Gazaעזה

Southern coastal Land of Israel

Gaza is a city on the Mediterranean coast in the Gaza Strip; Egyptian records mention it from the 15th century BCE. A Philistine city, it fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BCE and later came under Rome. Christianity spread there from the mid-3rd century, and Bishop Porphyry hastened conversion around 400; the church historian Sozomen came from a nearby village. Arab forces under Amr ibn al-As took Gaza in the 630s, and the jurist al-Shafi'i was born there in 767. Jews lived there for long periods: Israel Najara served as a rabbi there in his last years, and Nathan of Gaza lived there from 1663.

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