Ras Ibn Hani

Ras Ibn Hani (Arabic: رأس ابن هاني), Ugaritic Raʾšu,[1] is a small cape located 8 kilometers (5.0 mi) north of Latakia, Syria on the Mediterranean Sea.

During the middle of the 14th-century BC, a golden age began for Ugarit after stable borders had been achieved through treaties with the Egyptians.

"Ugarit's inhabitants dispersed, but no crisis could neutralize their invaluable asset, the coast's best natural harbour on the promontory of Ras ibn Hani; it became known from its low white cliff as the 'White Harbour' in later Greek coastal guidebooks, a name which persists in modern Arabic as Minet el-Beida", observes Robin Lane Fox,[4] who identified Ras Ibn Hani as the site later Greeks knew as Betyllion,[5] possibly a Hellenized version, he suggests, of the Semitic bait-El or "house of El, a name which, if that is the derivation, "confirms that Canaanite-Phoenician culture never entirely died at the site".

Robin Lane Fox notes[4] that the Roman emperor Trajan landed at this spot to join his troops in Syria for the fateful Mesopotamian campaigns of 114–117.

During the first three centuries AD, the city was practically uninhabited, there were probably some buildings on the western tip of the peninsula, the location of which can no longer be explored, as the area has been built over in the meantime.