Urabi Fortress: A Historic Nile Defense in Egypt
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Egypt
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Abbasid, French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fort
On this page16 sections
History
Urabi Fortress is an abandoned military fortification at Ezbet El Borg in Egypt, on the eastern bank of the Nile opposite Al-Garbi and near the Ras El Bar shoreline. Its earliest defenses were built by the Abbasids, the dynasty that ruled the Islamic caliphate at the time, beginning in 854. The fortress guarded the Nile entrance to Damietta and later became associated with the Egyptian nationalist and military movement known as Urabism.
Abbasid foundations and the Crusades
In 853, Byzantine forces attacked and plundered Damietta, took some inhabitants captive, and burned the eastern Astum Fortress before withdrawing. In response, the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil ordered Anbasa ibn Ishaq, the governor of Egypt, to build defensive towers and fortifications around Damietta. Work began in 854. The eastern and western towers at the Nile entrance were linked by an iron chain that could be drawn across the river to block enemy ships. Ezbet El Borg took its name from the eastern tower.
The defenses faced their most sustained medieval attacks during the Ayyubid period. The Ayyubids were the Muslim dynasty ruling Egypt during the Fifth and Sixth Crusades, medieval Western European military expeditions directed toward the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. In the Fifth Crusade, the Crusaders attacked Damietta in 1218 and repeatedly assaulted the eastern tower from June 24 to August 25, when its garrison surrendered. They then besieged Damietta, where famine and disease had devastated the inhabitants by early November 1219. The Crusaders held the city for another two years before leaving in July 1221. During the Sixth Crusade, they captured Damietta again in 1249, meeting little resistance.
French occupation and nineteenth-century rebuilding
During the Ottoman period, Damietta’s towers and fortifications deteriorated through inadequate maintenance. When the French expedition reached Egypt in 1798, Damietta rebelled under Hassan Tobar, the leader of Manzala. The inhabitants of Ezbet El Borg also rose against the French garrison and killed eight of its men. The revolts were suppressed. The French burned Al-Shaara village, where some of Hassan Tobar’s men had taken refuge, and demolished the houses of Ezbet El Borg after its inhabitants fled by boat toward Acre.
Threats from Ottoman and British fleets led the French to establish a military fort at Ezbet El Borg, along with two additional forts farther north, one on each bank of the river. These works occupied the site of the earlier Abbasid towers. After the French withdrawal, Muhammad Ali Pasha renewed the fort because of its importance in defending Egypt’s northern coastline. Abbas Helmy I maintained it, and Khedive Ismail strengthened the defenses by thickening the walls, adding further works, and clearing the moat.
The Urabi period and later decline
During the Egyptian resistance to the British invasion of 1882, supporters of Ahmad Urabi, the leader of Urabism, took shelter in the fort under Colonel Abdul Aal Hilmi to defend the Nile entrance. After the Egyptian defeat at Tel el-Kebir and the surrender of El-Gamil Fortress to the British, British forces captured Abdul Aal Hilmi at Urabi Fortress when he refused to surrender. They disbanded the garrison, dismantled the fortifications, and damaged its guns. The present name refers to the fort’s occupation by Urabi supporters. Earlier names included Al-Azba Fortress, Ezbet El Borg Fortress, and the Great Fortress at Ezbet El Borg.
During the Suez Crisis in 1956, the fortress was prepared to house people displaced from the Suez Canal cities, and a third floor was added for more families. From the late 1970s, severe neglect left the site abandoned. It became a refuge for criminals and a dumping ground, while rodents and dogs spread through the buildings and cracks developed in the surviving structures.
Egypt registered the fortress among its Islamic antiquities in 1985. A 1989 intervention exposed the outer moat wall, but no broader maintenance or excavation followed. The Ministry of Antiquities ordered restoration in 2005, although the work was not implemented. A later development project financed by the European Union and the French Institute of Oriental Studies was halted by the events of the 2011 revolution. Its only completed element was a protective perimeter wall.
Remains
The fortress originally covered about 60,000 square meters, or approximately 14.3 feddans. A feddan is a traditional Egyptian unit of land area. With a 20-meter archaeological protection zone established on most sides in 1987, the protected area totals approximately 25 feddans. A north-south road divides the rectangular site, which measures about 300 meters from north to south and 200 meters from east to west. The Nile’s setback provides the protected area on the northwest side.
Defensive layout
Moat and walls
The first principal section contains two walls separated by a moat, a defensive ditch, approximately 15 meters wide. Together they formed an integrated defensive line with closely spaced towers for communication and coordination among troops. Ditches, passages, ancillary defensive installations, and other fortification elements reinforced this arrangement. The inner wall on the outer side of the moat also formed firing positions and now stands approximately half a meter high.
Eastern entrance towers
Ruined towers survive on both sides of the eastern entrance. Their walls contain loopholes, narrow openings through which defenders could fire weapons. The remains of these entrance defenses, together with the damaged buildings elsewhere on the site, are all in a ruined condition.
Western and Nile-facing section
Fortress building with buttresses
The second principal section occupies the western side and overlooks the Nile directly. Among its ruined walls stands a rectangular building with three massive stone buttresses supporting each of its rear, western, and eastern facades. Its roof is gabled. Its original function is uncertain, with possible interpretations identifying it as either a gallows or a prison.
Barracks and water supply
This section also contained a large barracks building constructed during the tenure of Abbas Helmy I, several stores for gunpowder and supplies, and a large cistern. The cistern supplied the garrison with water when the Nile flood was absent. A recently paved modern road separates this western section from the eastern part of the fortress.
Eastern buildings
Small Maghribi Mosque
The third principal section lies on the eastern side and contains several buildings. One is thought to be the small Maghribi Mosque. The French left it standing in the middle of the fortress when they built their fort from the ruins of demolished houses in Ezbet El Borg.
Governor’s house and stores
The eastern section also contains the governor’s house and several supply stores. These buildings form part of the surviving group of structures within the eastern division of the fortress, whose buildings are now ruined.
Red-brick vaulted building
A large red-brick building has a rectangular plan divided into two aisles by five massive rectangular supports. The supports carry four semicircular arches, and a semicircular vault, a roof shaped as a half-cylinder, covers the structure. Its function is uncertain, although it is believed to have served either as a slaughterhouse or as a food-preparation room for fortress troops.
Horse stables
Four horse stables occupy the third section. Each is covered by a semicircular vault. They survive as part of the eastern group of ruined fortress buildings.
