Jaffa Totally Explained

Everything about Jaffa totally explained

Jaffa (Hebrew: יָפוֹ, Yafo Arabic: يَافَا ; also Japho, Joppa, and, in the Amarna Letters, Yapu) is an ancient port city located south of Tel Aviv, Israel on the Mediterranean Sea. Today it's a borough of the city.
It is mentioned four times in the Hebrew Bible, as one of the cities given to the Tribe of Dan (Book of Joshua 19:46), as port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for Solomon's Temple (2 Chronicles 2:16), as the place whence the prophet Jonah embarked for Tarshish (Book of Jonah 1:3) and as port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for the Second Temple of Jerusalem (Book of Ezra 3:7). It was also an important city in the Arab Middle East. During the Crusades, it was the County of Jaffa, a stronghold of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Etymology

Jaffa (or Yafo) is one of the most ancient port cities in the world. Some claim that Jaffa was named after Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah, who built it forty years after the Great Flood. A Hebrew etymology indicates that the city is called Jaffa because of its beauty (yofi in Hebrew). The Hellenist tradition links the name to "Iopeia", which is Cassiopeia, the mother of Andromeda. Following Pliny the Elder the name is connected with Jopa, who was the daughter of Aeolus, the god of wind. However, the Hellenist and Roman accountings for the name date from hundreds of years after the original (most probably west-semitic) naming.

History

Archaeological evidence

Archaeological evidence shows that it was the site of permanent settlement some 7,500 years before the Christian era.

Ancient period

The ancient site of Jaffa is Tel Yafo, or "Jaffa Hill," which rises to a height of 40 meters (130 feet) and offers a commanding view of the coastline. Hence its strategic importance in military history. At the foot of the hill were springs of fresh water. The accumulation of debris and landfill over the centuries made the hill even higher.
   Jaffa's natural harbor has been in use since the Bronze Age. It is mentioned in an Ancient Egyptian letter from 1470 BCE, glorifying its conquest by Pharaoh Thutmose III, who hid armed warriors in large baskets and gave the baskets as a present to the Canaanite city's governor. The city is also mentioned in the Amarna letters under its Egyptian name Ya-Pho, ( Ya-Pu, EA 296, l.33). In 1991, a replica of the Egyptian gate lintels, bearing the titles of Pharaoh Ramesses II, was re-erected on its original site. The city was under Egyptian rule until around 800 BCE.
   Jaffa is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the territorial border of the Tribe of Dan, hence the term "Gush Dan", used today for the coastal plain. Many descendants of Dan lived along the coast and earned their living from shipmaking and sailing. In the "Song of Deborah" the prophetess asks: "דן למה יגור אוניות": "Why doth Dan dwell in ships?" King David and his son King Solomon conquered Jaffa and used its port to bring the cedars used in the construction of the First Temple from Tyre. The city remained in Jewish hands even after the split of the Kingdom of Israel. In 701 BCE, in the days of King Hezekiah (חזקיהו), Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded the region from Jaffa.
   Jaffa was a Seleucid port until it was taken over by the Maccabean rebels (1 Maccabees x.76, xiv.5). In the Roman suppression of the Jewish Revolt, Jaffa was captured and burned by Cestius Gallus. The Roman Jewish historian Josephus writes that eight thousand inhabitants were massacred. Pirates operating from the rebuilt port incurred the wrath of Vespasian, who razed the city and erected a citadel in its place, installing a Roman garrison there.
   The New Testament account of St. Peter's resurrection of the widow Tabitha, (Dorcas) (Acts, ix, 36-42) takes place in Jaffa. St. Peter later had a vision in which God told him not to distinguish between Jews and Gentiles or between kosher and non-kosher (Acts, x, 10-16). This vision heralded a major ideological split between Judaism and Christianity. A painting in St. Peter's, a Roman Catholic church in Jaffa, depicts this event.

Medieval period

Unimportant during the first centuries of Christianity, Jaffa didn't have a bishop until the fifth century CE. In 636 Jaffa was conquered by Arabs. Under Islamic rule, it served as a port of Ramla, then the provincial capital.
Jaffa was captured during the Crusades, and became the County of Jaffa and Ascalon, one of the vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. One of its counts, John of Ibelin, wrote the principal book of the Assizes of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. During the period of the Crusades, the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela (1170) sojourned at Jaffa, and found there just one Jew, a dyer by trade. Saladin took it in 1187. The city surrendered to King Richard the Lionheart on September 10, 1191, three days after the Battle of Arsuf. Despite efforts by Saladin to reoccupy the city in July 1192 (see Battle of Jaffa) the city remained in the hands of the Crusaders. On 2 September 1192, the Treaty of Jaffa was formally sworn, guaranteeing a three-year truce between the two armies. In 1268, Jaffa was conquered by Egyptian Mamluks, led by Baibars. In the 14th century, they completely destroyed the city for fear of new crusades. According to the traveler Cotwyk, Jaffa was a heap of ruins at the end of the 16th century.

Ottoman period

On March 7, 1799 Napoleon I of France captured Jaffa, ransacked it, and killed scores of local inhabitants. Many more died in an epidemic that broke out soon afterwards.
   In the 19th century, Jaffa was best known for its soap industry. Modern industry emerged in the late 1880s. The most successful enterprises were metalworking factories, among them the machine shop run by the Templers that employed over 100 workers in 1910.
   Other factories produced orange-crates, barrels, corks, noodles, ice, seltzer, candy, soap, olive oil, leather, alkali, wine, cosmetics and ink. From the 1880s, real estate became an important branch of the economy. Most of the newspapers and books printed in Palestine were published in Jaffa.
   Jaffa's citrus industry began to flourish in the last quarter of the 19th century. Shamuti oranges were the major crop, but citrons, lemons and mandarin oranges were also grown.
   Until the mid-19th century, Jaffa's orange groves were mainly owned by Arabs, who employed traditional methods of farming. The pioneers of modern agriculture in Jaffa were American settlers, who brought in farm machinery in the 1850s and 1860s, followed by the Templers and the Jews.
   By the beginning of the twentieth century, the population of Jaffa had swelled considerably and new suburbs were built on the sand dunes along the coast. By 1909, the new Jewish suburbs north of Jaffa were reorganized as the city of Tel Aviv.
   In 1904, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1864–1935) moved to Palestine and took up the position of chief rabbi of Jaffa:
� In 1904, he came to the Land of Israel to assume the rabbinical post in Jaffa, which also included responsibility for the new secular Zionist agricultural settlements nearby. His influence on people in different walks of life was already noticeable, as he attempted to introduce Torah and Halakha into the life of the city and the settlements.

In 1917, the Ottomans banished all of Jaffa's residents as they feared the British army would occupy the city. The British did indeed occupy the city (see Sinai and Palestine Campaign), but let its residents return after a year.

Under the British mandate

   During 1917-1920, there were thousands of Jewish residents in Jaffa. A wave of Arab pogrom attacks during 1920 and 1921 caused many Jewish residents to flee and resettle in Tel Aviv. The 1921 riots (known in Hebrew as Meoraot Tarpa) began with a May Day parade that turned violent. The Arab rioters attacked Jewish residents and buildings. The Hebrew author Yosef Haim Brenner was killed by Arabs in Jaffa.
   In 1921, Rabbi Kook was appointed the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine.
   At the end of 1922 Jaffa had 32,000 residents and Tel Aviv had 15,000. However, in 1927, Tel Aviv had 38,000 residents. The Jews of Jaffa lived on the outskirts of Jaffa, close to Tel Aviv. The old city of Jaffa was almost entirely Arab. During the 1930s, both cities had a combined population of 80,000 residents.
   The 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, also known as the Great Arab uprising, inflicted great economic and infrastructural damage on Jaffa. Urban warfare between the British forces and Arab resistance destroyed many of the city's narrow alleys. The British demolished many houses belonging to members of the Arab resistance. Jewish and British citizens moved their businesses out of Jaffa. As a reaction to the Arab seaport workers' strike, the Jews built a modern seaport in Tel Aviv, which resulted in decreased income for Jaffa's Arab seaport.
   In 1945, Jaffa had a population of 101,580, of whom 53,930 were Muslims, 30,820 were Jews and 16,800 were Christians. The Christians were mostly Greek Orthodox and about one sixth of them were Greek-Catholic. One of the most prominent members of the Arab Christian community was the Arab Orthodox publisher of Filastin, Daoud Isa.

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War

Before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the UN's Special Commission on Palestine in 1947 recommended that Jaffa become part of the planned Jewish state. Due to the large Arab majority, however, it was instead designated as an Arab enclave in the Jewish state in the 1947 UN Partition Plan.
   The Arabs rejected the plan and on November 30, 1947, the day following the adoption of the UN resolution, seven Jews were killed by Arabs in Palestine in three separate incidents. At 8:00 in the morning, in what came to be seen as the opening shots of the 1948 War, three Arabs attacked a bus from Netanya to Jerusalem, killing five Jewish passengers. Half an hour later a second bus attack left a Jewish passenger dead. Later in the day, a twenty-five-year-old Jewish man was shot dead in Jaffa, where there were alleged attacks on Arabs by Jews. In Jerusalem, the Arab Higher Committee called a three-day general strike from Tuesday, December 2 to be followed by mass demonstrations after Friday prayers.
   From the beginning of the strike onwards, Arab and Jewish clashes escalated and by December 11 the Jerusalem correspondent of The Times estimated that at least 130 people had died, "about 70 of them being Jews, 50 Arabs, and among the rest three British soldiers and one British policeman".
   On April 25, 1948, Irgun launched an offensive on Jaffa, then the largest Arab city in Palestine, during which many of its Arab residents fled through the harbor. Haganah units took the city on May 14. Out of 70,000-80,000 Arabs, 3,600-4,100 remained, about 5%. To commemorate the Jewish soldiers who died in the battle for Jaffa, the "Conquest Garden" was planted in the city.

Modern Jaffa

In 1954, Jaffa became part of the municipality of Tel Aviv. Together, they're known as Tel Aviv-Yafo. Modern Jaffa has a heterogeneous population of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Parts of the Old City have been renovated, turning Jaffa into a tourist attraction featuring old restored buildings, art galleries, theaters, souvenir shops, restaurants, sidewalk cafes and promenades.

Jaffa beyond the Old City

Beyond the Old City and tourist sites, much of Jaffa, including the districts of Al Ajami, Yafo Gimel, Yafo Daled, Neve Ofer and Lev Yafo, is a slum neighborhood. Due to gentrification now under way in Al Ajami and Lev Yafo, real-estate prices have risen sharply.
   The public education system for Arabic-speaking children has a 53% dropout rate, and a significant proportion of those who finish high school do so without a matriculation certificate (bagrut). The Hebrew-speaking public educational system isn't much better. Parents who can afford it send their children to schools in Tel Aviv or to private Christian schools. Things are beginning to change and some better new schools have been established, such as The Democratic School, a private, Jewish school, and the Jaffa School, an Arabic-speaking school run by Jaffa's Al-rabita.
   Jaffa suffers from drug problems, high crime rates and violence. Some Arab residents have alleged that the Israeli authorities are attempting to Judaize Jaffa by evicting Arab residents from houses owned by the Amidar government-operated public housing company. Amidar representatives claim that the residents are illegal squatters.
   Jaffa's Jewish population includes "old-timers", (children of the Jews who settled there in the 1950s and 1960s) and wealthy newcomers who have purchased old homes and renovated them. The Yafo Gimel, Daled and Neve Ofer neighborhoods are home to more recent immigrants, mainly from the former Soviet Union.
   Some of Jaffa's Palestinian and Jewish residents accuse the Tel Aviv municipality of trying to erase the Arab past. In the early 1950s, many Arabic street names were replaced by Hebrew names. From the 1990s onwards, however, efforts have been made to renew Arab and Islamic monuments (such as the Mosque of the Sea and Hassan Bek Mosque) and document the history of Jaffa's Arab population.

Jaffa landmarks

The Clock Square, built in 1906 in honor of Sultan Abdul Hamid II's 25th anniversary, became the center of Jaffa, and it's centered between Jaffa's markets.
The Abulafia bakery in Yefet Street (the main street of Jaffa) is a famous bakery and a symbol of Jewish-Arab coexistence.
Mahmoudia Mosque which was built in 1812 by Abu Nabut (the city governor during the 19th century) and includes a public water fountain (Sabil) for pilgrims.
St. Peter's Church, a Franciscan church, built in the 19th century on the remains of Crusaders' fortress, which serves also as a hostel. It is said that Napoleon stayed in that church while it was a hostel.
St. Michael and St. Tabitha Church, a Greek Orthodox Monastery, restored in 1994. St. Michael church serves Romanian believers, and St. Tabitha chapel serves Russian believers, in Russian and Hebrew.
Russian St. Peter Monastery, built in 1895, at the site where St. Peter resurrected St. Tabitha. Inside the monastery is the site of the house where St. Tabitha lived with her family.
The Andromeda rock, according to legends this was the rock to which beautiful Andromeda was chained.
The Zodiac alleys, a network of restored alleys filled with art galleries, leading to the Jaffa seaport.
Jaffa's Old Seaport.
Jaffa's Hill, a center for archaeological excavations of the ancient cities. The most ancient are the Ancient Egyptian gates, about 3,500 years old, which have been restored.
The Libyan Synagogue called Beit Zunana was purchased by the Jewish landlord Zunana in the 18th century. During the 19th century, it stopped being used as a synagogue and became a hostel and later a soap factory. In 1948, it was re-established as a synagogue for Libyan Jewish immigrants, and in 1995 it became a museum.
Nouzha Mosque, on Jerusalem Boulevard, today's Jaffa's main mosque.
Al Ajami Mosque, a fairly new and popular mosque in south Ajami, on HaBaal Shemtov Street.
Abou ElNabut and the sculpture garden. An ancient sabil (drinking place) constructed by Abu El Nabut for visitors on their way to Jaffa.
Al Ajami or "Aliyah" beach, Jaffa's lovely beach, located in south Al Ajami.
The Arab Jewish Community Center, on Toulouse Street.
The Women's Court, a public space for Jaffa's women and girls (women only), at 220 Yefet Street.
The Seraya Theatre, the Arabic Hebrew theatre in Jaffa's old city, located in the "old" Seraya Building, once part of the Dajani soap factory.

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