Page 78 - A Walk to Caesarea / Joseph Patrich

64 Historical Review

group that settled in Caesarea in March 1884 brought with it personal belongings
and great wealth, but two years later left the site owing to problems with the climate,
the swamps, and malaria; two years after that, another group came instead. In 1887,
35 families lived there; in 1888 – 45; and in 1891 – 50. Only a few of these settlers,
who spoke a Slavic dialect, could speak a bit of Turkish; they did not know Arabic
but began to learn it. Laurence Oliphant, who visited Caesarea in September 1884
and told of the initial settlement, also attested that at that time the Caesarea harbor,
which had a small marina for sail boats, was used for the export of watermelons that
grew in its fertile agricultural hinterland. He also reported on the looting of stones
from the Old City that had been going on for 20 years for construction projects carried
out in that period in Acre and Jaffa. The looting of stones continued during the time
of the Bosnian settlement as well. Gottlieb Schumacher (1888) told of the theft of
thousands of building stones from the area of the Roman circus for use in Jaffa.

Looting of Building Stones from Caesarea – The Testimony of Laurence Oliphant,
September 1884

“Extensive ruins … They have already during the last twenty years served as a quarry from whence the magnificent
building-stones, cut originally by Herod the Great when he built the town, have been transported in thousands
of boat-loads to Acre and Jaffa. The ruins have therefore lost much of the pristine grandeur … In a few years more
they will probably have disappeared altogether” (Laurence Oliphant, Haifa, p. 183).

The structures the Bosnians built within the Crusader city and the paths they
paved over the ruins of the ancient settlement caused further destruction to the
archeological site.

The Bosnian settlers were allotted 75 plots within the boundaries of the Crusader
city and on its walls. At the side of each house was a large yard surrounded by a
wall. The homes had tiled roofs, as customary in their country of origin; among
them were also three-story houses. The houses were separated by rather wide
streets – four ran north-south, and four east-west. The main north-south street
linked the Jaffa Gate to the south to the Tantura gate to the north. The main
east-west street connected the harbor with the interior of the country. It emerged
from the settled area to south of the Crusader gate, which at that time was a ruined
vault. Eventually, the public buildings included two mosques (one, with a round
Ottoman minaret, still standing today); the site of the town council; a khan (on
the top of the harbor vaults, next to the ruins of the Crusader cathedral); a café
near the fortress, in which was located at the beginning of the settlement the
seraya – the headquarter of the Turkish governor (mudir), which in time became
the headquarters of the Mandatory police; a market square near the Jaffa Gate,
bound on the north by a bakery, a grocery store (which was owned by the father
of the famous Turkish archaeologist, Ekrem Akurgal), the customs house and a
school, and along the wharf – warehouses for the fishermen (Figs. 66a–d). Before