This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Lod (Hebrew: לוד, or fully vocalized לֹד), also known as Lydda (Ancient Greek: Λύδδα) and Lidd (Arabic: اللِّد, romanized: al-Lidd, or اللُّد, al-Ludd), is a city 15 km (9+1⁄2 mi) southeast of Tel Aviv and 40 km (25 mi) northwest of Jerusalem in the Central District of Israel.

[15] The name Lod derives from a tri-consonental root not extant in Northwest Semitic, but only in Arabic (“to quarrel; withhold, hinder”).

[20] The city is also mentioned in an Islamic hadith as the location of the battlefield where the false messiah (al-Masih ad-Dajjal) will be slain before the Day of Judgment.

[27] In the Early Bronze, it was an important settlement in the central coastal plain between the Judean Shephelah and the Mediterranean coast, along Nahal Ayalon.

In Stratum IVa there was a mudbrick wall with no stone foundations, with imported Egyptian potter and local pottery imitations.

[32] The earliest written record is in a list of Canaanite towns drawn up by the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III at Karnak in 1465 BCE.

[35] According to British historian Martin Gilbert, during the Hasmonean period, Jonathan Maccabee and his brother, Simon Maccabaeus, enlarged the area under Jewish control, which included conquering the city.

[36] The Jewish community in Lod during the Mishnah and Talmud era is described in a significant number of sources, including information on its institutions, demographics, and way of life.

The city reached its height as a Jewish center between the First Jewish-Roman War and the Bar Kokhba revolt, and again in the days of Judah ha-Nasi and the start of the Amoraim period.

[4] In 43 BC, Cassius, the Roman governor of Syria, sold the inhabitants of Lod into slavery, but they were set free two years later by Mark Antony.

[37][38] During the First Jewish–Roman War, the Roman proconsul of Syria, Cestius Gallus, razed the town on his way to Jerusalem in Tishrei 66 CE.

[40] In the period following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Rabbi Tarfon, who appears in many Tannaitic and Jewish legal discussions, served as a rabbinic authority in Lod.

[41] During the Kitos War, 115–117 CE, the Roman army laid siege to Lod, where the rebel Jews had gathered under the leadership of Julian and Pappos.

[42] The distress became so great, the patriarch Rabban Gamaliel II, who was shut up there and died soon afterwards, permitted fasting on Ḥanukkah.

[44] In 200 CE, emperor Septimius Severus elevated the town to the status of a city, calling it Colonia Lucia Septimia Severa Diospolis.

In the sixth century, the city was renamed Georgiopolis[47] after St. George, a soldier in the guard of the emperor Diocletian, who was born there between 256 and 285 CE.

[33] The 6th-century Madaba map shows Lydda as an unwalled city with a cluster of buildings under a black inscription reading "Lod, also Lydea, also Diospolis".

[50] After the Muslim conquest of Palestine by Amr ibn al-'As in 636 CE,[51] Lod which was referred to as "al-Ludd" in Arabic served as the capital of Jund Filastin ("Military District of Palaestina") before the seat of power was moved to nearby Ramla during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Suleiman ibn Abd al-Malik in 715–716.

[8] The city was visited by the local Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi in 985, when it was under the Fatimid Caliphate, and was noted for its Great Mosque which served the residents of al-Ludd, Ramla, and the nearby villages.

[62] In 1051 AH/1641/2, the Bedouin tribe of al-Sawālima from around Jaffa attacked the villages of Subṭāra, Bayt Dajan, al-Sāfiriya, Jindās, Lydda and Yāzūr belonging to Waqf Haseki Sultan.

[64] Missionary William M. Thomson visited Lydda in the mid-19th century, describing it as a "flourishing village of some 2,000 inhabitants, imbosomed in noble orchards of olive, fig, pomegranate, mulberry, sycamore, and other trees, surrounded every way by a very fertile neighbourhood.

Wells are found in the gardens...."[66] From 1918, Lydda was under the administration of the British Mandate in Palestine, as per a League of Nations decree that followed the Great War.

In December 1947, thirteen Jewish passengers in a seven-car convoy to Ben Shemen Youth Village were ambushed and murdered.

All but 700[83] to 1,056[12] were expelled by order of the Israeli high command, and forced to walk 17 km (10+1⁄2 mi) to the Jordanian Arab Legion lines.

[92] In the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, a state of emergency was declared in Lod after Arab rioting led to the death of an Israeli Jew.

[98][99][100][101][102] In the 19th century and until the Lydda Death March, Lod was an exclusively Muslim-Christian town, with an estimated 6,850 inhabitants, of whom approximately 2,000 (29%) were Christian.

Other important factories in the city are the communication equipment company "Talard", "Cafe-Co" - a subsidiary of the Strauss Group and "Kashev" - the computer center of Bank Leumi.

[105] A well-preserved mosaic floor dating to the Roman period was excavated in 1996 as part of a salvage dig conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Municipality of Lod, prior to widening HeHalutz Street.

According to Jacob Fisch, executive director of the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority, a worker at the construction site noticed the tail of a tiger and halted work.

The floor, with its colorful display of birds, fish, exotic animals and merchant ships, is believed to have been commissioned by a wealthy resident of the city for his private home.