Suez السويس (Arabic) Al-Sūwais
Satellite view of the port and city that are the southern terminus of the Suez Canal that transits through Egypt and debouches into the Mediterranean Sea near Port Said. (Up is south).
Suez Location in Egypt
Coordinates: 29°58′N 32°33′E / 29.967°N 32.55°E / 29.967; 32.55
Country	Egypt
Governorate	Suez
Government
• Governor	Saif al-Din Galal
Elevation	16 ft (5 m)
Population (2004)
• Total	478,553
Time zone	EST (UTC+2)

Suez (Arabic: السويس‎ as Suwais, Egyptian Arabic: [esseˈweːs]) is a seaport city (population ca. 497,000) in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez (a branch of the Red Sea), near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boundaries as Suez governorate. It has three harbors, Adabya, Ain Sokhna and Port Tawfiq, and extensive port facilities. Together they form a metropolitan area. Railway lines and highways connect the city with Cairo, Port Said, and Ismailia. Suez has a petrochemical plant, and its oil refineries have pipelines carrying the finished product to Cairo.

History[link]

Painting of Suez, 1841

Early Islamic era[link]

In the 7th-century CE a town named "Kolzum" stood just north of the site of present-day Suez and served as eastern terminus of a canal built by Amr ibn al-'As linking the Nile River and the Red Sea. Kolzum's trade fell following the closure of the canal in 770 by the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur to prevent his enemies in Arabia from accessing supplies from Egypt and the lands north of it. Nonetheless, the town benefited from the trade that remained between Egypt and Arabia.^[1] By 780 al-Mansur's successor al-Mahdi restored part of the canal.^[2] The Qarmatians led by Hasan ibn Ahmad defeated a Fatimid army headed by Gawhar al-Siqilli at Kolzum in 971 and thereby captured the town. Following his defeat in Cairo by al-Siqilli at the end of that year, Hasan and his forces retreated to Arabia via Kolzum.^[3] Suez was situated nearby and served as a source of drinking water for Kolzum according to Arab traveler al-Muqaddasi who visited in 986.^[4]

The Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, Saladin, fortified both Kolzum and Suez in to defend Egypt's eastern frontier from Crusader raids by Raynald of Chatillon.^[5] Between 1183-84, Raynald had ships stationed in the Red Sea to prevent the Ayyubid garrison at Kolzum from accessing water. In response, Saladin's brother al-Adil had Husam ad-Din Lu'lu build a naval fleet which sailed to the southern port of Aidab to end Raynald's venture.^[3] By the 13th-century it was recorded that Kolzum was in ruins as was Suez which had gradually replaced the former as a population center.^[1] According to Muslim historians al-Maqrizi and al-Idrisi, Kolzum had once been a prosperous town, until it was occupied and plundered by Bedouins. Arab geographer al-Dimashqi noted that Kolzum belonged to the Mamluk province of al-Karak at the time.^[3]

Ottoman and Egyptian rule[link]

To prevent Portuguese attacks against Egyptian coastal towns and the Red Sea port of Jeddah, Qansuh al-Ghawri the last Mamluk sultan ordered a 6,000-man force headed by Selman Reis to defend Suez in 1507, which in turn limited the Mamluk military's capabilities against the Ottomans in the Mediterranean sea.^[6] Following the Ottoman's conquest of Egypt at the beginning of the 16th-century, Suez became both a major naval and trading station. The Ottoman fleets at Suez were instrumental in disputing control with the Portuguese over Indian Ocean trade.^[1]

German explorer Carsten Niebuhr noted that in the 18th-century a 20-vessel fleet sailed annually from Suez to Jeddah—which served as the Islamic holy city of Mecca's port and Egypt's gateway for trade with India. However, by 1798, during Napoleonic invasion, Suez had devolved into an unimportant town. Fighting between the French and the British in 1800 left most of the town in ruins.^[1] Its importance as a port increased after the Suez Canal opened in 1869.

Modern era[link]

The city was virtually destroyed during battles in the late 1960s and early 1970s between Egyptian and Israeli forces occupying the Sinai Peninsula. The town was deserted following the Six Day War in 1967. Reconstruction of Suez began soon after Egypt reopened the Suez Canal, following the October War with Israel.

Suez was the first city to hold major protests against the government of Hosni Mubarak during the 2011 Egyptian revolution and was the scene of the first fatality of that uprising.^[7] On account of this, it has been called the Sidi Bouzid of Egypt, recalling that small town's role in the 2010–2011 Tunisian revolution.^[8]

Suez Canal[link]

Northernmost part of Gulf of Suez with town Suez on map of 1856

There was a canal from the Nile delta to the Gulf of Suez in ancient times, when the gulf extended further north than it does today. This fell into disuse, and the present canal was built in the nineteenth century.

Sunset view from land to Suez Canal Bridge, which links Africa with Asia

The Suez Canal offers a significantly shorter passage for ships than passing round the Cape of Good Hope. The construction of the Suez Canal was favoured by the natural conditions of the region: the comparatively short distance between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, the occurrence of a line of lakes or depressions which became lakes (Lake Manzala in the north, and depressions, Timsah and the Bitter Lakes, part way along the route), and the generally flat terrain. The construction of the canal was proposed by the engineer and French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, who acquired from Said Pasha the rights of constructing and operating the canal for a period of 99 years. The Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez was formed. Construction took 11 years, and the canal opened on 17 November 1869. The canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade.

In 1956 Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the canal, provoking the Suez Crisis. Following the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, the canal was closed, and reopened in 1975.

Today, the canal is a vital link in world trade, and contributes significantly to the Egyptian economy; in 2009 the income generated from the canal accounted for 3.7% of Egypt's GDP.^[9]

Climate[link]

International relations[link]

Twin towns — Sister cities[link]

Suez is twinned with:

• Skopje, Macedonia^[11]

See also[link]

• Suez Port
• Suez Canal overhead line crossing, located in the city

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

• Suez-online.com

Media related to Suez at Wikimedia Commons

Coordinates: 29°58′N 32°33′E / 29.967°N 32.55°E / 29.967; 32.55

v t e Egypt's largest cities by population Cairo Alexandria Giza Shubra El-Kheima Port Said Suez El-Mahalla El-Kubra Luxor Asyut Mansoura Tanta Faiyum Zagazig Ismaïlia Kafr el-Dawwar Aswan Qena Damanhour Minya Sohag Beni Suef Shibin El Kom Banha Edfu Talkha Kafr el-Sheikh Mallawi Dikirnis Bilbeis Arish

Sarah Silverman
Silverman at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Take This Waltz
Birth name	Sarah Kate Silverman
Born	(1970-12-01) December 1, 1970 (age 41) Bedford, New Hampshire,[citation needed] United States
Medium	Stand up, Television, Film, Radio
Years active	1992–present
Genres	Blue comedy Black comedy Political satire
Influences	Steve Martin
Domestic partner(s)	Jimmy Kimmel (2002-2009) Alec Sulkin (2010)
Notable works and roles	Saturday Night Live Sarah Silverman on The Sarah Silverman Program
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics 2008 Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Sarah Kate Silverman (born December 1, 1970) is an American comedienne, writer, actress, singer and musician. Her satirical comedy addresses social taboos and controversial topics such as racism, sexism, and religion.

Silverman first gained notice as a writer and occasional performer on Saturday Night Live. She starred in and produced The Sarah Silverman Program, which ran from 2007 to 2010, on Comedy Central.^[1] She often performs her act mocking bigotry and stereotypes of ethnic groups and religious denominations by having her comic character endorse them in an ironic fashion.^[2][3]

Early life[link]

Sarah Silverman, the youngest of four daughters, was born in Manchester, New Hampshire. Her mother, Beth Ann Halpin, was George McGovern's personal campaign photographer and founded the theater company New Thalian Players.^[4] Her father, Donald Silverman, was a social worker by training who ran the discount clothing store Crazy Sophie's Outlet. She was raised without religion, though she is ethnically Jewish.^[5]

She appeared in community theater at age 12, most notably with Community Players of Concord, New Hampshire in Annie and also appeared on a local television show in the Boston area called Community Auditions at age 15. At seventeen, she performed stand-up comedy in a restaurant, singing a song she called "Mammaries."

After graduating from The Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire, she attended New York University and continued her stand-up in Greenwich Village.^[6][7][8][9]

Career[link]

[edit] 1993-2007: Career beginnings and Jesus is Magic

Silverman first received national attention in the 1993–94 season of Saturday Night Live (SNL) as a writer and featured player. She was fired after one season because only one of the sketches she wrote survived to dress rehearsal, and none aired. Bob Odenkirk, a former SNL writer explained, "I could see how it wouldn't work at SNL because she's got her own voice, she's very much Sarah Silverman all the time. She can play a character but she doesn't disappear into the character — she makes the character her."^[6] Silverman states she was upset when SNL fired her via fax. She parodied the situation when she appeared on The Larry Sanders Show episode "The New Writer" (1996), playing Sanders' new staff writer, whose jokes are not used because of the chauvinism and bias of the male chief comedy writer, who favors the jokes of his male co-writers. She appeared in three episodes of Larry Sanders during its last two seasons.

Silverman was a featured performer on the HBO sketch comedy show Mr. Show (1995–97). She made TV program guest appearances on Seinfeld, in the episode "The Money"; (1997) on Star Trek: Voyager, in the two-part time travel episode "Future's End" (1996); on V.I.P. in the episode "48¹⁄₂ Hours" (2002); on Greg the Bunny as a series regular (2002); and on the puppet television comedy Crank Yankers, as the voice of Hadassah Guberman (2003, 2007). She had small parts in the films There's Something About Mary, Say It Isn't So, School of Rock, The Way of the Gun, Overnight Delivery, Screwed, Heartbreakers, Evolution, School for Scoundrels, and Rent, playing a mixture of comic and serious roles.

Silverman's concert film, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, based on her one-woman show of the same name, was released in 2005. Liam Lynch directed the movie, distributed by Roadside Attractions. Rotten Tomatoes gave Jesus Is Magic a "fresh" rating of 64% with 54 positive reviews and 30 negative ones, with the "cream of the crop" giving it a rating of 67%.^[10] It made US$124,475 on its opening weekend, showing on seven screens. The box office performance led to an expanded release in as many as 57 theaters, resulting in a box office take of more than US$1.3 million.^[11] The DVD was released in June 2006. The soundtrack featured songs and standup from the movie, and previously unreleased songs.^[12] As part of the film's publicity campaign, she appeared online in Slate, as the cover subject of Heeb magazine, and in roasts on Comedy Central of Pamela Anderson and Hugh Hefner.

Silverman played a therapist in a skit for a bonus DVD of the album Lullabies to Paralyze by the band Queens of the Stone Age. Silverman also appears at the end of the video for American glam metal band Steel Panther's "Death To All But Metal". On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Silverman parodied sketches from Chappelle's Show, replaying Dave Chappelle's characterizations of Rick James and "Tyrone", as well as a Donnell Rawlings character based on the miniseries Roots. The parody addressed a popular rumor that Silverman was the planned replacement for Chappelle after he left his popular television show. In 2006, Silverman placed #50 on Maxim Hot 100 List.^[13] In 2007, she placed #29 and appeared on the cover.^[14] She made the cover of The Observer in the United Kingdom, with an article naming her "the world's hottest, most controversial comedian".^[15]

[edit] 2007-2010: The Sarah Silverman Program

Silverman at the Tribeca Film Festival, 2007

Silverman's television sitcom, The Sarah Silverman Program, debuted on Comedy Central in February 2007. The show proved to be a ratings success, scoring the highest premiere ratings of any Comedy Central show in three years, with 1.81 million viewers and the highest 18–49 rating of the night on cable.^[1][16] It portrays the day-to-day adventures of fictionalized versions of Silverman, her sister Laura and their friends. A number of comedic actors from Mr. Show have reappeared on The Sarah Silverman Program. Silverman was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award^[17] for her acting on the show. At the awards ceremony, she wore a fake mustache. Comedy Central canceled The Sarah Silverman Program after three seasons.^[18]

In June 2007 she hosted the MTV Movie Awards. During her opening act, she commented on the upcoming jail sentence of Paris Hilton, who was in the audience, "In a couple of days, Paris Hilton is going to jail... As a matter of fact, I heard that to make her feel more comfortable in prison, the guards are going to paint the bars to look like penises. I think it is wrong, too. I just worry she is going to break her teeth on those things."^[19] In September 2007 she appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards. Following the comeback performance of Britney Spears, Silverman mocked her on stage, saying: "Wow, she is amazing. I mean, she is 25 years old, and she has already accomplished everything she's going to accomplish in her life."^[20]

In January 2008 she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to show Jimmy Kimmel, her boyfriend at the time, a special video. The video turned out to be a song called "I'm Fucking Matt Damon", in which she and Matt Damon sang a duet about having an affair behind Kimmel's back. The video created an "instant YouTube sensation".^[21] Kimmel responded with his own video a month later with Damon's friend Ben Affleck, which enlisted a panoply of stars, to record Kimmel's song "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck".^[22] On September 13, 2008, Silverman won a Creative Arts Emmy for writing the song "I'm Fucking Matt Damon".^[23] Silverman guest starred in a second season episode of the USA cable program Monk as Marci Maven. She returned in the sixth season premiere, and for the 100th episode of Monk. According to the audio commentary on the Clerks II DVD, director Kevin Smith offered her the role that eventually went to Rosario Dawson, but she turned it down out of fear of being typecast in "girlfriend roles". However, she told Smith the script was "really funny" and mentioned that if the role of Randal Graves was being offered to her she "would do it in a heartbeat."

In October 2008, Silverman visited the United Kingdom to promote the release of The Sarah Silverman Program on Paramount Comedy, but her media and stage performances failed to impress audiences. Her debut stand-up performance at the Hammersmith Apollo was widely panned by the critics and audiences alike. The performance bombed when Silverman's warm-up act failed to appear and Silverman rushed through a short 35–40 minute set. The heckling audience, who had been charged £40–50 a seat, refused to leave the theatre and Silverman, sporting a pair of after-show slippers, was forced to return to the stage for an impromptu question and answer session. Steve Bennett from comedy website Chortle declared that "minute for minute, there are sex phonelines that are cheaper than Sarah Silverman."^[24][25] In an interview on the How Was Your Week podcast, Silverman made one of her only public comments on the matter, claiming that the show had been one of the best of her life and that the audience reaction had been misreported by bloggers and the press.^[26]

Silverman at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival

She also appears in Strange Powers, the 2009 documentary by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara about cult songwriter Stephin Merritt and his band, the Magnetic Fields. Silverman wrote a comic memoir, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, which was published in 2010, and became a New York Times Best Seller. She received a $2.5 million advance for the book.

[edit] 2011-present: Take this Waltz and other projects

Silverman played a dramatic role alongside Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen in the film Take This Waltz, written and directed by Sarah Polley. The film was well received when it premiered in Toronto in 2011^[27] and was picked up by Magnolia for U.S. distribution in Summer 2012.^[28] Much was made of the fact that the movie features a full-frontal nude scene from Silverman,^[29] which the actress has spoken about on several occasions. At the Toronto International Film Festival, she told the press she'd deliberately gained weight for the part, emphasizing that Polley wanted "real bodies and real women" rather than impossibly skinny ones.^[30] In interviews she warned fans not to expect too much.^[31] However, she later told podcaster and author Julie Klausner that she had not really gained weight for the role, and that the statements were meant as self-deprecating humor.^[26]

A single camera comedy pilot by Silverman was given the go ahead by television network NBC in 2011 after a bidding war between multiple networks.^[32] Arrested Development producer, Ron Howard was reported to have been personally involved in the development process of the series.^[33] It was to be loosely based on Silverman's life as a woman who had just ended a decade long live-in relationship.^[32] The series was tentatively titled Susan 313 and received a put pilot commitment, which would require the network to pay a large fine if the pilot was not aired.^[34] However, NBC did not pick up the series for the fall 2012 season.^[35]

Controversy[link]

Racial slur[link]

In a July 2001 interview on NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien Silverman used the ethnic slur "chink" explaining that a friend advised her to avoid jury duty by writing a racial slur on the selection form, "something inappropriate, like 'I hate chinks.'" Silverman said she decided that she did not want to be thought of as a racist, so "I wrote 'I love chinks' – and who doesn't?" Silverman said that the joke satirizes the racist thought process. Guy Aoki, of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), objected to her use of the slur.^[36][37] NBC and O'Brien apologized, but Silverman did not, later appearing on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher in July and August 2001. Silverman questioned Aoki's sincerity, accusing him of exploiting the opportunity for publicity. On an episode of the show, Aoki appeared with Silverman, and stated that he did not accept Silverman's explanation, saying that it was not successful satire and that comedians should consult with groups such as his before performing such material. Silverman stated in an NPR's Fresh Air interview that she was asked to repeat the joke on Politically Incorrect, among other places, but she eventually dropped the joke from her act because she felt it was becoming stale.^[12] Silverman has since turned the complaint into grist for her stand-up act, saying that the experience helped teach her the important lesson that racism is bad: "And I mean bad, like in that black way."^[38]

[edit] The Aristocrats

A minor controversy arose over Silverman's performance in the documentary film The Aristocrats (2005). The film shows Silverman giving an apparently autobiographical account of her life as a child sex performer and mentions how Joe Franklin, a New York radio and TV personality whose nostalgic programs have aired since the early 1950s, would ask her to perform privately for him in his apartment. Silverman looks at the camera and, in a deadpan voice, accused Franklin of raping her. The film was edited in such a way that it appears as if Franklin knows what Silverman said about him. Later, after her clip, Franklin is shown stating "Sarah Silverman is a young lady to watch". After the film came out, Franklin took offense to Silverman's using his name and considered suing her. A month later the New York Times noted he remained undecided, but said, "the best thing I could do is get Sarah better writers so she'd have funnier material."^[39]

Personal life[link]

Silverman's humor frequently references religion; in this photo, she is holding the Jesus Dress Up magnet set

Silverman has said that she does not consume alcohol, because it nauseates her. She is open about her lifelong battle with clinical depression which at one point led to her developing an addiction to Xanax. She credited her subsequent emotional health to taking prescription drug Zoloft.^[8][40][41] She struggled with bedwetting from the time she was young until well into her teens and has stated that the last time she wet her bed was when she was fired from Saturday Night Live.^[12][41] Her autobiography, published in April 2010, entitled The Bedwetter, explores the subject, among others.