Samson (Judges, xiii., sq.) gives a graphic picture of the perpetual and frequently successful struggle maintained by the Philistines with the Israelites for the hegemony of Palestine. Pharaoh gave Gaza to Solomon as his daughter's dowry, and Moslem tradition makes Gaza Solomon's birthplace.
Under the Romans Gaza was an important city with the name of Minoa; and although its traditional first Bishop was the Philemon to whom S. Paul addressed the Epistle of that name, paganism survived almost until the Arab conquest. S. Jerome considered Marnas (Dagon) to be the worst enemy of Christianity after the Egyptian god Serapis, and it was not until the beginning of the fifth century that Bishop Porphyry of Gaza was able to secure the destruction of his temple. The Empress Eudocia caused a large cruciform church to be erected on the site, but the pagan tradition lingered; and for many years the women of Gaza refused to step on the once holy marbles. Again, when Justinian I. closed the pagan schools of Athens in 529, he permitted those of Gaza to continue the teaching of Neoplatonism.
In 634 Gaza was occupied by the Khalif ʾOmar, and became important to Moslems, partly because the Prophet's great-grandfather Hashim (a direct ancestor in the male line of the King of the Hejaz) is buried there, partly because it is the birthplace of Ibn Idris al-Shafi, the founder of the Shafi rite or school of Sunnite Islam (cf. Part II., § 5).
During the Crusades Gaza was hotly contested between the Saracens and the Crusaders, but received a terrible blow in 1244, when the Christians and Moslems, on this occasion in alliance, were defeated by the Khwarizmians (cf. Part I., § 5). Finally, it was the scene of two battles (26th–27th March and 17th–20th April, 1917) between the British and the Turks in the late war, and was very largely destroyed by the Turks and by subsequent bombardments. It was occupied by General Allenby on the 7th November, 1917.
The principal surviving monuments of Gaza are the ruined Orthodox church of S. Porphyry; the great mosque
