Page 63 - A Walk to Caesarea / Joseph Patrich

A Walk to Caesarea: A Historical-Archaeological Perspective 49

who had an important role in the urban society. Most of the inhabitants were killed,
though others managed to escape by land or by sea. Archaeological findings indicate
the abandonment of the southwestern zone of Caesarea, and a sudden end of urban
life there. However, the city center, in the area of the harbor, was neither abandoned
nor destroyed. Muslim Caesarea developed around this center.

Muslim Caesarea Fig. 55
Muslim burial plot with two
After the conquest, Caesarea no longer functioned as an administrative center. tombstones
Initially, the Muslims managed the affairs of the country from Jerusalem, and
afterward from Ramle, closer to the coast. Caesarea was a regular city in Jund Filastin, Fig. 56a–b
which replaced Palaestina Prima. Like any city, its rural hinterland, or its district – a. Muslim tombstone, dated
chora, was divided into sub-districts, which were called iqlim (from Greek klematos).
884 CE
The important harbor in Mucawiya’s time was that of Acre, where a shipyard b. Muslim tombstone, dated
was installed, then was transferred to Tyre in
the second quarter of the eighth century. Jaffa, 895 CE
no longer Caesarea, was the chief harbor of
Jund Filastin and of Ramle. The area of Muslim
Qaysariyah was much smaller in comparison to the
Roman-Byzantine city. The zone of the wealthy
mansions and of the Byzantine governor’s palace
in the south, between the harbor and the theater,
had already been abandoned during the years of
siege and the beginning of Muslim rule. At first,
part of the area was made into terraced gardens
watered by stone-built irrigation channels, the
water being supplied from wells. Later, during the Abbasid and Tulunid government,
about mid-ninth century, the area became a large Muslim cemetery for the city (Fig.
55). Arabic inscriptions on the tombstones indicate that it came into being in the
mid-ninth century at the latest. The oldest of them (Fig. 56a) is dated to 884 – near
the start of Tulunid rule (878–905); the latest is dated to 980 – the beginning of

ab