GAZA, the most southerly city of the Philistine Pentapolis, separated from the sea by 3 m. of sand dunes. It was a centre where ancient trade routes met, and through it passed the frankin cense from Arabia on its way to the Mediterranean world. It is now the first town on the railway from Egypt to Palestine and since 1922 capital of the southern province of Palestine. The town is well supplied with water. Before the World War it was a pros perous town with good bazaars, a considerable manufacture of black pottery, and a growing export trade in barley. "Gaza was more than half destroyed by the war and now (1927) the popula tion which had been somewhat replenished since, is dwindling away northward in search of sustenance." The small harbour of Gaza (El-Mineh) is used mainly for the export of grain. The anchorage is seven fathoms. The only industry is provided by about loo primitive looms on which is made coarse cloth for Bedouin cloaks. The population (1931) was 17,069.
Egyptian monarch, Thutmose III. (c. i5oo B.c.) found in Gaza a convenient base for operations against Syria. Gaza's king was a vassal of the Pharaohs in the Tell Amarna pe riod about a century later. Joshua's victories brought him to its neighbourhood but not within its walls. It was one of the strong holds from which the Philistines harassed Israel; and Gaza, fa mous for the worship of Dagon and Derketo, was the scene of Samson's glorious death. Solomon and Hezekiah gained a footing here without being able to retain it. Her traffic in slaves evoked the curse of Amos. In 735 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser made it tributary to Assyria. Gaza coquetted with Egypt and received condign punish ment from Sargon. In the three centuries following it was bandied between Babylon and Egypt. Gaza resisted Alexander the Great only to be broken and made a "desert." From the third to the first centuries B.C. Egyptian, Syrian and Jewish armies fought for its possession. The Romans made Gaza into an important place (named Minoa) and Augustus presented it to Herod. New Gaza was built on another site in the first century A.D. Although it showed itself ill-disposed to accept Christianity, a Christian com munity settled here early, and the Philemon, to whom St. Paul addressed a letter, was said to have been its first head.
In A.D. 6J4 it surrendered to Omar's troops, and since Hashim the great-grandfather of the Prophet was buried here became a sacred Muslim city. In the 12th century the crusaders found it al most desolate. Baldwin III. erected a fortress (1149) but after Hattin Gaza surrendered. The Khwarismians inflicted a painful defeat here on the Christian and Saracen armies whom dire neces sity drove into a strange and fleeting alliance. In the 16th century the Turks crushed the Mamelukes here and Egypt lay open to Salim I. Gaza fell to Bonaparte (1799). Three battles were fought at Gaza during the World War—the first, March 26-27; and the second, April 19, 1917, in which Gen. Sir Archibald Murray failed to take and hold the city ; and the third in November of the same year when Gen. Allenby secured its evacuation by breaking through the Turkish line at Beersheba. The town was much ruined and the mosques damaged.