Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

The walls inclose a half circle, or bow, as described by William of Tyre, the string being towards the sea, where are cliffs about fifty feet high, above the beach. The town measures one mile and three-quarters round, and three-eighths of a mile from east to west. The foundations of the five great towers, noticed by the chronicler of King Richard’s expedition, are all discernible, with the land-gate, the sea-gate, the church, and some other ruins. The whole place is now full of gardens, containing palms, olives, apples, lemons, almonds, pomegranates, and tamarisks, irrigated by no less than forty wells of sweet water.

The walls are of small masonry, which is much less solid than the work of the Christian kings of Jerusalem; but the mortar is so hard that, in places, the stone has given way and cracked, while the mortar joints remain unbroken. A huge tower-foundation lies tilted up on one side, like a great cheese, close to the land-gate; it is twenty feet in diameter, and six feet thick.

The fruits here ripen a month earlier than in other parts of Palestine; and were it not that now, as in King Richard’s time, Ascalon has no port, it would no doubt be a place of importance.

Of Herod’s beautiful colonnades, nothing now remains. The Crusaders had little respect for antiquities, and the innumerable granite pillar-shafts, which are built horizontally into the walls, are no doubt those originally brought to the town by Herod.

The Jews held Ascalon to be no part of “the Land.” Even as late as the twelfth century, three hundred Samaritans lived there. The famous Temple of Derceto, in the town, is noticed in the Mishna, as well as the idol Serapia, which was here worshipped. A place called Yagur is also noticed in the Talmud as on the boundary of “the Land,” apparently outside the walls of Ascalon; this, no doubt, is represented by the modern village of El Jûrah, on the north-east, beyond the fosse, among gardens and lanes which are half covered with sand.

It is indeed quite mournful to see how the dry blown sand, advancing, it is said, a yard every year, has climbed over the southern walls of the town, and has already quite destroyed the fruitful gardens on that side.

We heard a curious tradition at Ascalon. A tomb had been opened by the peasantry, near the ruins, some thirty years ago. Under a great slab, in the eastern cemetery, they found a perfectly preserved body, apparently embalmed, lying in its robes, with a sword by its side, and a ring on its finger. The dead eyes glared so fiercely on the intruders, that they let fall the slab, and as one of the party soon after died, they came to the conclusion that it was a Neby or “Prophet” whom they had disturbed, and the place has thus become surrounded with a mysterious sanctity.

Seven and a half miles north of Mejdel is the site of the famous city of Ashdod, now only a mud village of moderate size, on the eastern slope of a knoll which is covered with loose sandy soil and hedged in with prickly pear. On this knoll the old city no doubt stood, and though its elevation is not great, it commands the surrounding land, which accounts for the siege of twenty-nine years by Psammetichus, that Ashdod underwent. On the south is a small white mosque, a water-wheel, and the fine Khân which has fallen into ruins within the last thirty years. There is a great mud-pond on the east, with palms near it, and to the south a marsh, fig gardens and numerous sycamore trees. The corn-lands are wide and fertile, but the place has no antiquities beyond a few bad coins and gems.

The ever-rolling sand-dunes have here encroached no less than three miles, and are lapping against the village. Riding due west from Ashdod we reached the shore, at a point which seems to have been rarely visited by former travellers. There are here extensive ruins of a town, stretching along the shore, and a square fort with round corner towers, probably of Crusading date. This is no doubt the ancient port of Ashdod, mentioned in the fifth century, and the place is still used as a landing by small boats.

The name which is given to this harbour as well as to the ports of Abu Zabûra, Yebna, and Ghŭzzeh, is very interesting; they are each known as El Mîneh, but the word is not Arabic. The Talmud speaks of the harbour of Caesarea as Limineh, and here we have the solution of the puzzle. The Jews were not a race of sailors; the only notices of the sea in the Bible, show the awe with which they regarded its rolling waves. They had no harbours along the coast, and apparently no word in their language for a port; thus they adopted a foreign epithet, and naturalised the Greek Limen, now further corrupted into the modern El Mîneh.