City
Sydone
Saida
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Sidon, the Phoenician port now called Saida in Lebanon, carries a name said to mean fish or fishing. It was counted the mother of almost all the cities along the Phoenician coast, already great and powerful in the time of Joshua. Its sailors were reckoned the best in any Phoenician fleet, and the geographer Strabo and the Roman writer Pliny both praised its glass as the finest. The city had a double harbour, a larger outer basin and a smaller but safe inner one. The ancient mole still stands, though the harbour itself has long since silted up.