History of Gaza
In its place emerged semi-nomadic cultures with pastoral camps made up of rustic family dwellings which continued to exist throughout the Early Bronze Age IV.
[6] Egyptian direct rule ended in the 12th century BCE, when Gaza was settled by the Philistines, a seafaring people with cultural links to the Aegean, following their defeat against Ramesses III.
He then organized the city into a polis or "city-state" and Greek culture took root in Gaza which gained a reputation as a flourishing center of Hellenic learning and philosophy.
[23] Gaza was granted to Herod the Great by Roman emperor Augustus in 30 BCE, where it formed a separate unit within his kingdom; and Cosgabar, the governor of Idumea, was in charge of the city's affairs.
The first bishop of Gaza was Philemon, believed to have been one of the 72 disciples, but the first cleric was Saint Silvanus who, during the persecution by Maximinus Daia in 310, was arrested along with about 30 other Christians, and condemned to death.
[45] Its large representation, approximately half of which is preserved, cannot be easily explained, mainly because only small tentative excavations have been made there and because ancient Gaza is covered by the still-inhabited Old City.
[6][46] The celebrated Church of Saint Sergius was built in this century among other building projects such as a bath house, stoas and the city wall, that were undertaken by the bishop Marcianus and the provincial governor Stephanus.
Near the end of the Byzantine era, Gaza had become the home of an increasingly influential group of Arab traders from Mecca, including Umar ibn al-Khattab, who later became the second ruler of the Islamic Caliphate.
[24] Believed to be the site where Muhammad's great-grandfather Hashim ibn Abd Manaf—who also lived as a merchant in Gaza—was buried, the city was not destroyed by the victorious Arab army.
[54] The Christian population was reduced to an insignificant minority and the Samaritan residents deposited their property with their high priest and fled the city east upon the Muslim conquest.
[31] In 767, Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi'i was born in Gaza and lived his early childhood there; al-Shafi'i founded one of the prominent fiqhs (schools of law) of Sunni Islam, named Shafi'i after him.
[61] Gaza apparently recovered by the 9th century according to Persian geographer Istakhri who wrote that merchants grew rich there "for this place was a great market for the people of the Hejaz.
[28] Gaza's port, however, occasionally succumbed to neglect under Arab rule and an overall decline in commerce followed because of infighting among Palestine's rulers and Bedouin bandits who disrupted overland trade routes towards the city.
"[64] The Arabic-language poet Sulayman al-Ghazzi, who later also became bishop of the city, wrote many poems that thematise the hardships Palestinian Christians suffered during the reign of caliph al-Hakim.
"[67] William of Tyre confirms that in 1170, a civilian population was persuaded to occupy the area outside the castle and establish feeble fortifications and gates surrounding the community.
[70] This province covered the coastal plain from Rafah in the south, extending in the east to the western slopes of Samaria and the Hebron Hills; its major towns to the north were Qaqun, Ludd, and Ramla.
[70] The Syrian geographer al-Dimashqi accounted to Gaza the cities and towns of Ascalon, Jaffa, Caesarea and Arsuf to the north; Deir al-Balah and al-Arish (in north-central the Sinai) to the south; Bayt Jibrin, Karatiyya, Hebron and Jerusalem to the east—all of which had their own sub-governors.
He highly favored Gaza and transformed it into a flourishing city, having built in it a horse-race course, a madrasa (college), a mosque, a khan (caravansary), a maristan (hospital), and a castle.
He borrowed a large sum from the French in order to meet the heavy taxes imposed on the city by Hassan Aga, governor Sidon Eyalet—the province that Gaza briefly belonged to.
[88] Husayn's period in office was peaceful and prosperous for the city, and he gained a good reputation for considerably reducing the strife between the nearby Bedouin and the settled population.
[76] Anonymous petitions from Damascus sent to Istanbul complaining about Husayn's failure to protect the hajj caravan and his alleged pro-Christian tendencies,[88] however, served as an excuse for the Ottoman government to depose him.
[91] In the 1750s, local Bedouin tribes disposed of the plunder from a Meccan caravan, consisting of 13,000 camel-loads of goods, into Gaza's markets, boosting the city's wealth.
[92] Then, in November 1770, Ali Bey al-Kabir, the rebellious Mamluk sultan of Egypt, sent troops to Gaza to aid Zahir al-Umar in the Galilee, helping him check the power of the Ottomans in the Levant.
[95] American scholar Edward Robinson visited Gaza in 1838, describing it as a "thickly populated" town larger than Jerusalem, with its Old City lying upon a hilltop, while its suburbs laid on the nearby plain.
[76] The Church of Saint Porphyrius was renovated in 1856,[99] and in 1874, French orientalist Charles Clermont-Ganneau visited Gaza, gathering and cataloging a sizable collection of Byzantine inscriptions and describing the city's Great Mosque in detail.
[99] Although the first municipal council of Gaza was formed in 1893 under the chairmanship of Ali Khalil Shawa, modern mayorship began in 1906 with his son Said al-Shawa, who was appointed mayor by Ottoman authorities.
[100] Like other regions and cities in Palestine at the time, Gaza was economically and politically dominated by a number of powerful clans, particularly the Shawa, Husseini, and Sourani families.
[76] After the First World War, the League of Nations granted quasi-colonial authority over former Ottoman territories to Great Britain and France, with Gaza becoming part of the British Mandate of Palestine.
In response, Sharon conducted a year long operation, authorized by Shlomo Gazit, involving the demolition of homes and the employment of special assassination teams that killed suspects.
[115][116] In September 1993, after the First Intifada, leaders of Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, allowing Palestinian administration of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.
