Lake Manzala ( ar, بحيرة المنزلة ''baḥīrat manzala''), also Manzaleh, is a brackish lake, sometimes called a lagoon, in northeastern Egypt on the
Nile Delta
The Nile Delta ( ar, دلتا النيل, or simply , is the delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to ...
near
Port Said
Port Said ( ar, بورسعيد, Būrsaʿīd, ; grc, Πηλούσιον, Pēlousion) is a city that lies in northeast Egypt extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, north of the Suez Canal. With an approximate population of 6 ...
and a few miles from the ancient ruins at
Tanis
Tanis ( grc, Τάνις or Τανέως ) or San al-Hagar ( ar, صان الحجر, Ṣān al-Ḥaǧar; egy, ḏꜥn.t ; ; cop, ϫⲁⲛⲓ or or ) is the Greek name for ancient Egyptian ''ḏꜥn.t'', an important archaeological site in the ...
.
[Dinar, p.51] It is the largest of the northern deltaic lakes of Egypt.
As of 2008 it is 47 km long and 30 km wide.
[Zahran, p.283]
Etymology
The lake's name derives from . In
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
it was also known as pi-Manjōili (), translated into Greek as Xenedokhou (), thus making the modern Arabic name a translation of a Coptic one, where phonetic resemblance is only coincidental.
Geography
Lake Manzala is long but quite shallow. Though Lake Manzala's unaltered depth is only four to five feet, alterations to the depth were made during the construction of the Suez Canal to allow the Canal to extend 29 miles lengthwise along the lake. Its bed is soft clay.
Before construction of the Suez Canal, Lake Manzala was separated from the
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...
by a strip of sand 200 to 300 yards wide.
Port Said was established adjacent to Lake Manzala during the nineteenth century to support canal construction and related travel. The lake's location directly south of the
Port Said Airport restricts the city's capacity for growth.
Suez Canal
Lake Manzala is the northernmost of three natural lakes intersected by the
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal ( arz, قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The long canal is a popula ...
, the other two being
Lake Timsah
Lake Timsah, also known as Crocodile Lake ( ar, بُحَيْرة التِّمْسَاح); is a lake in Egypt on the Nile delta. It lies in a basin developed along a fault extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez through the Bit ...
and the
Great Bitter Lake
The Great Bitter Lake ( ar, البحيرة المرة الكبرى; transliterated: ''al-Buḥayrah al-Murra al-Kubrā'') is a large saltwater lake in Egypt that is part of the Suez Canal. Before the canal was built in 1869, the Great Bitter ...
. Construction of the canal proceeded from north to south, reaching Manzala first. Due to the lake's shallowness, it was necessary to dig a banked channel for ships to pass.
Ecology
Lake Manzala served as a significant source of inexpensive fish for human consumption in Egypt, but pollution and lake drainage have reduced the lake's productivity. In 1985, the lakes fishery was an open area of 89,000
ha and employed roughly 17,000 workers.
The government of Egypt drained substantial portions of the lake in an effort to convert its rich Nile deposits to farmland. The project was unprofitable: crops did not grow well in the salty soil and the value of resulting produce was less than the market value of the fish that the reclaimed land had formerly yielded. By 2001, Lake Manzala had lost approximately 80 percent of its former area through the effects of drainage efforts.
[Ibrahim, p.145]
Notes
References
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{{Authority control
Manzala
Nile Delta
Port Said