Sidon
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Sidon. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
anciently a city of Phœnicia ; on the E. coast of the Mediterranean; half way between Tyre and Beyrout. It soon rose, both by its exceptional position and the enterprising character of its inhabitants , to the first position among the cities of Phoenicia, so that the whole country is sometimes designated by the name Sidon. The colonies extended over the coast of Asia Minor, the adjacent islands , Thrace and Eubwa, and even some parts of Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, northern Africa, in fa fact, nearly the whole of the ancient world. The Sidonian manufactures of glass and linen, purple dye and perfumes, were sources of vast wealth. At length it surrendered to Shalmaneser, King of Assyria. But under Assyrian, Chaldean , and Persian domination it retained a kind of independence for its internal affairs, and under the Persians reached its highest prosperity. An unsuccessful revolt against Artaxerxes Ochus ended in its temporary ruin (351 B. c.). Speedily rebuilt and repeopled, it opened its gates to Alexander the Great (333 b. c.), and from that time forth it fell successively into the hands of Syrian, Greek, and Roman rulers. Through the Middle Ages little is heard of it, except that it was taken by the Crusaders. The present town of Saida has 15,000 inhabitants, of whom 7,000 are Mohammedans. In the neighborhood are numerous rockcut burial-places of the ancient Phœnicians, in which have been found the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, King of Assyria, and others. The town was stormed by the allies under Napier in 1840. BENGEBIRGE, a small mountain range of Germany, on the right bank of the Rhine, not far from Bonn. Seven mountains tower above the rest, of which the Drachenfels, close to the Rhine, and presenting a splendid view from the river, is the most beautiful. On all of them are ruins of ancient castles.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
(O. T. Tsidon, or, in the English form, Zidon: Saida, Ru.). One of the most ancient of the cities of Phoenice and for a long time the most powerful.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote in 1921 the site was "the present town of Saida" of 15,000 people, then under a newly imposed French mandate; today Saida (Sidon) is Lebanon's third city, with roughly 80,000 in the town itself and far more in its wider area, including Ain el-Hilweh, the country's largest Palestinian refugee camp, founded in 1948. The city was occupied by Israeli forces after the 1982 invasion and has been repeatedly caught up in Lebanon's wars since. Collier's also slipped on its own showpiece find: the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, recovered in 1855 and now in the Louvre, belonged to a king of Sidon, not of Assyria; the even grander "Alexander Sarcophagus" was dug from the same royal necropolis in 1887 and stands in Istanbul. Excavation of the sanctuary of Eshmun just outside the town, begun in the 1960s, has since given the Phoenician city a physical presence the 1921 account could only guess at.
Written for this edition, 2026.