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Arish or El-Arish (, ) is the capital city and largest city of the North Sinai Governorate of Egypt, as well as the largest city on the Sinai Peninsula, lying on the Mediterranean coast northeast of Cairo and west of the Egypt–Gaza border. Its estimated population was 204,391 in 2023.
In antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the city was known as Rhinocorura (, ).
ʻArīsh is located at the mouth of Wadi al-Arish, a long ephemeral watercourse. The Azzaraniq Protectorate is on the eastern side of ʻArīsh. Arish. Britannica.com
Another possibility is that the name el-Arish was given to a city that already existed in the Byzantine Empire period. However, no Arab source mentions such a change of name for any city in the region, and there is no plausible explanation for this change.
A third possibility is that the name el-Arish was created when a new settlement of some "huts" () was established in the 7th or 8th century. It is possible that the city of Rinokoloura fell into ruins in the first half of the 7th century, and a new community arose that the new inhabitants started to call el-Arish, after their poor living conditions.
M. Ignace de Rossi derived the Arabic name from the Egyptian , an analogue of Greek Rinocorura.
A Coptic-Arabic colophon dating to 1616 mentions the writer "Solomon of Shorpo, son of Michael, from the city of Mohonon" (ⲥⲱⲗⲟⲙⲟⲛ ⲛϣⲱⲣⲡⲟ ⲡϣⲏⲣⲓ ⲙⲓⲭⲁⲏⲗ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲟⲗⲓⲥ ⲙⲟϩⲟⲛⲟⲛ); in the Arabic version, the writer is identified as being "of el-Arish". Timm raises the possibility that Shorpo () may be another name for el-Arish.
"Arish is considered part of Bilad al-Sham.
Arish is the closest city to Lake Bardawil.
The highest record temperature was , recorded on May 29, 2003, while the lowest record temperature was , recorded on January 8, 1994.
The city is the site of a deep-water seaport capable of serving ships up to 30,000 tonnes, the only such port on the Sinai Peninsula. Its major exports are cement, sand, salt and marble. The Sinai White Cement Company plant is located south of the city.
Thus modern scholars, following the version given by Seneca, believe that in the 4th century BC, a Persian king, believed to be either Artaxerxes II or Artaxerxes III, conducted a campaign in Syria where he punished people, possibly a tribe, by mutilating their noses. As a result, the places where these people came from or relocated to were given new names that reflected their disfigurement. While the Greek name Rinokoloura may have existed from the outset, it is possible that it was a translation of a name with the same meaning in another language.
When the city became a part of the Ptolemaic Empire, an Egyptian tradition emerged that may have transformed the Persian king into an Ancient Ethiopia king named Actisanes. First mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, who based his information on the Aegyptiaca of Hecataeus of Abdera, written in the 4th century BC, Actisanes conquered Egypt during the reign of king Amasis. He governed Egypt with justice and benevolence, and instead of executing convicted criminals, he had their noses cut off and relocated them to a city at the desert's edge, near the border between Egypt and Syria.
During the second invasion of Antiochus IV in the spring of 168 BCE, an embassy of Ptolemy VI met him near Rinokoloura, which in about 79 BCE came under the rule of the Judaean Kingdom of Alexander Jannaeus, while in 40 BCE, Herod I sought refuge in Rinokoloura on his way to Pelusium, where he received news of his brother's death.
The Oxyrhynchus papyrus, traditionally referred to as 'an invocation of Isis' or 'a Greek Isis litany,' is believed to have been transcribed during the reigns of Trajan or Hadrian, but its composition dates back to the late 1st century. This text contains numerous invocations of Isis and mentions Rinokoloura, where she is called 'all-seeing' ().
A number of funerary with a repeated consolation formula "nobody is immortal" () were found in and around the city. The earliest reliable Christian reference to Rinokoloura can be found in Athanasius's Epistula ad Serapionem, in which Salomon was appointed as bishop of Rinokoloura, possibly in 339 AD. Sozomen also refers to Rinokoloura in the mid-5th century AD, stating that the city was a center of scholarship, with a meditation school () located in the desert north of the city, a church illuminated by oil lamps, and an episcopal dwelling where the entire clergy of the city resided and dined together.
Hieronymus reported that in the early 5th century the inhabitants of Rinokoloura and other nearby cities spoke Syriac language. However, as most of the epitaphs discovered in the area are written in Greek, and one is in Coptic, it is unclear which segment of the population Hieronymus was referring to.
According to John of Nikiu, in 610 AD the army of general Bonosos passed through Rinocoroura (mentioned under the corrupted name Bikuran) on its way to Athribis.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, proposed ʻArīsh as a Jewish homeland since neither Sultan Abdul Hamid II nor Kaiser Wilhelm II supported settlement in Palestine. In 1903, Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, agreed to consider ʻArīsh, and Herzl commissioned the lawyer David Lloyd George a charter draft, but his application was turned down once an expedition, led by Leopold Kessler had returned and submitted a detailed report to Herzl, which outlined a proposal to divert some of the Nile waters to the area for the purpose of settlement. , page 380–381, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011.
During World War I, the fort was destroyed by British bombers. It was later the location of the 45th Stationary Hospital which treated casualties of the Palestine campaign. The remains of those who died there were later moved to Kantara Cemetery.
El-ʻArīsh Military Cemetery, designed by Robert Lorimer,Dictionary of Scottish Architects: Robert Lorimer was built in 1919 for Commonwealth personnel who died during World War I. It is one of several commonwealth war cemeteries in the region, including two in the Gaza Strip.
A Royal Air Force airfield, known as RAF El Arish, was a base for air sea rescue and other operations, during World War II.
In 1995, two graves holding the remains of 30 to 60 people, allegedly Egyptian soldiers killed after their surrender during the 1967 War, were found near Arish.
On 9 February 2021 six locals were killed by the Islamic State terrorists.
Quote: "Cairo's government-run newspaper al-Ahram said Wednesday. The daily newspaper, which sponsored the expedition, said excavators and a dredger dug for just six hours before finding the first grave with the help of Abdel-Salam Moussa, a former Egyptian POW who allegedly helped bury his comrades 28 years ago."
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