survives; the southern, or Egyptian, has disappeared. Once the great mart of the Mediterranean world, it has now an insignificant export trade in cotton and tobacco. It has a French garrison and a French adviser.
History.—The name Usu (Ushu), the designation of the main land town, appears in the Tell el Amarna letters (14th century B.c.), and in Papyrus Anastasi I. (13th century). As it is not found in the list of Syrian cities tributary to Thutmoise III. (15th century B.c.), it is reasonable to conclude that it was founded before the beginning of the 14th century, but not before the be ginning of the i5th. The earliest settlement, a colony of Sidon (q.v.), was in all probability divided between the mainland and the island. The building of a causeway connecting the island with the shore is attributed to Hiram, well known as the king of Tyre, who had commercial dealings with Solomon and supplied skilled labour and material for the erection of the temple at Jeru salem. Jezebel was a daughter of Ethbaal, a Tyrian king.
From her island fortress, Tyre, the mistress of the seas, could defy her enemies and for the most part Assyrian and Babylonian might spent itself against her defences in vain. Shalmaneser IV., after an unsuccessful attack by sea, maintained a blockade on the land side for five years until his death intervened. Ashurbanipal stormed the city in 664 B.c. In the 6th century B.C. it endured a 13 years siege from Nebuchadrezzar.
However, Tyre, with the marvellous vitality of those early times, recovered in a comparatively short time. The city passed under the sway of the Seleucids (198 B.c.) and the Romans (68 B.c.). Herod the Great endowed it with a temple. St. Paul spent a week there while the ship "unloaded her burden" on his journey from Ephesus to Jerusalem. By the 2nd century it had become the see of a bishop. With the rest of Syria it passed into the hands of the Muslims in the 7th century. The crusaders captured it (1124), and made it one of the chief cities of their kingdom of Jerusalem. After the fall of Acre, the Muslims destroyed it.
A French archaeological expedition visited Tyre in 1921 and explored the neighbourhood. See PHOENICIA.
Siege of, by Alexander the Great (332 B.C.).—After the battle of Issus, Alexander, as he marched southwards towards Egypt, called upon the Phoenician cities to open their gates, as it was part of his general plan to deny their use to the Persian fleet. The citizens of Tyre, who owed allegiance to the king of Persia, refused to do so, whereupon he laid siege to the city. New Tyre was built on a small island, about half a mile from the main land upon which the old city stood. Possessing no fleet Alexander demolished old Tyre, and with the debris built a mole 2ooft. in breadth across the straits, and erected towers and war engines at its further end. Thereupon the Tyrians destroyed the towers by fire ships and damaged the mole. Many curious devices were made use of to defeat the Greeks, such as pots of burning naphtha and sulphur, and red-hot sand hurled from catapults. Alexander next widened the mole and rebuilt the towers, but he saw that without assistance of a fleet success could not be assured since the Tyrians had free access to the sea. From Sidon he obtained 8o Phoenician ships, and 24 from Rhodes, Malius, Soli, Lycia and Macedonia. Then the king of Cyprus, hearing of the defeat of Darius at Issus, joined Alexander with 2 20 warships. The reduc tion of Tyre was now but a matter of time, for if the assault from the mole proved unsuccessful, starvation must accomplish its work. Alexander was, however, impatient to complete the siege before Darius could raise another army, so he constructed float ing batteries upon which rams were mounted, and forced his way into the Egyptian and Sidonian harbours, and scaled the city walls. Thus after a siege of seven months the city was taken, 8,000 of the citizens were slaughtered, 2,000 later on executed, and 30,000 sold into slavery.