Alexandria

The lighthouse itself was by then a ruin, shaken down by earthquakes, the last in 1303. Ibn Battuta found it partly fallen in 1326, and when he returned in 1349 it could no longer be entered. The port beneath it still thrived. Incense from Arabia, spices from India, and ivory from Africa came down the Nile to its quays, and the merchants of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Catalonia kept walled compounds there under their own consuls, watched by a customs inspector answering to the Mamluk sultan himself. That wealth drew a crusade: in October 1365 King Peter I of Cyprus landed with 165 ships and pillaged the city for three days, killing thousands and carrying off some 5,000 captives.

Around 1480 Sultan Qaitbay, fearing the Ottomans, built a fortress on the lighthouse site with the last of its stones. It did not keep them out. After their conquest of Egypt in 1517 Alexandria declined, and much of its trade passed to Rosetta on the Nile mouth to the east. The city's revival came only when the Mahmoudiyah Canal, opened in 1820, brought Nile water and barges straight to its harbour.