Notes from “Gaza a History” by Jean-Pierre Filiu Part 5
661-1260
Notes from “Gaza a History” by Jean-Pierre Filiu
Part 5
“Gaza was part of the military district (jund) of Palestine which was administered from the central point of Ramla during the Umayyad period (from 661 to 750). Following the advent of the Abbasids a decision was made to relocate the seat of the Caliphate to Iraq, which resulted in the distancing of Gaza from the centre of Islamic government. But this did not prevent Gaza from developing a reputation as a place of intellectual importance. The city was the birthplace in 767 of the Iman Shafi’i, the celebrated founder of the Shafi’i school of religious law (madhhab), one of the four juridical schools of Sunni Islam – though he left the city in his early youth to complete his education, the tomb of Imam Shafi‘i’s daughter, together with that of one of his close associates can still be found in the Muslim cemetery in Gaza’s Zeitoun district. In the more worldly sphere, commerce of every kind continued to flourish in the port of Maiumas, which came to be known around this time as Mimas. Travelers and writers stress the city’s prosperity and note the burgeoning orchards and farmlands surrounding it. The Gaza Valley (‘Wadi Ghazza’), which opens into the Mediterranean to the south of the city, was only rivalled in the flow of water and the luxuriance of the vegetation by the Jordan Valley.”[1]
“The ‘Pax Islamica” was to last for more than a century and a half, until geopolitical tensions between the Middle East and Egypt once more darkened Gaza’s horizons. Between 899 and 905 the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad, who were no longer prepared to tolerate the dissidence of the Nile Valley, dispatched expeditions through Gaza to bring Egypt to heel. At the same time, as Hamadani, a chronicler of Persian origin has recorded there was a jostling between Iraq and Syria over the possession of Islam’s most attractive lands. By this stage Palestine was regarded as part of the bilad al-Sham (as greater Syria was known), with Syria’s eulogists boasting of the land’s ‘two brides in this world, Gaza and Ascalon.’”
“Yet in 969 Egypt was conquered by new masters who came from the west: the Ismaili Shi’ite Fatimid dynasty, who spread their messianic doctrine from their base in Tunis.the new rulers of the Nile Valley also laid claim to the position of Caliphate and founded a capital whose very name rang out as a challenge, Al-Qahira (literally the ‘Victorious”), which we know today as Cairo. The Fatimids immediately moved to take hold of Gaza, the necessary point of transit for their offensive against Jerusalem. The representatives of Cairo made no attempt to proselytize in Gaza, which remained staunchly faithful to Sunni orthodoxy.”
“The contention between Baghdad and Cairo was of an entirely strategic nature, and hence bore no resemblance to the internecine conflicts of the Eastern Church in the fifth century. At the close of the tenth century the chronicler Al-Muqadissi describes Gaza as one of the largest cities in Palestine, to which only Ramla, the current capital, could be compared. His contemporary Ibn Hawqal described Gaza as a ‘fine city and very prosperous.’ Fatimid rule did not disrupt the regular passage of the caravans from Egypt to the Levant and vice versa, and the mosque of Umar continued to be much frequented by merchants, who, according to Al-Muqadissi, were attracted by the echoes of their distant forerunner Umar, who had made his fortune in Gaza even before he converted to Islam.”[2]
“In 1071 the Fatimids lost Jerusalem to Baghdad, where, however, the caliphs now exercised only the semblance of power. In fact, the Turkish Seljuk sultans governed in their name, with brutality often taking the place of piety. Jerusalem was bitterly disputed between the Fatimids and the Seljuks and the city changed hands several times over the space of a generation before finally falling under Cairo’s control. These military upheavals and the religious polemics that accompanied them seriously impeded the Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and it was this issue which Pope Urban II used to justify his crusade for the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre in 1095. Jerusalem was stormed four years later, and after the surrender of its garrison, when the Egyptians took flight, a blood bath among the city’s population ensued.”
“The carnage the crusaders inflicted spread terror throughout Palestine. In Gaza, the inhabitants fled ahead of the invaders, who took the city without conflict. The mosque of Umar became a church once more, in an act of posthumous vengeance for Eudoxia and Porphyry. To control the southward route to Egypt, the crusaders built the fort at Darum, on the site of present-day Deir al-Balah. When Gaza was absorbed into the Frankish Kingdom, the Fatimid defenders of Jerusalem fell back to Ascalon, on the coast, which had remained a Muslim enclave. These two coastal cities, some 15 kilometers apart, which had been lined together from the days of ancient Philistia, were now separated by the front line of the confrontation between the Cross and the Crescent.”
“In 1149, angered by continuing Muslim raids from Ascalon, King Baldwin III of Jerusalem instructed the Knights Templar to make Gaza their stronghold and impose peace on the coastal region. Before long, a new crusader castle loomed over the outskirts of Gaza, threatening the defenders of the nearby Fatimid redoubt. The church that had been built on the foundations of the mosque of Umar was enlarged to become a cathedral of the Latin rite, which was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. In 1153 Ascalon surrendered after a seven-month siege and was transformed by the occupying crusaders into a bridgehead for projected maritime expeditions against Egypt. Gaza, which was no longer in the forefront of the conflict, lost much of its strategic value. But its role as a mercantile crossroads continued to ensure that it was relatively prosperous, something attested to by the Arab geographer Al-Idrissi: ‘Gaza is a modest city whose market is nevertheless renowned.’”[3]
“The Islamic re-conquest was the achievement of Kurdish General Salah ad-Din, who was fighting on behalf of the Fatimids. In 1170 his forces took possession of Darum (Deir al-Balah) and made forays as far as the crusader castle at Gaza. In 1171 Salah ad-Din abolished the Fatimid Caliphate and founded the Ayyubid Sultanate, thereby uniting Damascus and Cairo under his military rule, which enabled him to defeat the crusaders in a pincer movement. In 1187 he annihilated the crusader armies at a battle near Lake Tiberias, putting an end to the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Knights Templar abandoned Gaza to the Islamic forces, but the reaction when Jerusalem itself was lost enabled the king of England, Richard Coeur de Lion, to raise a new crusade. In 1191 Richard’s troops took Gaza before pressing on to Ascalon. However, the resurgence of the Christian knights was of short duration; Salah al-Din soon regained the initiative on all fronts, obliging the crusaders to agree to the surrender of Gaza and Ascalon and to the destruction of their fortifications.”
“Gaza was left defenceless and was therefore as easy to take as to lose, which in turn meant that it was to pay a high price for the military comings and goings of the thirteenth century. Initially, Gaza came under the control of the descendants of Salah al-Din, the Ayyubid sultans in Cairo. Yet in the treaty signed in 1229 between Al-Kamid, the fifth Ayyubid sultan, who was Salah al-Din’s nephew, and Frederick II, the king of Sicily, who was also the holy Roman emperor, Gaza was again handed over to the crusaders. Ten years later the Christian armies went on the offensive again, led by Theobald, count of Champagne and king of Navarre. This time they were defeated at Beit Hanoun, near Gaza, by the troops of Shuja al-Din Uthman al-Kurdi, who died during the battle. In 1244 an ephemeral coalition of Turkish and Egyptian military leaders seized Gaza and expelled the crusaders, who retreated to Ascalon, which served as a refuge for the Knights Hospitaller for three further years. In 1250, the Ayyubid Sultanate in Egypt was overthrown by the Mamluk generals, and these liberated slaves, often of Caucasian origin, again raised the flag of jihad against the last bastion of the crusaders.”[4]
“However, everything was to change once more due to the advent of a much more powerful enemy in the Middle East in 1258. In that year Baghdad fell to the Mongol hordes from the East, led by their all-conquering general, Hulagu, a grandson of Genghis Khan. After defeating their opponents, and committing massacres throughout the region in the process, the invaders from the Central Asian steppes were soon able to conquer Palestine, where they reached Gaza in 1260. Hulagu himself then left the Middle East, returning to Mongolia to strike his claim in an unsuccessful struggle for succession to the position of great khan within the Mongol Empire (his brother, Kublai Khan, eventually assumed this position). In the meantime the Egyptian Mamluk General Baybars, who was to displace Qutuz after the battle, won a decisive victory at Ain Jalout, near Nablus, which led to the withdrawal of the Mongol armies from the Levant.”[5]
[1] pp. 19-20 Gaza a History, Jean-Pierre Filiu
[2] p.20 Ibid
[3] pp.21-22 Ibid
[4] p.22 Ibid
[5] p.23 Ibid