Travel Guide Arwad

A unique island not only on the Syrian coast, but on coasts extending from Turkey to Egypt, it has always been a great strategic interest. Located less than 3 km from Tartous, the island of Arwad is rather an island so much its size is reduced. The boat journey is pleasant and iodized air boosts. It takes about two hours to discover it. Very popular in summer, she attracts Syrians for her fish restaurants. But as everywhere, we have to set a price right from the start. From the top strategic place that Arwad was, there is little left apart from the pretty lost strangely in the middle of the houses. To take in photo: some pictures of sailors'activity, boat repair, design of fishing nets…Arwad has a community of sailors known since the High Antiquity. The Bible recalls that Tyr La'had for rowers, the inhabitants of Arvard '. At the end of the second millennium, it controls a territory extending to Homs. A passage from the Book of Ezekiel (th century B.C.) describes with a touch of envy the flourishing trade of coastal inhabitants. We exchange money, tin and bronze, horses and mule, ivory, ebony, wheat, oil and honey, from all four corners of the known world. Arwad will preserve its autonomy until the Roman period. At the very beginning of the Christian era, the geographer Strabon described it composed of several storeys, and noted a high population density. The last Byzantine bastion during the Arab conquest, its fortress will serve as a final retreat for the crusaders driven from Syria. During the First World War, France occupied it and made it a base for the allied fleet but, forced to fold down, elle the population from Arwad to Cyprus. Remembering these troubled times, the few letters on the island's stamp, with stamps marked «Island de Rouad», are now negotiating several thousand euros.