Bride Of The Sea
In Arabic Jaffa has many names: Mother Of Strangers, because it adopted all strangers. Its other name is Bride Of The Sea. Port towns are open to the rest of the world by the sea. Mediterranean port cities were connected with each other, in some ways more so than with their inland folks with whom they share a language and history. Being an ancient Mediterranean port city, Jaffa was a center of independent thinking that did not bow down to occupiers. Jaffa’s archeology goes back to the late Stone Age. Later, when it was the primary port of Canaan, the Jaffans’ resistance to the Pharaoh and Egyptian occupiers was fierce.
Jaffa was inhabited from the Bronze Age until 1948. Jaffa lies near two rivers and multiple water sources, which made it lush and allowed the huge orange orchards. It was built on a 40m high hill where the wind from the west blows over the sea as a cooler. Jaffa was also one of the endpoints of the Silk Road from the far east. Here, Europeans purchased spices, silks, glass, soap, mirrors, recipes, ideas, and religions.
A rare photograph treasure from Palestine: Frank Scholten was a wealthy Amsterdammer who traveled to Palestine between 1921-1923. He mainly stayed in Jaffa and his collection holds over 13.000 photographic prints. This archive is a high resolution and open source. Although it stops at 1923 before the peak of Jaffa, it is a treasure worth exploring.
The sea produces fishermen and sailors, a rough demanding life under a strong sun. But it offers freedom since the fish and the sea are not owned by anyone. Having a natural port adds a new layer: trade. Jaffa has been known for olive oil and wine exports since ancient times. With its closest neighbors in the Shaam region (Shaam consists of historic Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria) Jaffa had strong shared businesses, intermarriage, music, cuisine, culture, and history. In addition, many Jaffans had Greek, Syrian, Afghani, Sicilian, French, Lebanese, Egyptian, and other international surnames, reflecting their interconnectivity. When your country happens to be also the scene of miracles related to major religions, you get waves of pilgrims. Europe started arriving at Jaffa’s port, sleeping in its rooms, renting its donkeys, eating in its taverns, and following its guides and translators. Most European pilgrims arrived by crossing the Mediterranean. Venice had special ties with Jaffa, as it had a lucrative business of ‘all-inclusive’ pilgrimage trips. Jaffa has seen Europe’s poor, sick, sinful, monks, nuns, priests, knights, merchants, lords, princes, princesses, kings, and queens. Naturally, it was called ‘Port of Jerusalem’ and ‘Mother of Strangers’.
Palestine had a long stream of conquerors including the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, the British, and the Zionists; they all occupied Jaffa. But Jaffa prospered as the capital of Palestine during the Islamic period, which was the Golden Age in Palestine.
The change that suddenly hit Jaffa around 1860, was something very unexpected, it was the development of a type of orange with thick skin. No one understood how that thick-skinned Jaffan would change the city’s history. But that orange needed Jaffa’s harbor to make money, and that harbor was soon overfilled with tens of thousands of workers from all over the region. It was common to see 45 ships in the harbor with hundreds of boats waiting to be loaded. Until this time Jaffa was an entrance to the land, but now it has become a destination.
In 1935, Jaffa’s port saw 402,525 tons of goods imported and 171,819 tons exported.
1944-45, there were 1,056 tons of fish, worth 292,570 British Pounds (at that time).
Bride Of The Sea became a cosmopolitan modern city and the cohesion between its Christian and Muslim population was seamless. In the 1930s-40s, Jaffa was the most advanced city in Palestine in the development of its commercial, banking, fishing, and agriculture industries. The port city had a cigarette, cement, colored floor tile and roof tile production, iron casting, cotton processing plants, traditional handmade carpets, leather products, wood box industry for Jaffa orange, textile, presses, publications, and soft drink factories. In the 1940s, the district of Jaffa included 23 villages within its municipality, two German colonies (Sarounah and Weil Helma), and five Jewish colonies: Tel Aviv, Mlabess which was turned into Petach Tiqva, Cholon, Tel Luftinski, and Bat Yam. When it came to intellect, Jaffa was the center for culture, literature, media, and publishing in Palestine. The majority of all publications and newspapers in Palestine were printed and published in Jaffa. This went with cafés and restaurants to read these papers and discuss new ideas.
In the 19th century, Jaffa became an important center demanding Palestinian autonomy and was a core of resistance. In 1834, The Peasant Revolt was suppressed by the Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali Basha. The administrator of Jaffa and his son were beheaded. Jaffa’s urban notables fled to Cyprus where some of them were executed with other headmen from the Jaffa area. This revolt reduced the male population of Palestine by about one-fifth. In 1916, Jaffa was again at the core of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. It didn’t take long for the occupiers to change once more, and the Jaffans revolted against the British occupation in 1936. The British blew up 240 buildings, a significant chunk of the old city, to punish the Jaffans. This collective and architectural urban punishment left a strong mark on the city. Yet, about eleven years later, Jaffa was still a city with 17 cinemas, 14 public hammams (bath houses), 13 mosques, 6 churches, 5 hospitals, 18 schools, 15 headquarters of newspapers and magazines and their publishers and selling points, and printing houses, 7 big markets, theaters, banks, railway station, ships, boats, busses, trains, cars, storages and miles and miles of orange orchards. No one would give all this history, hard work, and abundance away. Jaffans resisted being replaced by Zionists. But on May 13, 1948, Jaffa fell and 97% of its inhabitants were ethnically cleansed. Jaffa and Jaffans have been separated. In addition to being physically separated, they have been separated in history and narratives. Jaffa and Jaffans have been also erased from the visual and archival worlds. This project is one of the bridges between the two.
