1845 print GAZA, PALESTINE, #65 |
Print from steel engraving titled Gaza, published in a volume of L'Univers Pittoresque, approx. page size 20.5 x 12.5 cm, approx. image size 14 x 10 cm.
Gaza
Arabic Ghazzah , Hebrew ʿAzza
city and principal urban centre of the Gaza Strip, southwestern Palestine.
Formerly the administrative headquarters for the Israeli military forces that
occupied the Gaza Strip, the city came under Palestinian control in 2005.
Records exist indicating continuous habitation at the site for more than three
millennia, the earliest being a reference by Pharaoh Thutmose III (18th dynasty;
15th century BC). It is also mentioned in the Tell el-Amarna tablets, the
diplomatic and administrative records of ancient Egypt. After 300 years of
Egyptian occupation, the Peleset (Philistines), one of the Sea Peoples, settled
the city and surrounding area. Gaza became an important centre of the Philistine
Pentapolis (league of five cities). There the biblical hero Samson perished
while toppling the temple of the god Dagon. Because of its strategic position on
the Via Maris, the ancient coastal road linking Egypt with Palestine and the
lands beyond, Gaza experienced little peace in antiquity; it fell, successively,
to the Israelite king David and to the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, and
Persians. Alexander the Great met stiff resistance there, and, after conquering
it, he sold its inhabitants into slavery. Throughout its history it was a
prosperous trade centre. In Hellenistic and Roman times the harbour, about 3
miles (5 km) from the city proper, was called Neapolis (Greek: “New City”).
In AD 635 the Arabs took Gaza, and it became a Muslim city. Gaza has long been
an important centre of Islamic tradition and is the reputed site of the burial
place of Hāshim ibn ʿAbd Manāf, great-grandfather of the Prophet Muḥammad, and
the birthplace of al-Shāfiʿī (767–820), founder of the Shāfiʿite school of
Muslim legal interpretation. The city declined during the Crusades and never
regained its former importance. After the sultan Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn) defeated
the Crusaders occupying the region at the Battle of Ḥaṭṭīn (1187), Gaza reverted
to Muslim control; it passed to the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. In World
War I it was stoutly defended by the Turks and was not taken by British forces
until November 1917.
After the war Gaza became part of mandated Palestine, and a small coastal port
(fishing, lighterage) was operated on the coast. When the Palestine partition
plan was promulgated by the United Nations (1947), Gaza was assigned to what was
to be an Arab state. That state, however, was not set up, and Gaza was occupied
in 1948 by Egyptians. At the time of the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian
armistice (February 1949), Egypt held Gaza and its environs, a situation that
resulted in the creation of the Gaza Strip. (See Arab-Israeli wars.) Egypt did
not annex the city and territory but administered it through a military
governor. Gaza and its surroundings have continued to be greatly overpopulated
by Palestinian Arab refugees.
During the Sinai campaign of November 1956, Gaza and its environs were taken by
Israeli troops, but international pressure soon forced Israel to withdraw.
Reoccupied by Israel in the Six-Day War (June 1967), the city remained under
Israeli military administration until 1994, when a phased transfer of
governmental authority to the Palestinians got under way. In 2005 Israel
completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, handing over control of the region
to the Palestinians.
Long a prosperous citrus centre, Gaza also has extensive truck farms within the
city limits. Dark pottery, food products, and finished textiles are
manufactured; the city has a long-standing textile industry. Sites of interest
include at the harbour an early Byzantine mosaic floor (6th century AD),
evidently of a synagogue, showing King David playing the harp and dressed as the
Greek hero Orpheus. Pop. (2005 est.) 479,400.