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Haifa....
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Haifa (Hebrew hefa, heyfa;
Arabic حَيْف) is the third-largest city in
Israel, with a population close to 300,000. Areas and towns around it are
deemed to be in the Haifa District, of which it is also a part. It is a
seaport, located below and on Mount Carmel,
and lies on the Mediterranean coast.
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The name Haifa is derived from the Levantine
Arabic word الحيفة meaning 'nearby'. Under
Roman rule it was known by Efa, and the
Crusaders called Haifa Cayphas and also
Sycaminon which means Wild Strawberry. During the
Islamic period, Acre dominated the coastal area,
and Haifa was a minor port. Haifa is first mentioned in written records
around 3rd century AD, as a small town near Shikmona, the main town in the
area at that time. It had been under
Byzantine rule until the 7th century, when it was conquered first by the
Persians, then by the Arabs. In 1100, it was conquered again by the
crusaders, after a fierce battle with its
Jewish inhabitants. It then became part of the Principality of
Galilee. The town was taken again by the
Muslim Mameluks in 1265, and was ruined and mostly
abandoned until the 17th century. |
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1761 Daher El-Omar, Bedouin ruler of
Acre and Galilee, destroyed and rebuilt the town in a new location,
surrounding it with a thin wall. This event is marked by many as the
beginning of the town's modern era. After El-Omar's death in 1775, the town
remained mostly under Ottoman rule until
1918, except for two brief periods: in 1799,
Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Haifa as part of his brief and failed
campaign to conquer Palestine and
Syria, but withdrew the same year; and between 1831
and 1840, the town had been under the rule of the
Egyptian viceroy Mohamed Ali, after having been conquered by his son
Ibrahim Pasha. |
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At the beginning of the 20th century,
Haifa had emerged
as an industrial port city and growing population center. At that time
Haifa district was home to approximately 20,000 inhabitants, comprised of
82% Muslim Arab, 14% Christian Arabs. Haifa is located in the northernmost reach of the Coastal
Plain designated as Jewish territory in the 1947 UN Partition Plan
dividing mandatory Palestine. As the major industrial and oil-refinary
port in the British mandate of
Palestine, Jewish forces deemed control of
Haifa during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. |
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