courtesy Wikipedia |
In the time of
Joshua, Ashkelon became one of the five major cities of the Philistines. Even
though it was allotted to the tribe of Judah, the Israelites were never able to
conquer it and it was, consequently, at constant war with them and later, the Kingdom of
Judah.
During the Assyrian invasion in the 8th century
BCE, Ashkelon allied with King Hezekiah. Later, it was the last of the
Philistine cities to hold out against Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar
II. When it fell in 604 BCE, it was burnt and destroyed and its
people taken into exile thus, extinguishing the Philistines as a people.
Ashkelon was
thereafter repopulated by various gentile peoples but it also contained a
sizable Jewish community after the Babylonian captivity. This community
flourished under the Egyptian Ptolemies in the early 2nd century
BCE. It later had mostly friendly relations with the Hasmonean and Herodian
kingdoms of Judea. It surrendered twice to Jonathan the
Maccabbee and later, to Alexander Jannaeus. In a significant case of an
early witch-hunt,
during the reign of the Hasmonean queen Salome
Alexandra, the court of Simeon ben Shetach sentenced to death eighty women
in Ashkelon who had been charged with sorcery. Herod the
Great, who became a client king of Rome over Judea and its surroundings
in 38 BCE, had not received Ashkelon, yet he built monumental buildings there: bath houses, elaborate fountains and large
colonnades, and his sister Salome resided there.
The city remained
loyal to Rome during the Great Revolt, 66–70 AD. During the revolt,
Jewish forces tried several times to conquer the city but without success. Jews
continued to live and flourish in Ashkelon, however, and during the Byzantine
era from the 4th – 7th centuries, they built their own synagogue. Their local orchards became
famous and a city fair was held every year. Under Fatimid Arab rule in the 10th century,
the Jewish community was known as the Kehal Ashkelon and the Kahal Kadosh
(according to letters found in the Cairo Genizah).
After the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem, many Jews
fled to Ashkelon escaping Crusader atrocities. The six elders of the local
Karaite Jewish
community contributed to the ransoming of captured Jews and holy relics from
Jerusalem. The Letter of the Karaite elders of
Ascalon, which was sent to the Jewish elders of Alexandria, described
their participation in the ransom effort and the ordeals suffered by many of
the freed captives. At
the same time, members of the Jewish community were in constant touch with
Jewish centers abroad. For example in 1110, letters were sent to the head of
the "Gaon Jacob Yeshivah," which was exiled from the country. After
the Crusader conquest in 1153, part of the Jewish population remained in Ashkelon. Benjamin of
Tudela (c. 1170) described it as "a large and beautiful town, which
contains two hundred Jews, and apart from them, several dozen Karaites and
about three hundred Samaritans." A few hundred Jews were living in
Ashkelon in the second half of the 12th century, but moved to Jerusalem when
the city was destroyed in 1191. Information
also exists on the settlement of Samaritans in the 13th century.
Throughout the rule of the Ottoman Empire (1516-1917),
there was no Jewish community in Ashkelon. After the invasion of Israel by
Napoleon, the Jewish community of Gaza was destroyed by the invading French with
the active participation of the local Arabs. When Israel was briefly invaded
and occupied by Arab forces from Egypt (1831-1840), Ibrahim Pasha, the
commander of Egyptian forces, took the stones from Gaza’s ruined synagogue and
used them to build a fort in
Ashkelon. At the same time, Arabs were brought in from Egypt to settle there and
the town of al Majdal was established.
In 1948, the city
was re-captured by Egyptian Arab forces who were on their way to conquer Tel
Aviv. However, it was taken by Israeli forces later that year. Tel Aviv was
saved and the Arab population fled along with the Egyptian army. It was later
settled by Jewish refugees from throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Thereafter, it
was named “Migdal Ashkelon” but in 1953, the nearby neighborhood of Afridar was incorporated and the name
"Ashkelon" was returned to the town.
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