Bilbays

Bilbeis lies at the eastern edge of the Nile Delta, on the route between Egypt and the lands of Syria. Its position made the fortified town a gateway to the Delta and brought it into the struggles for control of Egypt in the twelfth century.

In 1164 the Syrian commander Shirkuh held Bilbeis against a three-month siege by the combined forces of the Egyptian vizier Shawar and Amalric, king of Jerusalem. Four years later Amalric returned with a crusading army, captured the town and killed many of its inhabitants. Centuries afterward, during the French military occupation of Egypt, Napoleon ordered the fortifications repaired in 1798. The town remained a place where the cultivated Nile Delta met the approaches across the eastern desert.