Ramla, Israel Tourism

... More

which dates from the Crusader period.

History

The town was founded in 716 by Caliph Suleiman, the second son of Abd el-Malik, builder of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and named Ramleh ("sand") after the type of soil in the area. Its palaces and mosques reflected the splendor of the Omayyad dynasty, whose capital was Damascus. When the Omayyads were succeeded in 750 by the Abbasids members of the Sufi sect left the new capital of Baghdad and came to Ramleh, where there were already Sunnite and Shiite Muslims, indigenous Jews and Jews of the Diaspora, as well as members of the Jewish Karaite sect, which came into existence in Babylon in the eighth century. The Karaites recognize only the Law as written down in the Torah but not the traditions collected in the Talmud. Their largest community is in Ramla, where 3,000 of their approximately 11,000 members live.

In the 11th century Ramleh was pillaged (1025) and ravaged by earthquakes (1033, 1067). In 1099 it was taken by the Crusaders, who fought three battles with Fatimid forces here; in 1101 and 1105 they won, in 1102 they lost.

After Saladin's victory at the Horns of Hittim in 1187 the Crusader period came to an end in Ramleh. The conquest of the town by Baibars in 1267 marked the beginning of the Mameluke period, of which the White Tower is a relic. In the 14th century Ramleh's population included both Muslims and Jews as well as Christian monks. In the 17th century the town fell into decay. In 1799 Napoleon spent the night in Ramleh on the way to Akko. In 1917 a British military cemetery was laid out for 2,000 of General Allenby's troops who had been killed in the fighting with the Turks. In 1936, during Arab riots, Ramleh's Jewish inhabitants left the town; then in 1948 it surrendered to Israeli forces without a fight. At that time there were only 1,500 Arabs left in the town, but their numbers have since increased to over 5,000.