Yaffa Resurfacing: A 6000 Year Old City Remapped

Jaffa was the most advanced, vibrant, prosperous and wealthy city in Palestine. It produced Jaffa oranges, colored floor tiles, handmade carpets, textiles and tobacco. The port city was a commercial hub boasting an array of successful businesses, with banking, fishing, and agriculture industries. When it came to intellect, Jaffa was the center for culture, literature, media and publishing in Palestine. This went with cafes to read these papers and discuss new ideas, restaurants for debate and political new thinking. Jaffa had modern cinemas and theaters which hosted international top-notch artists, singers and performers. In the thirties, a common view was having  45 ships in its harbor waiting to be uploaded, in addition to hundreds of boats. In Arabic, Jaffa is called ‘Bride Of The Sea’. After Jaffans developed a global product, the Shammouti or the Jaffa Orange the city saw a financial boom which contributed to modern urbanism. One of the first designs for a Palestinian flag had a Jaffa orange in its middle. Jaffa is also called ‘Lady of Oranges’, more about Jaffa oranges a little later.

Jaffa’s archaeology goes back to the late stone age and it was continuously inhabited from the Bronze Age until 1948. It was built on a 40m high hill where the wind from the west is its air conditioner. The city is lush, lying near two rivers and multiple water sources. With a natural harbor, Jaffa was the primary port of Canaan and the point of connection between Asia, Africa and Europe. With its closest neighbors, Beirut, Damascus and Cairo, Jaffa had strong shared businesses, intermarriage, music, cuisine, culture and history.  Jaffa was also one of the endpoints of the Silk Road from the far east, and the place for Europeans to get acquainted with, and purchase spices, silks, glass, soap, recipes, ideas and religion.

Jaffa had long been connected to Europe, at least since the Philistines arrived at its shores in the 12th century BC. However, Europe had been arriving intensely at its port, sleeping in its rooms, renting its donkeys, eating in its taverns, paying its guides and translators since about 400 AD when Christian pilgrims started arriving in “The Holy Land”. Venice had special ties with Jaffa, as it had a lucrative business of  ‘all-inclusive’ pilgrimage trips arriving in the city’s port. Jaffa has seen Europe’s poor, sick, sinful, monks, nuns, priests, knights, merchants, lords, princes, princesses, kings and queens from all over the continent. Naturally, it was called ‘Port of Jerusalem’ and ‘Mother of Strangers’. 

As an ancient Mediterranean port city, Jaffa did not bow down to occupiers. Jaffa’s culture of resistance dates back to the time of the Pharaohs when it was a Canaanite town, this archeological evidence is clear. Palestine had a long stream of occupiers including the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans and the British. And Jaffa prospered as a capital in Palestine during the Islamic period when Palestine lived a Golden Age between the 8th and 10th centuries. But in June 1100, the Doge himself with 200 ships and about 9000 Venetians arrived in Jaffa to take over. The Crusaders sought religious purity and achieved that in a very bloody manner. Although most Palestinians at that time were Christians, to the Crusaders, indigenous Palestinians, regardless of religion, were unwanted. Venice got the right to build a church and a marketplace in every city that the Crusaders conquered. Jaffa was an important center for trade. Fortunately, the Crusaders were defeated by Saladin in the Battle of Jaffa in 1192 (after they were defeated earlier in north Palestine). In 1799 after sieging Jaffa for 3 days, Napoleon massacred about 4000 people – the inhabitants were all Arabs, children and adults. With the city sparking interest for settlers from around the world, Jaffans have learned to look out for anything arriving from the West.

In the 19th century, Jaffa became an important center of Arab nationalism and resistance. In 1834, The Peasant Revolt was suppressed by the Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali Basha. 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 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 14 public hammams (bath houses), 13 mosques, 6 churches, about 30 cafes, five hospitals, 18 schools, 15 headquarters of newspapers and magazines and their publishers and selling points and printing houses, 7 big markets, 18 cinemas, theaters, banks, railway station, ships, boats, busses, trains, cars, storages, orange orchards – their owners and workers would resist, as always, but on May 13 in 1948 Jaffa falls and its inhabitants disappear.