Suez Canal
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Wikipedia-Article "Suez Canal"
The Suez Canal (Arabic, Qanā al-Suways), west of the Sinai Peninsula, is a 163 km maritime canal in Egypt between Port Said (Būr Sa'īd) on the Mediterranean Sea and Suez (al-Suways) on the Red Sea.
The canal allows two-way north to south water transport between Europe and Asia without circumnavigating Africa. Before the opening of the canal, some transport was conducted by offloading ships and carrying the goods overland between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
The canal comprises two parts, north and south of the Great Bitter Lake, linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea.
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History
Antiquity
Perhaps as early as the 12th Dynasty, Pharaoh Senusret III (1878 BC - 1839 BC) may have had a west-east canal dug through the Wadi Tumilat, joining the Nile with the Red Sea, for direct trade with Punt. Evidence indicates its existence at least by the 13th century BC during the time of Ramesses II (see [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]). It later fell into disrepair, and according to the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, re-excavation was undertaken about 600 BC by Necho II; though Necho II never completed his project.
The canal was finally completed around 500 BC by King Darius I, the Persian conqueror of Egypt. Darius commemorated his achievement with a number of granite stelae that he set up on the Nile bank, including one near Kabret, 130 kilometres from Suez. The Darius Inscriptions read:
- Saith King Darius: I am a Persian. Setting out from Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered this canal dug from the river called the Nile that flows in Egypt, to the sea that begins in Persia. When the canal had been dug as I ordered, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, even as I intended. [6]
The canal was again restored by Ptolemy II about 250 BC. Over the next 1000 years it was successively modified, destroyed and rebuilt, until finally being put out of commission in the eighth century by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur.
The modern Suez Canal
More than a thousand years elapsed before the next attempt was made to dig a canal. At the end of the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte, while in Egypt, contemplated the construction of a canal to join the Mediterranean and Red Seas. His project was abandoned, however, after a French survey erroneously concluded that the waters of the Red Sea were higher than those of the Mediterranean, making a lockless canal impossible.
In 1854 and 1856 Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained concessions from Said Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt, whom de Lesseps had as a French diplomat come to know in the 1830s. Said Pasha authorized the creation of a company for the purpose of constructing a maritime canal open to ships of all nations according to plans created by Austrian engineer Alois Negrelli. By way of a lease of the relevant land, the company was to operate the canal for 99 years from its opening to navigation. The Suez Canal Company (Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez) came into being on December 15, 1858.
The excavation operations through the desert took nearly eleven years by poor Egyptians who forcibly dug the canal. Some of them were actually beaten to continue digging. Numerous technical, political, and financial problems were overcome. The final cost was more than double the original estimate. The canal opened to traffic on November 17, 1869.
The canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade. Combined with the completion of the American Transcontinental Railroad six months earlier, the entire world could be circled in record time. It played an important role in increasing European penetration and colonization of Africa. External debts forced Said Pasha's successor, Isma'il Pasha, to sell his country's share in the canal to the United Kingdom in 1875. The Convention of Constantinople in 1888 declared the canal a neutral zone under the protection of the British, after British troops had moved in to protect it in 1882. Under the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the United Kingdom insisted on retaining control over the canal. In 1951, Egypt repudiated the treaty, and by 1954 the United Kingdom had agreed to pull out.
After the United Kingdom and the United States withdrew their pledge to support the construction of the Aswan Dam because Egypt had sought weaponry from the Soviet Union, President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal. This caused Britain, France, and Israel to invade, in the week-long 1956 Suez War. As a result of damage and sunken ships, the canal was closed until April 1957, when it had been cleared with UN assistance. A United Nations force (UNEF) was established to maintain the neutrality of the canal and the Sinai Peninsula.
After the Six Day War in 1967, the canal was closed until June 5, 1975. In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, the canal was the scene of a major crossing by the Egyptian army into Israeli-controlled Sinai; later, the Israeli army crossed the canal westward.
A multinational observer force (MFO), mostly consisting of U.S. Army troops, currently monitors the Sinai. After a U.N. mandate expired in 1979, negotiations began for a new observer force. In 1981, the MFO was stationed in the Sinai in coordination with a phased Israeli withdrawal. This force is not under United Nations auspices. It is there under agreements between the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and other participating nations. (www.mfo.org)
Present day
The canal has no locks because there is no sea-level difference and there are no hills to climb. The canal allows the passage of ships of up to some 150,000 tons displacement, with cargo. It permits ships of up to 16 m (53 ft) draft to pass, and improvements are planned to increase this to 22 m (72 ft) by 2010 to allow supertanker passage. Presently supertankers can offload part of their cargo onto a canal-owned boat and reload at the other end of the canal. There is one shipping lane with several passing areas.
Some 25,000 ships can pass through the canal each year, bearing about 14% of world shipping. The passage takes between 11 and 16 hours.
Since 1980 there has been a road tunnel under the canal, and since 1999 a powerline has crossed it. A railway on the west bank runs parallel to the canal for its entire length.
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Connections between the shores
For north to south:
- In El Qantara there is a high-level fixed road bridge.
- In 2001 the El Ferdan Railway Bridge 20 km north of Ismailia was completed: the longest swing span bridge in the world, with a span of 340 m (1100 ft). The previous bridge was destroyed in 1967 during the Arab-Israeli conflict.
- South of the Great Bitter Lake is the Ahmed Hamdi tunnel, built in 1983. Because of leakage problems, in the period 1992–1995 a new water-tight tunnel was built inside the old one.
See also
- wikisource:Constantinople Convention of the Suez Canal
- Pharaoh (historical novel by Bolesław Prus, incorporating motifs of an ancient "Suez Canal").
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