Mahmoudiyah Canal

Mahmoudiyah Canal, is a 45-mile-long sub-canal from the Nile River which starts at the Nile-port of Mahmoudiyah and goes through Alexandria to the Mediterranean Sea. It was built to supply Alexandria with food and fresh water from the Nile.

The first freshwater canal from the Nile to Alexandria was built under the rule of the Ptolemy I.Ibn Batuta (1304-1369) the Moroccan traveller, in his "Rihla - My Travels", discusses passing through Alexandria in 1326 and references a canal from Alexandria to The Nile that was finished a few years before his arrival. This might contradict with Wali Muhammad Ali building it almost four centuries later. However, regarding the geographic location and the fact that this part of the land, which has been reclaimed not a long time ago, was plain desert then, the canal might have been covered in sand sometime before it was re-established, not necessarily following the same route, by Muhammed Ali of Egypt.

On May 8, 1817, Viceroy Mohamed Ali ordered to dig a canal from the Nile River close to Alatf village to deliver the water of the Nile to Alexandria through Beheira and to be a path for cargo ships. He ordered to group workers and tools necessary to start the digging work. During the digging process, some old houses covered in sand were found which had ancient boxes inside; some of them were opened and some others were sent to Mohamed Ali without their content being known. In April 1819 the work stopped due to plague. In January 1820, the canal was completed and named after Sultan Mahmud II, the Sultan of Istanbul, as Egypt then was an Ottoman province.

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