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Abstract
The city of Ashkelon occupies the geographical area that, during the Ottoman and Mandatory periods, belonged to six settlements (Majdal, Hamame, Nailia, Jora, Rasem, and Hasas). Although these settlements differed from one another in nature and in status, they nonetheless had ties with each other and with the large village, later to become the town Majdal, the central settlement in the region. The various developments that Palestine underwent during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not pass over this area. Although the livelihood of the settlements in the region was based primarily on agriculture, each also possessed a distinctive character. The research describes the geographical developments in the Ashkelon region and its landscape, and examines the changes they and the area, underwent as a case study of the southern coastal plain.
Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to Gad Sobol (MA) for his assistance with research in the historical archives.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
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2 After 20 years of researching this region, this study is an updated version of A. Sasson, ‘The Development of Ashkelon and Its Environs in the Late Ottoman Period’, in A. Sasson, Z. Safrai, and N. Sagiv (eds), Ashkelon: Bride of the South: Studies in the History of Ashkelon from the Middle Ages to the End of the Twentieth Century (Hebrew), (Tel Aviv: Eretz, 2002), pp.87–122.
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159 Guérin, Description, p.133.
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