Sheikh Zuwayed was known in the past as Pitulion. Then the city was called by its current name due to the death of Sheikh Zuwayed in 640 AD during the entry of the Arabs into Egypt during the reign of Amr ibn al-Aas. He was buried in the place where he died and the place was named after him.
It is located 42 km southwest of Rafah, 25 km northeast of Al-Arish, and 334 km from Cairo in the northeast direction.
Sheikh Zuweid is an ancient city on the borders of Egypt. Its prosperity peaked in the Byzantine era, and this prosperity continued in the Greek era.
Al-Kawthar neighborhood grew up on the ruins of this ancient city, and “Noam Shukair” describes to us in his book “The Ancient and Modern History of Sinai and its Geography” its condition at the beginning of this century, where its ruins indicate that it was sophisticated and of good progressive urban design. Many evidences were found in it Archeology, including those dating back to the Christian era. The most famous of them are the remains of a church, as well as rooms with colorful pieces of mosaic, the remains of a rectangular red brick Roman fortress, a Roman bath and tombs from the Roman era. He also discovered a white marble statue of a woman, possibly the Virgin Mary.
Important antiquities were found in Tell Sheikh Zuweid through excavations carried out by the scientist “Jean Cledat” in 1913 during the work of a French expedition at the time of digging the Suez Canal, and it has a mosaic that is now displayed in the Ismailia Museum, dating back to the Greco-Roman era. There are other archaeological places in the area, whose components have not yet been discovered.
