Road station

Rinocorura

Kasr-el-Arisch

Rinocorura means cut-off nose, and the Greek writers Strabo and Diodorus explained it with a grim tale of Ethiopian criminals whose noses had been cut off and who were settled here. The town, today's El Arish, lay in the desert on the frontier, counted now to Egypt, now to Palestine, and served as a depot for the Arabian trade; Diodorus adds that many quails were caught on its sandy coast. Herod stopped here on his flight to Egypt and Rome, and in 1118 Baldwin the First, King of Jerusalem, died here, still remembered by a stone named after him.

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