Only 3,000 of Damietta's 70,000 people survived the Fifth Crusade siege
Crusaders chose Damietta as the key to Egypt, reasoning that whoever held this Nile port held the river and could then march on Jerusalem. Their siege of 1218 and 1219 succeeded, but the city was left with a small fraction of its population, and the invaders' push toward Cairo collapsed two years later.
The ground Damietta stands on is young. Nile sediment built this stretch of coast during the first millennium, and the city sits just one to two metres above sea level on the eastern branch of the delta, about 200 kilometres north of Cairo. Stephanus of Byzantium mentioned it in the sixth century, the Hellenistic name being Tamíathis, and George of Cyprus described it around 605. In 1885 Baedeker's guide recorded a stone there inscribed with the name of the Roman emperor Domitian.
After Miqdad ibn Aswad took the city in the Arab conquest of Egypt, Byzantine fleets raided it repeatedly, in 708, 738, 852, 921 and 968 among other years. Following the sack of 853, Caliph al-Mutawakkil gave it walls. Its Amr ibn al-As Mosque is said to be the second oldest in Egypt, and the Abbasids used the port, along with Alexandria, Aden and Siraf, as a gateway for trade with India and Tang China. The Veil of St. Anne was woven there in 1096 or 1097, and the Sufi Qalandariyya order was founded partly in Damietta in the 13th century.
Crusaders attacked in 1155, and in 1169 King Amalric of Jerusalem besieged it with Byzantine help and failed, prompting new walls. The Fifth Crusade's capture came in November 1219, followed by looting; that same year Francis of Assisi had come hoping to negotiate peacefully with the Muslim ruler. In 1249 Louis IX of France seized the fort quickly on the Seventh Crusade and would not hand it to the nominal king of Jerusalem, but after his army's capture in April 1250 he had to give Damietta back as ransom.
The Mamluks razed the old city that November and built a new one to the south around an old mosque. Sultan Aybak granted it to a prince in 1254, and Baybars had the river closed to seagoing ships, a job finished in 1264. Genoa raided it in 1384 and 1412. Today it is the capital of Damietta Governorate, a titular Catholic see and, since 2019, a UNESCO Learning City.
Source: Damietta
