Ascalon

Ashkelon: a city on the coast of Palestine, one of the districts of the military district of Palestine, according to al-Baladhuri. In the museum's data it belongs to Jerusalem. ¹

al-Baladhuri reports that Umar ibn al-Khattab conquered it by treaty after a stratagem, and it is also said that Amr ibn al-As was the one who conquered it. It is said that Amr conquered it, then its people broke the covenant and the Byzantines reinforced them, so Mu'awiya reconquered it, settled in it garrison men, and appointed guards over it. ¹

al-Baladhuri relays from the shaykhs of its people that the Byzantines ruined it and expelled its people in the days of Ibn al-Zubayr, and when Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan came to power he rebuilt it and fortified it. He reports that it contained estates granted by order of Umar and Uthman, and that Abd al-Malik granted a man of the Arabs an estate in it, among the estates of the garrison. ²

Ascalon (Hebrew Ashkelon) is one of the five Philistine towns known from the Old Testament. In the Roman period, as oppidum Ascalon liberum, it was a flourishing Hellenistic town famous for its cults and festal games; in the Christian period it was a bishop's see, with the tomb of the three martyr brothers, the Egyptians. ³

It was one of the last towns of Palestine to fall to the Muslims, and was taken by treaty by Mu'awiya shortly after the capture of Caesarea in 19 AH (640), though 'Amr ibn al-As may have occupied it briefly before. The Byzantines reoccupied it briefly in the time of Ibn al-Zubayr, and 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan later restored and refortified it. A building inscription records that the caliph al-Mahdi had a mosque and minaret built there in 155 AH (772). Under the Fatimids it prospered, according to Mukaddasi and Nasir-i Khusraw; it had a mint and was at times a secondary naval base. When the Saljuqs took the rest of Syria and Palestine, the Fatimids kept it with some other coastal towns, though sometimes only as a nominal suzerainty over local rulers. ³

In 492 AH (1099) the Egyptian army retreating from Jerusalem entered the town, and for a while it seemed it would pass under Frankish rule, but the dissensions of the Crusaders saved it for the Egyptians, who held it for the next century and a half as a frontier city and key objective. The Egyptians used it as a bridgehead and base for raids into Frankish territory; with its population swollen by refugees and its garrison reinforced from Egypt, it became a major military centre. In 548 AH (1153) Baldwin III took it after a siege of seven months by a combined land and sea attack, and it became the base for Frankish adventures in Egypt. After Hattin it surrendered to Saladin in 583 AH (1187); in 587 AH (1191), after the defeat at Arsuf, Saladin, unable to hold it against Richard of England, destroyed it. The Muslim population moved to Syria and Egypt, the Christians and Jews to Jerusalem. The Hospitallers garrisoned it and held it against an Egyptian attack in 642 AH (1244), but after the battle of Gaza (October 1244) it fell in 645 AH (1247) to Fakhr al-Din Yusuf ibn al-Shaykh. In 668 AH (1270) Baybars levelled its last vestiges, filling the harbour with trees and rubble; the town remained desolate until modern times. ³

In antiquity and the Middle Ages the environs were famous for their wine, sycamores and henna; the shallot (Allium ascalonicum) took its name from the town, and medieval writers, citing a saying attributed to the Prophet ﷺ, called Ascalon the bride of Syria. Under the Fatimids al-Afdal ibn Badr al-Jamali built, in 491 AH (1098), a mashhad to receive the head of the Prophet's grandson Husayn, a highly venerated relic which was saved from the Franks in 548 AH (1153-1154) and carried to Cairo. Later Muslim pilgrims visited, in particular, Abraham's Well. ³