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The Qoseir city is the oldest cities in the province. it is a city and port in the Red Sea Governorate, Egypt. It is a small open bay from its south-eastern side. It is located 139 km north of Marsa Alam and 73 km north of the Marsa Alam International Airport.It is said that it\s name is extracted from the word “short” due to the fact that it is the shortest link between Upper Egypt and the Red Sea, and in the past, it was the only link between them.


The city’s story has been engraved in ancient history, from which the history of different Pharaonic or Roman or Ptolemaic. Seven thousand years ago, the Pharaohs were digging for gold in this city and the way from the Qoseir to Qena, was called the “path of the gods”.


The city of Qoseir dates back to the 15th century BC, during the reign of the Pharaonic Queen “Hatshepsut”, which used this coastal city, which was then called the "Thaglo", as a base for the launch of its famous sea voyages to the rich country of "Pont”, that believed to have been the home of Ethiopia or Somalia, now had great spiritual significance and was an important trading partner with ancient Egypt. In the following centuries, the name of the city was changed to "Leukus of Yemen", the "white port", which was an important commercial port in the Roman Empire. After the conquest of Islam, it became a pivotal role on the path of the pilgrims to Mecca, and it was the Arabs who named the city with its current name.


When the Ottoman Empire reached the height of its glory in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD and conquered Egypt, the Ottoman “Sultan Selim I” (also known as Salim al-Absis) ordered the construction of the fortress of Qoseir, to protect the commercial port and ensure the safety of thousands of Muslims passing through the area, on their way to pilgrimage. After several centuries, the French Emperor “Napoleon Bonaparte” realized the strategic importance of the city and sent his warships to seize it from the sea, but the wind came in what the ships did not desire, where a powerful wind blew the four ships close to the shore and made it into the defender's shield fleet. In August of that year, the French fleet was fortified by the British fleet. The fortress was later rebuilt during the reign of “Muhammad Ali” Pasha, who used it as a base for his military campaign against the Wahhabis in the land of Hejaz (Saudi Arabia), during the first half of the century nineteenth.


By the end of Mohammed's war campaigns on the Hijaz, the military history page of the city of Qoseir has been called to an end and the port, overlooking the Red Sea, returned to its old role, as a link between East and West. But this golden age did not last long, because when the Suez-Cairo railway was opened in 1850, traders and pilgrims began to use the port of Suez, because of its easy way to travel. In 1864, the short-lived famine hit a large number of its population, whose number dropped from 8 thousand to 800 people only. The last strike came when the Suez Canal was opened in 1869 and the importance of the Qoseir as a commercial city has been demolished.


One of the most important monuments in the city of Qusayr is the Ottoman Citadel, which was built in the Ottoman era in 1799. It is located directly on the sea, the gold mine known as the Fawakheir mine, the Farran Mosque, which was built during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III, Meters in the era of the Ottoman Sultan Salim III and located directly on the sea, in addition to the tomb of Sheikh Abdul Qader Jilani, the old Qusair police department, King Farouk's rest, the pilgrimage route, and the Catholic Church in the gold mine, The Church of Our Lady of the Coptic Orthodox Church established by the Italian company for its workers and originally named the church of St. Barbara "protector of mines".As well as the tomb of Sheikh Abi Hassan al-Shazli, which was established in 1892 under the reign of Abbas Hilmi II.