Ashkelon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the city of Ashkelon; for biographies of persons with the surname Ascalon, see Maurice Ascalon, David Ascalon, or Brad Ascalon.
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| Hebrew | אַשְׁקְלוֹן |
| Arabic | عسقلان |
| Founded in | 1951 |
| Government | City |
| Standard Hebrew | Ašqəlon |
| Officially also spelled | Ashqelon |
| District | South |
| Population | 105,100 (CBS end of 2004) |
| Jurisdiction | 55,000 dunams (55 km²) |
| Mayor | Roni Mahatzri |
Ashkelon (Hebrew: אַשְׁקְלוֹן; Tiberian Hebrew ʾAšqəlôn; Arabic: عسقلان ʿAsqalān ; Latin: Ascalon) is a city in the western Negev, in the South District of Israel, which was formed out of the Arab town of al-Majdal in the 1950s. It is also the name of an ancient Philistine seaport on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea just north of Gaza.
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[edit] History of the ancient city
Ashkelon was the oldest and largest seaport in ancient Canaan, one of the "five cities" of the Philistines, north of Gaza and south of Jaffa (Yafa). Archaeological excavations begun in 1985 led by Lawrence Stager of Harvard University are revealing the site with about 50 feet of accumulated rubble from successive Canaanite, Philistine, Phoenician, Iranian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, and Crusader occupation.
In the oldest layers are shaft graves of pre-Phoenician Canaanites. The city was originally built on a sandstone outcropping and has a good underground water supply. It was relatively large as an ancient city with as many as 15,000 people living inside walls a mile and a half (2.4 km) long, 50 feet (15 m) high and 150 feet (50 m) thick. Ashkelon was a thriving Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550 BCE) city of more than 150 acres (607,000 m²), with commanding ramparts including the oldest arched city gate in the world, eight feet wide, and even as a ruin still standing two stories high. The thickness of the walls was so great that the mudbrick Bronze Age gate had a stone-lined tunnel-like barrel vault, coated with white plaster, to support the superstructure: it is the oldest such vault ever found.
The Bronze Age ramparts were so capacious that later Roman and Islamic fortifications, faced with stone, followed the same footprint, a vast semi-circle protecting Ashkelon on the landward side. On the sea it was defended by a high natural bluff.
Within the huge ramparts, in the ruins of a sanctuary, a votive silver calf was found in 1991. During the Canaanite period, a roadway more than 20 feet in width ascended the rampart from the harbor and entered a gate at the top. Nearby, in the ruins of a small ceramic tabernacle was found a finely cast bronze statuette of a bull calf, originally silvered, 4 inches (100 mm) long. Images of calves and bulls were associated with the worship of the Canaanite gods El and Baal.
The Philistines conquered Canaanite Ashkelon about 1150 BCE. Their earliest pottery is similar to pottery found at Mycenae in mainland Greece, adding weight to the hypothesis that the Mycenaeans and Philistines were among the "Sea Peoples" that upset cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean at that time. Ashkelon became one of the five Philistine cities that were constantly warring with the Israelites and the kingdom of Judah. According to Herodotus, its temple of Venus was the oldest of its kind, imitated even in Cyprus, and he mentions that this temple was pillaged by marauding "Scythians" during the time of their sway over the Medes (653-625 BC). When this vast seaport, the last of the Philistine cities to hold out against Nebuchadnezzar finally fell in 604 BCE, burnt and destroyed and its people taken into exile, the Philistine era was over.
Ashkelon was soon rebuilt. It was an important Hellenistic seaport, the birthplace of Herod the Great who rebuilt and enriched the city and it continued to flourish in the Roman and Byzantine periods. During the Crusades, Ashkelon (which was known to the Crusaders as Ascalon) was an important fortress. Although Fatimid forces were defeated at the Battle of Ascalon by the Crusaders in 1099, the city itself was not taken. In 1150 it was fortified with fifty-three towers by its Egyptian Fatimid rulers, to defend it against marauding Crusaders, but to no avail, for it fell three years later, after a months-long siege, to Baldwin III of Jerusalem. It was then added to the County of Jaffa, one of the most important Crusader seigneuries. Saladin retrieved the strategic port for Islam after the Battle of Hittin, July 4, 1187, but with the Third Crusade a few years later, Saladin systematically demolished Ashkelon lest it fall once more into the hands of the infidel. Indeed Richard the Lion-Hearted built a fort upon the ruins. Finally in 1270, the Mamluk sultan Baybars demolished Ashkelon for the last time, filling in its harbor and leaving it desolate.
[edit] History of the modern city
The Arab town of al-Majdal (Arabic: المجدل, Hebrew: אל-מג'דל; also spelled Majdal and Migdal) was described as a large village in the 16th century. By the time of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, it had grown into a substantial town of about 11,000 residents. It was especially famous for its large weaving industry.
Soon after the declaration of the state of Israel, the Egyptian army occupied a large part of Gaza including Majdal. During the next few months, the town was subject to repeat Israeli attacks including air-raids and shelling. All but about 1000 of the town's residents had fled by the time it was captured by Israeli forces in Operation Yoav on November 4, 1948. General Yigal Allon ordered the expulsion of the remaining Arabs but the local commanders did not do so and the Arab population soon recovered to more than 2000 due mostly to refugees slipping back. During the next year or so, the Arabs were held in a confined area while a secret debate took place about their fate. Some, such as General Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wanted them expelled, while others, such as the left-wing minority party Mapam and the Israeli labor union Histadrut, wanted them to remain. The government decided that the Arabs should be expelled, but that they would not be expelled without their consent, which the government might have conceded because of growing international pressure. A carrot-and-stick campaign was carried out. Positive inducements included favorable currency exchange, and negative inducements included "black propaganda" and harassment such as night-time raids. Eventually most of the Arabs agreed to leave, though it was alleged that many never gave their consent. The majority were taken on trucks to the Gaza Strip where they joined their fellows in the refugee camps there. By October 1950, only 20 Arab families remained, most of whom later moved to Lydda or Gaza.[1]
The Israeli national plan of June 1949 designed Al Majdal as the site for a regional urban center of 20,000 people. Mass repopulation of the vacated Arab houses by Jewish immigrants or demobilised soldiers began in July 1949 and by December the Jewish population had increased to 2,500. During 1949, the town was renamed Migdal Gaza, and then Migdal Gad. Soon afterwards it became Migdal Ashkelon. In 1953 the nearby neighborhood of Afridar was incorporated and the current name Ashkelon was adopted. By 1961, Ashkelon ranked 18th amongst Israeli urban centers with a population of 24,000.
The population of Ashkelon in 2005 was 117,000. Ashkelon is currently a thriving city which has a newly built sports complex and a culture hall, making it the 8th largest city in Israel.
In 2005 the world's largest water desalination plant opened at Ashkelon.
[edit] References
- ^ B. Morris, The transfer of Al Majdal's remaining Arabs to Gaza, 1950, in 1948 and After; Israel and the Palestinians.
- Kafkafi, Eyal (1998). "Segregation or integration of the Israeli Arabs - two concepts in Mapai". International Journal of Middle East Studies 30: 347-367.
- Golan, Arnon (2003). "Jewish Settlement of Former Arab Towns and their Incorporation into the Israeli Urban System (1948-1950)". Israel Affairs 9: 149-164.
[edit] Sister Cities
Portland, Oregon, USA- Baltimore, Maryland, USA
[edit] See also
The name of the shallot and the scallion derives from the name of this ancient city.
Ascalon is another spelling, and also refer to other related topics.
[edit] External links
- City of Ashkelon web site (in Hebrew)
- The city English page (Don't miss the "Site Map" button)
- Ashkelon Marina
- National Geographic January 2001, "Ashkelon, ancient city of the sea"
- David Schloen, "Recent discoveries at Ashkelon"
- An "Lawrence+Stager"&btnG=Google+Search Advanced Google search (for Ashkelon and exact phrase Lawrence Stager) returns plenty of interesting hits.
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