with Fort Caffareli or Napoleon in the centre. This quarter has been pierced by several straight roads, one of which, crossing the Mahmudiya canal by the Pont Neuf, leads to Gabbari, the most westerly part of the city and an industrial and manufacturing region, possessing asphalt works and oil, rice and paper mills. On either side of the canal are the warehouses of wholesale dealers in cotton, wool, sugar, grain and other commodities. In the southern part of the city are the Arab cemetery, “Pompey’s Pillar” and the catacombs. “Pompey’s Pillar,” which stands on the highest spot in Alexandria, is nearly 99 ft. high, including the pedestal. The shaft is of red granite and is beautifully polished. Nine feet in diameter at the base, it tapers to eight feet at the top. The catacombs, a short distance S.W. of the pillar, are hewn out of the rocky slope of a hill, and are an elaborate series of chambers adorned with pillars, statues, religious symbols and traces of painting (see below, Ancient City). Along the northern side of the Mahmudiya canal, which here passes a little S. of the catacombs, are many fine houses and gardens (Moharrem Bey quarter), stretching eastward for a considerable distance, favourite residences of wealthy citizens. A similar residential quarter has also grown up on the N.E., where the line of the old fortifications has become a boulevard. The district extending outside the E. fortifications, in the direction of Hadra, has been laid out with fine avenues, and contains numerous garden-cafés and pleasure resorts. Thence roads lead to the E. suburb known generally as Ramleh, which stretches along the coast, and is served by a local railway. It begins E. of the racecourse with Sidi Gabr, and does not end till the khedivial estates E. of San Stefano are reached, some 5 m. E. All this space is filled with villas, gardens and hotels, and is a favourite summer resort not only of Alexandrians but also of Cairenes.
The eastern bay is rocky, shallow and exposed, and is now used only by native craft. The harbour is on the W. of Pharos and partly formed by a breakwater (built 1871–1873 and prolonged 1906–1907), 2 m. long. The breakwater starts opposite the promontory of Ras et-Tin, on which is a lighthouse, 180 ft. above the sea, built by Mehemet Ali. Another breakwater starts from the Gabbari side, the opening between the two works being about half a mile. A number of scattered rocks lie across the entrance, but through them two fairways have been made, one 600 ft. wide and 35 ft. deep, the other 300 ft. wide and 30 ft. deep. The enclosed water is divided into an outer and inner harbour by a mole, 1000 yds. long, projecting N.W. from the southern shore. The inner harbour covers 464 acres. It is lined for 212 m. by quays, affording accommodation for ships drawing up to 28 ft. The outer harbour (1400 acres water area) is furnished with a graving dock, completed in 1905, 520 ft. long, and with quays and jetties along the Gabbari foreshore. Their construction was begun in 1906.
Alexandria is linked by a network of railway and telegraph lines to the other towns of Egypt, and there is a trunk telephone line to Cairo. The city secured in 1906 a new and adequate water-supply, modern drainage works having been completed the previous year. Being the great entrepôt for the trade of Egypt, the city is the headquarters of the British chamber of commerce and of most of the merchants and companies engaged in the development of the Delta. About 90% of the total exports and imports of the country pass through the port, though the completion, in 1904, of a broad-gauge railway connecting Cairo and Port Said deflected some of the cotton exports to the Suez Canal route. The staple export is raw cotton, the value of which is about 80% of all the exports. The principal imports are manufactured cotton goods and other textiles, machinery, timber and coal. The value of the trade of the port increased from £30,000,000 in 1900 to £46,000,000 in 1906. In the same period the tonnage of the ships entering the harbour rose from 2,375,000 to 3,695,000. Of the total trade Great Britain supplies from 35 to 40% of the imports and takes over 50% of the exports. Among the exports sent to England are the great majority of the 80,000,000 eggs annually shipped (see also Egypt: Commerce).
The population of the city (1907) was 332,246 or including the suburbs, about 400,000. The foreigners numbered over 90,000. The majority of these were Greeks, Italians, Syrians, Armenians and other Levantines, though almost every European and Oriental nation is represented. The predominant languages spoken, besides the Arabic of the natives, are Greek, French, English and Italian. The labouring population is mainly Egyptian; the Greeks and Levantines are usually shopkeepers or petty traders. In its social life Alexandria is the most progressive and occidental of all the cities of North Africa, with the possible exception of Algiers. (F. R. C.)
II. The Ancient City—The Greek Alexandria was divided into three regions: (1) the Jews’ quarter, forming the north-east portion of the city; (2) Rhacotis, on the west, occupied chiefly by Egyptians; (3) Brucheum, the Royal or Greek quarter, forming the most magnificent portion of the city. In Roman times Brucheum was enlarged by the addition of an official quarter, making up the number of four regiones in all. The city was laid out as a gridiron of parallel streets, each of which had an attendant subterranean canal. Two main streets, lined with colonnades and said to have been each about 200 ft. wide, intersected in the centre of the city, close to the point where rose the Sema (or Soma) of Alexander (i.e. his Mausoleum). This point is very near the present mosque of Nebi Daniel; and the line of the great east-west “Canopic” street only slightly diverged from that of the modern Boulevard de Rosette. Traces of its pavement and canal have been found near the Rosetta Gate; but better remains still of streets and canals were exposed in 1899 by the German excavators outside the E. fortifications, which lie well within the area of the ancient city.
Alexandria consisted originally of little more than the island of Pharos, which was joined to the mainland by a mole nearly a mile long and called the Heptastadium. The end of this abutted on the land at the head of the present Grand Square, where rose the “Moon Gate.” All that now lies between that point and the modern Ras et-Tin quarter is built on the silt which gradually widened and obliterated this mole. The Ras et-Tin quarter represents all that is left of the island of Pharos, the site of the actual lighthouse having been weathered away by the sea. On the east of the mole was the Great Harbour, now an open bay; on the west lay the port of Eunostos, with its inner basin Kibotos, now vastly enlarged to form the modern harbour.
In Strabo’s time, (latter half of 1st century B.C.) the principal buildings were as follows, enumerated as they were to be seen from a ship entering the Great Harbour. (1) The Royal Palaces, filling the N.E. angle of the town and occupying the promontory of Lochias, which shut in the Great Harbour on the east. Lochias, the modern Pharillon, has almost entirely disappeared into the sea, together with the palaces, the “Private Port” and the island of Antirrhodus. There has been a land subsidence here, as throughout the N. Delta and indeed all the N.E. coast of Africa; and on calm days the foundations of buildings may be seen, running out far under sea, near the Pharillon. Search was made for relics of these palaces by German explorers in 1898–1899, but without much success. (2) The Great Theatre, on the modern Hospital Hill near the Ramleh station. This was used by Caesar as a fortress, where he stood a siege from the city mob after the battle of Pharsalus. (3) The Poseideion or Temple of the Sea God, close to the theatre and in front of it. (4) The Timonium built by Antony. (5, 6, 7) The Emporium (Exchange), Apostases (Magazines) and Navalia (Docks), lying west of (4), along the sea-front as far as the mole. Behind the Emporium rose (8) the Great Caesareum, by which stood the two great obelisks, later known as “Cleopatra’s Needles,” and now removed to New York and London. This temple became in time the Patriarchal Church, some remains of which have been discovered: but the actual Caesareum, so far as not eroded by the waves, lies under the houses lining the new sea-wall. (9) The Gymnasium and (10) the Palaestra are both inland, near the great Canopic street (Boulevard de Rosette) in the eastern half of the town, but on sites not determined. (11) The Temple of Saturn: site unknown. (12) The Mausolea of Alexander (Soma) and the Ptolemies in one ring-fence, near the point of intersection
