Damietta
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General Information
Other Name: Domyat, District: Damietta, State: Lower Region, Egypt
Area: 0 -
Languages Spoken: Arabic
Long Distance Code: -
Importance: -
Best Time to Visit: - to - and -
International Access: -Description
Damietta is a port and the capital of the governorate of Domyat, Egypt.Mostly Damietta is an industrial center known for its furniture, leathers, textile and sweets industries in addition to dairy products and rice mills. and for its agricultural heritage. It is also a fishing industry town, with one of the largest fleets on the Mediterranean which accounts for fully half of the fishing boats of Egypt. Finally, it is well known for the port.Location
About 200 kilometres (120 mi) north of Cairo.Climate
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Northeast of the town, in the cemetery district of El-Gabbana, is the badly dilapidated Abul Maata Mosque (or Amr ibn el-As Mosque), which may date from the time of the old town. In the vestibule are Kufic inscriptions. Many of the columns in the interior are antique.On the minaret are the remains of early Arab ornamentation.
Near the river is the El-Madbuliya Mosque, built by Qait Bey in 1475 together with its associated school, the Ashrafiya.
To the east of Damietta lies Lake Manzala, the largest of the lagoons along the north of the Delta (area 700 sq.mi/1,800 sq. km). Here in ancient times the Mendesian and Tanitic arms of the Nile flowed into the Mediterranean, the former at El-Diba and the latter at the Eshtum el-Gamel Channel. Their courses can still be traced by the fluvial deposits and by the mounds of rubble which mark the sites of settlements built on their banks. Between the lake and the sea is a very narrow spit of land along which a poor road (improvement planned) runs to Port Said.
Damietta has many handsome old houses, now rather down at heel, to bear witness to its former prosperity. Many of the houses have carved wooden oriel windows and lattice screens, usually very old, differing considerably in style from the mushrabiyas of Cairo.