Suez (السويس ) is a seaport town (population ca. 497,000) in northeastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez, near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boundaries as Suez governorate. It has two harbors, Port Ibrahim and Port Tawfiq, and extensive port facilities. Rail lines and highways connect the city with Cairo and Port Said. Suez has a petrochemical plant, and its oil refineries have pipelines carrying the finished product to Cairo.
Suez is a way station for Muslim pilgrims traveling to and from Mecca. In the 7th century a town near the site of present-day Suez was the eastern terminus of a canal linking the Nile River and the Red Sea. In the 16th century Suez was a Turkish naval station.
Its importance as a port increased after the Suez Canal opened in 1859. The city was virtually destroyed during battles in the late 1960s and early 1970s between Egyptian and Israeli forces occupying the Sinai Peninsula. The town was deserted following the Second Arab-Israeli War in 1956. Reconstruction of Suez began soon after Egypt reopened the Suez Canal, following the October 1973 war with Israel.
History
The construction of a canal that bound the seas Mediterranean and Red through the isthmus of Suez, in Egypt, was an old plan very. The Romans already used the region for the ticket of small boats and they called it “Canal of the Faraós”. The defenders of the project argued that the canal in the distance diminuiría between the Europe and the south of Asia. The boats that left of the Mediterranean Sea would not need more to surround Africa and to skirt the handle of the Good Hope to reach the Oceans Indian and Pacific.
The project of construction of the canal was co-ordinated by the engineer and French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, who acquired of paxá Said the rights of opening and exploration for the period of 99 years. For this it mounted a company, the Universal Company of the Maritime Canal of Suez, that had as main shareholders France and the United Kingdom.
More than 1,5 million of workers had participated of the workmanships. They had initiated in 1859 and had later finished ten years with a cost of 17 million sterling pounds. The construction of the Suez Canal was favored by the natural conditions of the region: the small distance between the Mediterranean and the Red sea, the occurrence of a line of lakes of North the south (Manzala, Timsah and Amargos), level low e the arenaceous nature of lands. For the inauguration, in day 17 of November of 1869, the Italian Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) composes the Aída opera.
In 1888, the Convention of Constantinopla defined that the Suez Canal would have to serve the boats of all the countries same in war times. England and Egypt had signed, in 1936, an agreement that assured the military presence of the United kingdom in the region of the canal for a period of 20 years.
With the withdrawal of the English troops, in 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Nasser initiated a conflict when nationalizing the canal and to hinder the ticket of ships with the flag of Israel. In this exactly year, with the aid of the United kingdom and France, the Israeli army invaded Egypt. Defeated, but counting on the support of the ONU, U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, Egypt guaranteed the control on the canal. The price of the support was the opening of the canal for the international navigation.
In 1967, with the War of the Six Days (conflict between Israel and the Arab front, formed for Egypt, Jordan and Syrian), the ticket is again closed. From 1975 the Suez Canal is reopened for all the nations of the world.
Image:Port Tawfik shipyard.jpg|Port Tawfik shipyard in Suez
Image: Sadat's_House.JPG|Sadat's house in Suez
Image:Masjid Hamza in Suez, Egypt.jpg|Masjid 'Hamza in Suez
