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Monday, May 20, 2024
“Lineage of the Forefathers and the Prophets and the Righteous and the Tana’aim and the Amora’im, May They Rest in Peace, in the Land of Israel and Outside the Land, May God Establish Their Merit for Us, Amen.”
Why Does Gaza Appear in This Antique Hebrew Scroll?
Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, the tombs of the righteous in the Galilee, and... Gaza? Jewish scrolls from the 16th and 17th centuries offer an interesting selection of holy places in the Land of Israel. How did the city of Gaza end up on this list?
Illustration of the city of Gaza in the 17th century Yichus Ha’avot Scroll, which is kept at the National Library of Israel
A complete road atlas for the holy sites in the Land of Israel, an advertisement brochure, or a travel book? From the Middle Ages to the 16th and 17th centuries, written and illustrated compositions were circulated in the Land of Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora, claiming to present those abroad with descriptions of the Jewish holy places found throughout the land. Three of these, which were copied as illustrated scrolls, are preserved at the National Library of Israel.
These items were copies of what’s known as the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll, or in its full name as it appears in the first part of the manuscript: “Lineage of the Forefathers and the Prophets and the Righteous and the Tana’aim and the Amora’im, May They Rest in Peace, in the Land of Israel and Outside the Land, May God Establish Their Merit for Us, Amen.” As its name indicates, this scroll is mainly focused on the burial places of our ancient ancestors – from those buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs (Ma’arat Ha’Machpela) to the later tombs of the Amorites which were spread throughout the Land of Israel, and sometimes even outside of it (such as the tombs of Mordechai and Esther, Daniel, and others).
But then, in one of the copies, above the illustration depicting a city surrounded by a wall, the following Hebrew inscription appears:
“Kfar Gaza, the city of Samson, a beautiful country”
This particular copy of Yichus Ha’Avot was copied and illustrated in Casale Monferrato in northern Italy, in 1598. As mentioned above, the illustration depicts a walled city with many towers covered with domes, some alluding to their status as mosques, some reminiscent of churches. The whole city is surrounded by a wall, and a (very) large domed gate with no doors symbolizes the entrance to the city.
Another illustration very similar in its characteristics – in which Gaza is referred to as “the land of Samson, a beautiful country” – appears in another Yichus Ha’Avot scroll from the National Library collection, this one dating to the 17th century. Here, the illustrator imagined Gaza as an even greener and more colorful city, with the mosques appearing more prominently. The city gate is still broad and impressive, lacking doors and wide open.
Shlomo Zucker, a former member of the National Library’s manuscripts department, researched the composition and described it as follows:
“The drawings are spectacular; green and red for the trees and flowers, gold for the domes and some of the columns of the buildings […] However, the buildings – with vaults, gables, columns, and crowns in the classical style – are completely imaginary, and have nothing to do with the actual shape of the sites described in the text.” (S. Zucker, Yichus Ha’Avot or Elleh Massai, Ariel, 123-122, 5757, p. 206 [Hebrew])
Is this really how Gaza looked in those days?
Written testimony, archaeological findings, and descriptions in various travel books present a different picture of the city.
But the very fact that the descriptions and illustrations in the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll are imagined is not surprising or unusual. Scientific or geographical accuracy was not necessarily at the forefront of the minds of the writers and artists of the time. Maps and illustrations based on imagination or various graphic ideas disconnected from reality were quite common.
One of the interesting examples is the “Clover Leaf Map” by Heinrich Bünting, one original copy of which is preserved in the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection at the National Library.
The map depicts the old world in the form of a clover leaf on which three continents are represented: Asia, Europe, and Africa. Jerusalem, by the way, is located in the center of the world according to this map. On the map itself, Bunting explains the reason for his artistic choice: “The whole world is in the shape of a clover leaf, which is a symbol of the city of Hanover, my beloved birthplace.”
Like the famous Clover Leaf Map, the Yichus Ha’Avot scrolls also weren’t trying to be realistic or to reflect actual geography and topography. The scrolls and the illustrations inside them tried to express a visual-imagined space, emotional at its core, which made it possible to browse through them and feel like someone who was walking in the footsteps of our ancestors, as someone who is faithful and connected to the “lineage of the fathers”.
The much more surprising fact is that Gaza was added to the map of holy places at an unknown time.
In earlier and more ancient versions of the Yichus Ha’Avot scrolls, Gaza does not appear at all. Why suddenly in the 16th and 17th centuries was Gaza included on the map of holy places? Why is it described as a “beautiful country”, and why is the city where Samson the biblical hero met his death suddenly named after him – “Samson’s city”?
It should be noted that Gaza was not one of the four traditional Jewish holy cities in the Land of Israel. Moreover, various halachic discussions raised the question of whether Gaza is part of the Land of Israel, and whether the commandments that are dependent on the land must be observed there. According to most opinions, the answer is no.
So what suddenly changed at the end of the 16th century?
The fluctuations in Gaza’s status as an important or backwater city over the years stemmed from its location on the coastal road leading between the Land of Israel and Egypt. When the Crusaders conquered the Holy Land, there were no trade relations between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and Muslim Egypt, and Gaza was a ruined and largely abandoned city. But then the Mamluks conquered the region, and with the increased stability, the status of Gaza, which had been rejuvenated into an important roadside trading city, rose as well.
Towards the end of the Mamluk period, in 1481, Rabbi Meshullam of Volterra, a Jewish banker from Florence, visited Gaza, and his descriptions corroborate the literal description in the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll which states that Gaza is a “beautiful country”.
According to Rabbi Meshullam, Gaza was “a good and fat land”, with a small Jewish community that produced wine. But unlike the illustrations in the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll, Rabbi Meshullam described Gaza as so self-confident that it had no wall at all: “Aza is called Gaza by the Ishmaelites, and it is a good and fat land, and its fruits are very fine. And there is good bread and wine, although the wines are only made by the Jews. Its perimeter is 4 miles long and it has no walls […] it is surrounded by blue on the shore of the sea. And has about 60 Jewish homeowners […]”
Rabbi Meshullam also notes the fragment of Jewish history that is connected to the city of Gaza: It is the city where the biblical hero and judge Samson lived for part of his life, together with his wife Delilah, who ultimately brought on his demise out of greed. It is also the city where Samson was imprisoned and killed, and which he destroyed:
“And at the top of the Judaica [mound] was the house of Delilah, and Samson the hero lived in it. And near there […] I saw the great court which he overthrew with his strength and power” (Abraham Yaari, Masa Meshullam MeVolterra, Mossad Bialik, 599, p. 64 [Hebrew]).
About thirty years after Rabbi Meshullam’s visit, in 1517, an event occurred that further affected Gaza’s status in the following centuries: The war between the Mamluks and the Ottomans ended in an Ottoman victory. The Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered the entire region, including the Land of Israel, the shores of the Red Sea, Mecca, and Medina, as well as the southern connection to the African continent – Egypt. The victory of the Ottomans strengthened the position of Gaza. From a peripheral border city, it became a city perfectly situated in the center of a vast empire.
The Ottoman victory also had additional significance. All the holy places of Islam and Judaism and most of the holy places of Christianity now fell under the control of a single regime. The Ottoman Empire developed, improved the access routes, and ensured the safety of the Muslim pilgrims who set out for the Hajj to Mecca, while also offering safety to the Jewish and Christian pilgrims. The security resulted in economic growth and the improvement of roads, which contributed to a significant increase in the volume of pilgrimage.
As it turns out. even though Gaza was not one of the four Jewish holy cities in the Land of Israel, it became a popular place to visit when making the long journey to the Holy Land.
Why?
Those who embarked on a pilgrimage for religious reasons were specifically interested in the holy places, especially in the tombs of biblical figures and righteous sages, which Gaza could not claim to have. But Samson “came to her aid”.
This is perhaps the reason why Gaza is depicted in illustrations as a walled city with its mighty gates open. The illustrators of the scrolls didn’t illustrate Gaza, the prosperous trading city without a wall, but rather as a city whose doors Samson had uprooted, leaving it with wide open gates. That’s also why they call it the “Land of Samson.”
The illustrators of the Yichus Ha’Avot scrolls knew that many of the immigrants, especially those from Italy, would pass through Gaza anyway on their way to or from Egypt. As such, they indicated to the pilgrims that although there were no tombs of note in Gaza, there was indeed a history of Jewish heroism there.
This article is based on an article by Dr. Chaim Meir Neria, curator of the Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel, published in Etmol, issue 286 February 2024
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