Gaza and the Templars

Gaza is in the news right now as Israel and Hamas clash in this tiny territory and its population are bombed and starved. But Gaza is no stranger to conflict. A little-known fact about Gaza is that it was a stronghold of the Knights Templar during the Crusades.

The known history of Gaza goes back to the Bronze Age, when it was inhabited by the Semitic Canaanites. While the territory has been held by everyone from the Egyptians to the Mongols, its original Canaanite inhabitants remained, albeit mixed with the Philistines.

A seafaring people with cultural links to the Aegean islands, the Philistines made Gaza part of a league of their five most important city-states. They gave their name to the Roman province of Palaestina Prima. Gaza is shown on the 6th-century floor mosaic Madaba Map in the early Byzantine church of Saint George in Madaba.

While Gaza had a small Christian community from very early times, the Faith did not come to dominate the area until the time of Saint Porphyrius, who inspired and imposed mass conversion between 396 and 420 AD. All eight of the city's pagan temples were destroyed and the Church of John the Baptist was built on the ruins of the temple of Marnas in 406.

Together with the fifth century church of St. Porphyrius (pictured above and below), this survived the Muslim take-over, earthquakes, the wars of the Crusades, the Ottoman conquest and two world wars. Earlier this year, however, both were flattened by the Israeli forces during their campaign to eradicate the history as well as the people of Gaza. Dozens of historic mosques and Christian sites have been destroyed in this “cultural genocide”, including possibly the world’s oldest monastery.

The Muslim conquest in 637 A.D. saw the Church of John the Baptist turned into the Great Mosque. Gaza saw periods of prosperity and decline under Islamic rule, with several periods of civil war and persecution of Christians inflicting substantial damage.

The city was liberated by the Crusaders in 1100, just a year after Jerusalem had been freed. According to the chronicler William of Tyre, the Crusaders found it uninhabited and in ruins.

King Baldwin III built a small castle there in 1149. The possession of Gaza completed the military encirclement of the Fatimid-held city of Ascalon to the north.

Gaza was of huge strategic importance on the frontline against Fatimid Egypt, so Baldwin entrusted its defence to the Knights Templar. As well as granting the castle to the Templars, the king also had the Great Mosque converted into the Cathedral of Saint John.

In 1153, Ascalon fell to the Crusaders after a siege in which the Templars played a major role. A year later, in 1154, the Muslim chronicler Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi conceded that under Templar control, Gaza was thriving.

That same year, King Amalric I of Jerusalem withdrew Gaza's Templars to assist him against an invasion by Saladin. However, Saladin evaded the Crusader force and assaulted Gaza instead, destroying the town, although unable to take the fortress.

After the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, the fall of Ascalon left Gaza isolated, so the Templars withdrew. Saladin ordered the destruction of the city's fortifications in 1191.

A year later, after recapturing it, Richard the Lionheart refortified the city, but the walls were dismantled as a result of the Treaty of Ramla agreed in 1193. Although the Crusader state in the Holy Land survived for nearly another 100 years, Gaza was never again to play an important part in the story of either the Templars or the Crusades of which they were such an important part.

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