A request that this article title be changed to Ashkelon (ancient city)isunder discussion. Please do not move this article until the discussion is closed.
|
Ascalon (Philistine: 𐤀𐤔𐤒𐤋𐤍, romanized: *ʾAšqalōn;[1] Hebrew: אַשְׁקְלוֹן, romanized: ʾAšqəlōn; Koinē Greek: Ἀσκάλων, romanized: Askálōn; Latin: Ascalon; Arabic: عَسْقَلَان, romanized: ʿAsqalān) was an ancient Near East port city on the Mediterranean coast of the southern Levant of high historical significance, including as a much contested stronghold during the Crusades. Its importance diminished after the Mamluks destroyed its fortifications and port in 1270 in order to prevent any future military and logistical use by the Crusaders.[2]
𐤀𐤔𐤒𐤋𐤍
אַשְׁקְלוֹן Ἀσκάλων عَسْقَلَان | |
Shown within Israel | |
Location | Southern District, Israel |
---|---|
Region | Southern Levant, Middle East |
Coordinates | 31°39′43″N 34°32′46″E / 31.66194°N 34.54611°E / 31.66194; 34.54611 |
Type | Settlement |
History | |
Founded | c. 2000 BC |
Abandoned | 1270 AD |
Periods | Bronze AgetoCrusades |
Cultures | Philistine(?), Crusaders |
Site notes | |
Excavation dates | 1815, 1920-1922, 1985-2016 |
Archaeologists | Lady Hester Stanhope, John Garstang, W. J. Phythian-Adams, Lawrence Stager, Daniel Master |
Evidence of the emergence of a major fortified city at the site of Ascalon appears during the Middle Bronze Age. In the Late Bronze Age, the city was integrated into the Egyptian Empire and, following the migration of the Sea Peoples to the area, became one of the five cities of the Philistine pentapolis. The city was later destroyed by the Babylonians but was subsequently rebuilt.[2]
Ascalon remained a major metropolis throughout antiquity and the early Middle Ages, before becoming a highly contested fortified foothold on the coast during the Crusades, when it became the site of two significant Crusader battles: the Battle of Ascalon in 1099, and the Siege of Ascalon in 1153. The Mamluk sultan Baybars ordered the destruction (slighting) of the city fortifications and the harbour in 1270 to prevent any further military use, though structures such as the Shrine of Husayn's Head survived. The nearby town of al-Majdal was established in the same period.
Ottoman tax records attest the existence of the village of Al-Jura adjacent to citadel walls from at least 1596.[3] That residual settlement survived until its depopulation in 1948. The modern Israeli city of Ashkelon takes its name from the ancient city.
Ascalon has been known by many variations of the same basic name over the millennia. It is speculated that the name comes from the Northwest Semitic and possibly Canaanite root t-q-l, meaning "to weigh", which is also the root of "Shekel".[4]
The settlement is first mentioned in the Egyptian Execration Texts from the 18-19 centuries BC as Asqalānu.[1] In the Amarna letters (c. 1350 BC), there are seven letters to and from King YidyaofAšqaluna and the Egyptian pharaoh. The Merneptah Stele (c. 1208 BC) of the 19th dynasty recounts the Pharaoh putting down a rebellion at Asqaluna.[5] The settlement is then mentioned eleven times in the Hebrew BibleasʾAšqəlôn.[1]
In the Hellenistic period, Askálōn emerged as the Ancient Greek name for the city,[6] persisting through the Roman period and later Byzantine period.[7][8][9]
In the Early Islamic period, the Arabic form became ʿAsqalān.[10] The medieval Crusaders called it Ascalon.
Inmodern Hebrew it is known as Ashkelon. Today, Ascalon is a designated archaeological area known as Tel Ashkelon ("Mound of Ascalon") and administered as Ashkelon National Park.
Ascalon lies on the Mediterranean coast, 16 km. north of Gaza City and 14 km. south of Ashdod and Ashdod-Yam. Around 15 million years ago, a river flowed from inland to the sea here. It was later covered by fossilized sandstone ridges (kurkar), formed by sand that was washed to the shores from the Nile Delta. The river became an underground water source, which was later exploited by Ascalon's residents for the constructions of wells. The oldest well found at Ascalon dates around 1000 BCE.[4]
The remains of prehistoric activity and settlement at Ashkelon were revealed in salvage excavations prior to urban development in the Afridar and Marina neighborhoods of modern Ashkelon, some 1.5 kilometres (1 mi) north of Tel Ashkelon. The fieldwork was conducted in the 1950s under the supervision of Jean Perrot and in 1997-1998 under the supervision of Yosef Garfinkel.[11]
The earliest traces of human activity include some 460 microlithic tools dated to the Epipalaeolithic period (c. 20,000 to c. 12,000 BC). These come along wide evidence for hunter-gatherer exploitation in the southern coastal plain in that time. This activity come to hiatus during the early periods of sedentation in the Levant, and resumed only during the pre-pottery C phase of the Neolithic (c. 7900 BP). Jean Perrot's excavation revealed eight dwelling pits, along with silos and installations, while Garfinkel's excavations revealed numerous pits, hearths and animal bones.[12]
During the Early Bronze Age I period (EB I, 3700–2900 BCE), human settlement thrived in Ashkelon. The central site was in Afridar, situated between two long and wide kurkar ridges. This area had unique ecological conditions, offering an abundance of goundwater, fertile soils and varied flora and fauna. Two other settlements existed at Tel Ashkelon itself, and in the Barnea neighborhood of modern Ashkelon. The site of Afridar is one of the most extensive and most excavated settlements of the EB I period, with over two dozen dig sites, excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The flourishment of EB I Ashkelon has also been linked to trade relations with Prehistoric Egypt. The site of Afridar was abandoned at the start of the EB II period (c. 2900 BCE). It was suggested that the cause for the abandonment was a climate change causing increased precipitation, which destroyed the ecological condition that had served the locals for centuries.[13][14]
In the EB II-III (2900–2500 BCE), the site of Tel Ashkelon served as an important seaport for the trade route between the Old Kingdom of Egypt and Byblos. Excavations at the northern side of the mound revealed a mudbrick structure and numerous olive-oil jars.[15]
Ashkelon is mentioned for the first time in the Egyptian Execration Texts from the time of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt (20th–19th centuries BCE). These texts were written on red pots, which were broken as part of a cursing ritual against Egypt's enemies. Ashkelon appears three times in these texts, under the name Asqanu (ỉ-ś-q-3-nu), along with three of its rulers ḫꜥykm (or Khalu-Kim), ḫkṯnw and Isinw.[1][16]
The "Canaanite gate" of the city's ramparts, rendered in brick and limestone to a height of four metres, two metres wide and 15 metres across, is believed to have been built in around 1,850 BCE.[17]
Beginning in the time of Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC), the city was under Egyptian control, administered by a local governor. In the Amarna letters (c. 1350 BC), there are seven letters to and from King Yidya of Ašqaluna and the Egyptian pharaoh, referring to the ‘man’ of aš-qa-lu-naki,[1][4] In the late 13th century Merneptah Stele, the Pharaoh notes putting down a rebellion at "Asqaluni".[5]
The founding of Philistine Ashkelon, on top of the Egyptian-ruled Canaanite city, was dated by the site's excavators to c. 1170 BCE.[18] Their earliest pottery, types of structures and inscriptions are similar to the early Greek urbanised centre at Mycenaeinmainland Greece, adding evidence to the conclusion that they were one of the "Sea Peoples" that upset cultures throughout the Eastern Mediterranean at that time.[19][20] In this period, the Hebrew Bible presents Ašqəlôn as one of the five Philistine cities that are constantly warring with the Israelites.
By 734 BCE, Ashkelon was captured by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, under the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III. Following the Assyrian campaign, Ashkelon, along with other southern Levantine kingdoms, paid tribute to Assyria, and thus became a vassal kingdom.[21]
By 733 BCE, the Assyrians were fighting against Damascus, and Ashkelon, under king Mitinti I, joined Israel, Tyre and Arab tribes in a revolt against Assyrian hegemony. The revolt failed and Mitinti I was killed and replaced by Rukibtu. The identity of Rukibtu is unknown. It has been conjectured that he was the son of Rukibtu. Otherwise it was suggested that he was a usurper, either one who was installed by the Assyrians, or one who usurped the throne on his own behalf, and secured his rule through accepting Assyrian subjugation. Either way, after Rukibu's ascension, Ashkelon resumed paying annual tributes to Assyria.[22]
Somewhere towards the end of the 8th century BCE, Sidqa userped the throne, and joined the rebellion instigated by king HezekiahofJudah, along with other Levantine kings. Together, they deposed king PadiofEkron who remained loyal to Assyria.[4] The rebellion, which was launched shortly after Sennacherib's was suppressed during his third campaign In 701 BCE, as described in the Taylor Prism. At that time, Ashkelon controlled several cities in the Yarkon River basin (near modern Tel Aviv, including Beth Dagon, Jaffa, Beneberak and Azor. These were seized and sacked during the Assyrian campaign. Sidqa himself was exiled with all of his family and was replaced Šarru-lu-dari, the son of Rukibtu, who resumed paying tribute to Assyria.[23]
During the 7th century BCE, Ashkelon ruled by Mitinti II, the son of Sidqa, who was a vassal to Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. With the decline of the Assyrian Empire, Ashkelon was shortly under the rule of Egypt, in the days of pharaoh Psamtik I. Later it was incorporated in the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Ashkelon was the last of the Philistine cities to hold out against Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. When it fell in 604 BCE, burnt and destroyed and its king Aga' was taken into exile.[4] According to Herodotus (c.484–c.425 BC), the city's temple of Aphrodite (Derketo) 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 BCE).[citation needed] With the Babylonian destruction, the Philistine era was over. After its destruction, Ashkelon remained desolate for seventy years, until the Persian Period.[24][4]
Ashkelon was the pimary seaport of the Philistines, inhabited by 10,000–12,000 residents and with fortifications which integrated and developed the Canaanite ramparts, in addition to an estimated 50 protective towers.[25] Industry in Iron Age Ashkelon included wine and olive oil production and export and possibly textile weaving.[26] Together with Ashdod, it is the site most abundant with Red-Slipped ware, both imported and locally made, which decreases greatly further inland.[27] Imports further included amphorae, elegant bowls and cups, "Samaria ware", and red and cream polished tableware from Phoenicia, together with amphorae and decorated fine-ware from Ionia, Corinth, Cyprus and the Greek islands.[27] Close connections between Ashkelon and Egypt developed after Egypt filled the power vacuum due to the withdrawal of the Assyrian empire from the West.[28] This is demonstrated by the discovery of multiple Egyptian trade items, such as barrel-jars and tripods made of Nile clay, a jewelry box made of abalone shell together with a necklace of amulets. Egyptian cultic and votive items, statuettes and offering tables were likewise discovered, demonstrating a religious influence as well.[29] Concern over the strong Egyptian influence on Ashkelon, and possibly its direct rule, are possbibly what brought Nebuchadnezzar II to reduce it to a pile of rubble, one year after the Assyrian-Egyptian defeat in the battle of Carchemish and several years before the failed Babylonian invasion of Egypt.[30]
Until the conquest of Alexander the Great, the city's inhabitants were influenced by the dominant Persian culture. It is in this archaeological layer that excavations have found dog burials. It is believed the dogs may have had a sacred role; however, evidence is not conclusive.
Unlike the Judeans, the Philistines did not return from exile, and there is evidence for the inhabitation of the city by Tyrians during the Persian period.[24] Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax[31] calls it "Ashkelon, the city of Tyre's people". In those days, the city's residents led an extensive trading life with its neighbor Ancient Egypt, as evidenced by the same statues resembling Egyptian gods that were found in the excavations. The Phoenician presence in the city is also evidenced by the archaeological findings.[32]
After the conquest of Alexander in the 4th century BCE, Ashkelon was an important free city and Hellenistic seaport.
It had mostly friendly relations with the Hasmonean kingdom and the Herodian kingdomofJudea, in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. 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.[33]
Herod the Great, who became a client king of the Roman Empire, ruling over Judea and its environs in 30 BCE, had not received Ashkelon, yet he built monumental buildings there: bath houses, elaborate fountains and large colonnades.[34][35] A discredited tradition suggests Ashkelon was his birthplace.[36] In 6 CE, when a Roman imperial province was set in Judea, overseen by a lower-rank governor, Ashkelon was moved directly to the higher jurisdiction of the governor of Syria province.
Roman and Islamic era fortifications, faced with stone, followed the same footprint as the earlier Canaanite settlement, forming a vast semicircle protecting the settlement on the land side. On the sea it was defended by a high natural bluff. A roadway more than six metres (20 ft) in width ascended the rampart from the harbor and entered a gate at the top.
The city remained loyal to Rome during the Great Revolt, 66–70 CE.
The city of Ascalon appears on a fragment of the 6th-century Madaba Map.[37]
The bishops of Ascalon whose names are known include Sabinus, who was at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, and his immediate successor, Epiphanius. Auxentius took part in the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Jobinus in a synod held in Lydda in 415, Leontius in both the Robber Council of Ephesus in 449 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Bishop Dionysius, who represented Ascalon at a synod in Jerusalem in 536, was on another occasion called upon to pronounce on the validity of a baptism with sand in waterless desert. He sent the person to be baptized in water.[38][39]
No longer a residential bishopric, Ascalon is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.[40]
During the Muslim conquest of Palestine begun in c. 633–634, Ascalon (Asqalan in Arabic) became one of the last Byzantine cities in the region to fall.[10] It may have been temporarily occupied by Amr ibn al-As, but definitively surrendered to Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (who later founded the Umayyad Caliphate) not long after he captured the Byzantine district capital of Caesareainc. 640.[10] The Byzantines reoccupied Asqalan during the Second Muslim Civil War (680–692), but the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) recaptured and fortified it.[10] For the shape and fortification plan of the city, see above under "Roman period".
A son of Caliph Sulayman (r. 715–717), whose family resided in Palestine, was buried in the city.[41] An inscription found in the city indicates that the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi ordered the construction of a mosque with a minaret in Asqalan in 772.[10]
Asqalan prospered under the Fatimid Caliphate and contained a mint and secondary naval base.[10] Along with a few other coastal towns in Palestine, it remained in Fatimid hands when most of Islamic Syria was conquered by the Seljuks.[10] However, during this period, Fatimid rule over Asqalan was periodically reduced to nominal authority over the city's governor.[10]
In 1091, a couple of years after a campaign by grand vizier Badr al-Jamali to reestablish Fatimid control over the region, the head of Husayn ibn Ali (a grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad) was "rediscovered", prompting Badr to order the construction of a new mosque and mashhad (shrine or mausoleum) to hold the relic, known as the Shrine of Husayn's Head.[42][43][44] According to another source, the shrine was built in 1098 by the Fatimid vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah.[45][verification needed]
The mausoleum was described as the most magnificent building in Asqalan.[46] In the British Mandate period it was a "large maqam on top of a hill" with no tomb, but a fragment of a pillar showing the place where the head had been buried.[47] In July 1950, the shrine was destroyed at the instructions of Moshe Dayan in accordance with a 1950s Israeli policy of erasing Muslim historical sites within Israel,[48] and in line with efforts to expel the remaining Palestinian Arabs from the region.[49] Prior to its destruction, the shrine was the holiest Shi'a site in Palestine.[50] In 2000, a marble dais was built on the site by Mohammed Burhanuddin, an Indian Islamic leader of the Dawoodi Bohras.[51]
During the Crusades, Ascalon was an important city due to its location near the coast and between the Crusader States and Egypt. In 1099, shortly after the Siege of Jerusalem, a Fatimid army that had been sent to relieve Jerusalem was defeated by a Crusader force at the Battle of Ascalon. The city itself was not captured and remained under the control of the Fatimids, who eventually re-garrisoned it and used it as a base of operations against the Kingdom of Jerusalem.[52]
As a result of military reinforcements from Egypt and a large influx of refugees from areas conquered by the Crusaders, Ascalon became a major Fatimid frontier post.[45] The Fatimids then used it to launch raids into the Kingdom of Jerusalem.[53] Trade ultimately resumed between Ascalon and Crusader-controlled Jerusalem, though the inhabitants of Ascalon regularly struggled with shortages in food and supplies, necessitating the provision of goods and relief troops to the city from Egypt on several occasions each year.[45] According to William of Tyre, the entire civilian population of the city was included in the Fatimid army registers.[45] The Crusaders' capture of the port city of Tyre in 1134 and their construction of a ring of fortresses around the city to neutralize its threat to Jerusalem strategically weakened Ascalon.[45] In 1150 the Fatimids fortified the city with fifty-three towers, as it was their most important frontier fortress.[54]
Three years later, after a seven-month siege, the city was captured by a Crusader army led by King Baldwin III of Jerusalem.[45] Ibn al-Qalanisi recorded that upon the city's surrender, all Muslims with the means to do so emigrated from the city.[55] The Fatimids secured the head of Husayn from its mausoleum outside the city and transported it to their capital Cairo.[45] Ascalon was then added to the County of Jaffa to form the County of Jaffa and Ascalon, which became one of the four major seigneuries of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
After the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem the six elders of the Karaite Jewish community in Ascalon contributed to the ransoming of captured Jews and holy relics from Jerusalem's new rulers. The Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon, which was sent to the Jewish elders of Alexandria, describes their participation in the ransom effort and the ordeals suffered by many of the freed captives. A few hundred Jews, Karaites and Rabbanites, were living in Ascalon in the second half of the 12th century, but moved to Jerusalem when the city was destroyed in 1191.[56]
In 1187, Saladin took Ascalon as part of his conquest of the Crusader States following the Battle of Hattin. In 1191, during the Third Crusade, Saladin demolished the city because of its potential strategic importance to the crusaders. This is captured in an anecdote in which a reluctant Saladin is reported to have exclaimed: "Wallah, I would rather see my children perish than lose Ascalon!"[57]
The leader of the crusaders, King Richard the Lionheart of England, nevertheless proceeded to construct a citadel upon the ruins. Ascalon subsequently remained part of the diminished territories of Outremer throughout most of the 13th century and Richard, Earl of Cornwall reconstructed and refortified the citadel during 1240–41, as part of the Crusader policy of improving the defences of coastal sites. The Egyptians retook Ascalon in 1247 during As-Salih Ayyub's conflict with the Crusader States and the city was returned to Muslim rule.
The ancient and medieval history of Ascalon was brought to an end in 1270, when the then Mamluk sultan Baybars ordered the citadel and harbour at the site to be destroyed as part of a wider decision to destroy the Levantine coastal towns in order to forestall future Crusader invasions. Some monuments, like the shrine of Sittna Khadra and Shrine of Husayn's Head survived. According to Marom and Taxel, this event irreversibly changed the settlement patterns in the region. As a substitute for ‘Asqalān, Baybars established Majdal ‘Asqalān, 3 km inland, and endowed it with a magnificent Friday Mosque, a marketplace and religious shrines.[58]
In the first Ottoman tax register of 1526/7 Ascalon (still referred to as Asqalān) and its surrounding environs were recorded as being unpopulated.[2] By 1596 CE, the village of village of Al-Jura, then named as Jawrat al-Hajja, was founded just outside the northeastern perimeter of Ascalon's still mounded ramparts.[59]
Beginning in the 18th century, the site was visited, and occasionally drawn, by a number of adventurers and tourists. It was also often scavenged for building materials. The first known excavation occurred in 1815. Lady Hester Stanhope dug there for two weeks using 150 workers. No real records were kept.[60] In the 1800s some classical pieces from Ascalon (though long thought to be from Thessaloniki) were sent to the Ottoman Museum.[61] By the time of the commissioning of the PEF Survey of Palestine in 1871-77, the interior of Ascalon's ruined perimeter was divided into cultivated fields, interspersed with wells.[62] From 1920 to 1922 John Garstang and W. J. Phythian-Adams excavated on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund. They focused on two areas, one Roman and the other Philistine/Canaanite.[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70] Over the more recent decades a number of salvage excavations were carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority.[71]
Modern excavation began in 1985 with the Leon Levy Expedition. Between then and 2006, seventeen seasons of work took place, led by Lawrence Stager of Harvard University.[72][73][74][75][76][77][78] In 1991 the ruins of a small ceramic tabernacle was found, containing a finely cast bronze statuette of a bull calf, originally silvered, ten centimetres (4 in) long.[citation needed] In the 1997 season a cuneiform table fragment was found, being a lexical list containing both Sumerian and Canaanite language columns. It was found in a Late Bronze Age II context, about 13th century BC.[79]
In 2012, an Iron Age IIA Philistine cemetery was discovered outside the city. In 2013, 200 of the cemetery's estimated 1,200 graves were excavated. Seven were stone-built tombs.[80] One ostracon and 18 jar handles were found to be inscribed with the Cypro-Minoan script. The ostracon was of local material and dated to 12th to 11th century BC. Five of the jar handles were manufactured in coastal Lebanon, two in Cyprus, and one locally. Fifteen of the handles were found in an Iron I context and the rest in Late Bronze Age context.[81]
William Albright said of the city: "Ascalon is a name to conjure with. Few cities in the Old World had a more romantic history than this, from the time when its fleets according to Greek tradition, held the thalassocracy of the eastern Mediterranean to its romantic destruction by its own suzerain, Saladin, who thus avoided its impending capture by the Lion Heart."[57]
The scallion and shallot are both types of onion named after ancient Ascalon. The name "scallion" is derived from the Old French escaloigne, by way of the Vulgar Latin escalonia, from the Latin Ascalōnia caepa or onion of Ascalon.[82][83] "Shallot" is also derived from escaloigne, but by way of the 1660s diminutive form eschalotte.[84]
The derivative "Im schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon" (In the Black Whale of Ascalon) is a German commercium song historically sung in German universities. Joseph Victor von Scheffel provided the lyrics under the title Altassyrisch (Old Assyrian) in 1854, while the melody is from 1783 or earlier.[85]
ASHKELON. A major city and important harbor on the southern coast of Palestine about 50 kilometers south of modern Tel Aviv. It was excavated in 1920, and again in ongoing excavations since 1985. /.../ Although destroyed by the Babylonians in 604 B.C.E., it was soon rebuilt and remained an important center of trade not only in Persian times but actually until the Middle Ages when it was finally destroyed by Arab rulers after their victories over the crusaders.Cite error: The named reference ":0" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
I am willing to state flatly that the Sea Peoples, including the Philistines, were Mycenaean Greeks
Only with Cyrus the Great, successor to the Babylonians, does the archaeological record begin again in Ashkelon (where Phoenicians settled; Philistines did not return from the diaspora) - as in Jerusalem and in Judah, where many Jewish exiles returned to their homeland.
{{cite encyclopedia}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(help)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)