Ashkelon, Portland, Oregon's Sister City

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

                               Ashkelon National Park

Ashkelon or Ashqelon, is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, 50 kilometres (30 mi) south of Tel Aviv, and 13 kilometres (8 mi) north of the border with the Gaza Strip.

The modern city is named after the ancient seaport of Ascalon, which was destroyed in 1270 and whose remains are on the southwestern edge of the modern metropolis.  

The site was an important city during Roman, Byzantine and pre-Crusades Muslim rule, and particularly during the period of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, due to its location near the coast and between the Crusader states and Egypt. 

Baldwin of Jerusalem:  Baldwin IV, known as the Leper King, was the king of Jerusalem from 1174 until his death in 1185. Baldwin ascended to the throne when he was thirteen despite having leprosy. He launched several attempts to curb the Egyptian ruler Saladin's increasing power.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was established in 1099 by Crusaders following the First Crusade. It was initially captured from the Fatimid Caliphate. While Godfrey of Bouillon was a key figure in its founding, his brother Baldwin I was the first to be crowned king in 1100. The kingdom existed until 1291, when its last major city, Acre, fell to the Mamluks. 

The Battle of Ascalon was the last action of the First Crusade. In 1270, the Mamluk sultan Baybars ordered the fortifications and harbour at the site to be destroyed. As a result, the city was abandoned by its inhabitants and fell into disuse.

 The Muslim conquests of the Levant began after Mohammad's death in 632 CE. The first Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, previously under Byzantine rule, took place between 636 and 637 CE. The Rashidun army, led by Abu Ubayda, initiated a siege in November 636. Patriarch Sophronius eventually agreed to surrender the city after six months, but only to the caliph. Caliph Umar traveled to Jerusalem to formally accept the surrender in either 637 or 638. 

So after 70 CE when Jerusalem was taken by the Romans, other empires took the Levant.  567 years lapsed before the Arabs entered in 637.  The name, Ashkelon, is Semitic, but Majdal (Arabic) and Migdal (Hebrew) mean 'tower'.

In the 1922 census of Palestine, Majdal had a population of 5,064; 33 Christians and 5,031 Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 6,226 (6,166 Muslims and 41 Christians) with 172 in the suburbs (167 Muslims, 4 Christians, and one Jew). Jews were often attacked. 

Majdal was occupied by the Egyptian army in the early stages of the 1948 war, along with the rest of the Gaza region that had been allocated to the Arab State in the United Nations plan. Over the next few months, the town was subjected to Israeli air-raids and shelling. All but about 1,000 of the town's residents were forced to leave by the time it was captured by Israeli forces as a sequel to Operation Yoav on 4 November 1948. Israel had been declared, reborn in May 1948.  

Some of the new Israeli government wanted the Arabs to leave, butsome also wanted them to remain.  With time passing, perhapsthe best move was to allow them to stay and build up an Arabtrust in the Jews.  They didn't realize what could happen, andthey moved the Arabs.  

Majdal was granted to Israel in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Re-population of the recently vacated Arab dwellings by Jews had been official policy since at least December 1948, but the process began slowly. The Israeli national plan of June 1949 designated al-Majdal as the site for a regional urban center of 20,000 people. From July 1949, new immigrants and demobilized soldiers moved to the new town, increasing the Jewish population to 2,500 within six months. These early immigrants were mostly from Yemen, North Africa, and Europe.

In 1949, the town was renamed Migdal Gaza, and then Migdal Gad. Soon afterwards it became Migdal Ashkelon. The city began to expand as the population grew. 

In 1951, the neighborhood of Afridar was established for Jewish immigrants from South Africa, and in 1953 it was incorporated into the city. The current name Ashkelon was adopted and the town was granted local council status in 1953.

                     Skyline of Ashkelon

In 1955, Ashkelon had more than 16,000 residents. By 1961, Ashkelon ranked 18th among Israeli urban centers with a population of 24,000. This grew to 43,000 in 1972 and 53,000 in 1983. In 2005, the population was more than 106,000.The most recent population estimate for Ashkelon, Israel, is 153,138 as of 2022. This figure ranks Ashkelon as the third-largest city in the Southern District of Israel. 

Resource:

https://www.worldhistory.org/image/11675/muslim-invasion-of-the-levant-634-ce/