army against the Emir’s troops, after two defeats, gained a third bloody battle, in which 
Fakhr-ed-din saw his gallant son Ali fall, and himself undone. Still his spirit was 
unbroken; he took refuge in one of his mountain fortresses; and though now deprived 
of all allies, and advanced in age, he made a daring defence, and after a year of heroism, 
saw the enemy retire in exhaustion from the walls. But intrigue accomplished what could 
not be done by arms. He was seized by a band of conspirators, and betrayed to the Sultan. 
The captive was received at Constantinople with honour, but his fate was already sealed in 
the Divan; he was thrown into a dungeon, and after a brief period of confinement, 
strangled, at the age of seventy (a.d. 1633). 1 
1 Sandys’s Travels. D’Arvieux, i. 
THE CITADEL OF SIDON. 
On the south of Sidon, and on a height commanding the City, stands the large square 
tower now designated as the Citadel, though formerly perhaps no more than a blockhouse, 
or advanced post of the general fortifications. It, however, boasts a romantic antiquity, 
being supposed to belong to the age of the Crusades, if not to have been actually built by 
Louis IX. (a.d. 1258). 1 
On a coast where good harbours are so rare, and where the winds from both the 
sea and the mountains blow with such violence, the harbour of Sidon early attracted a 
memorable commerce; and its command, even in later periods, was obviously a matter of 
importance. It thus exercised the rude engineering of the Crusaders, who built another 
Castle on a rock in the sea, connected with the shore on the north by a causeway of nine 
arches. But, as the harbour also exposed the City to hazard from the Turkish fleets, the 
still ruder science of the celebrated Fakhr-ed-Din found no other expedient for its protection, 
than partly filling up the inner harbour with the fragments of ancient pillars, so that boats 
alone can enter it. Large vessels lie outside the entrance, on the north of a ledge of rocks, 
where they find sufficient protection from W.S.W. winds, but lie open to those from the 
north. 
The Artist strikingly observes: “ From a little farm-house, with a garden of olives and 
mulberries, we had our first view of Sidon. It is one of the finest that I have yet seen in 
this country. This once noble City, jutting out upon its promontory into the clear, blue 
sea, and connected with its ancient Citadel by a bridge and causeway; with the snow-clad 
peaks of Lebanon in the distance, reflected in the Mediterranean in all the glories of a 
Syrian sunset, formed a superb spectacle.” 2 
' Nau. p. 585. Pococke, ii. 87. Turner’s Tour, 87, quoted by Robinson, Biblical Researches, iii. 418. 
2 Roberts’s Journal. 
