GAZA (Hebr. Azzah, Ar. Gazzah). — Canaanite city (Gen. 10:19; Deut. 2:23) in the southwestern corner of Palestine, 4 km. from the sea, on the only route leading from Egypt to Syria. An important center for the trade in wine, grain, and aromatics, and from the most remote antiquity an object of competition among all the commanders contending for possession of Asia or Egypt.
Mentioned in the proscription texts (Ächtungstexte) of 1900 B.C., in the Ta'annak letters (15th century) and those of el-Amârnah, it was the metropolis of the Philistine pentapolis and the setting of Samson’s deeds, his triumph, and his death beneath the temple of the god Dagon (Indc. 16). Solomon (I Reg. 4:24) and later King Hezekiah (II Reg. 18:5) sought to consolidate Israelite rule there; but G. was occupied in 734 by Tiglath-pileser III and remained tributary to the Assyrian kings. Occupied in 579 by Cambyses and in 322 by Alexander the Great, it was besieged in 145 by Jonathan (I Mach. 11:61) and destroyed in 96 by Alexander Jannaeus (Fl. Giuseppe, Bell. Ind., I, 4, 3). It was rebuilt by Gabinius and, under Roman auspices, became a center of Hellenistic culture.
The inhabitants showed themselves ill-disposed toward Christianity and converted only in the 5th century, as a result of the edict of the emperor Arcadius (401) prohibiting pagan worship. On the ruins of the Marnion temple, through the zeal of Bishop Porphyry and the empress Eudoxia, the great church known as the Eudoxian church was built. Until the middle of the 6th century, under the rule of Christian humanists, it distinguished itself in literature and monuments. Occupied by the Muslims in 634, it was held by them in high regard because of the tomb of Hâlim, Muhammad’s grandfather, and because it was the birthplace of al-Shafi‘i, founder of the Sunni school. At the time of the Crusaders it was entrusted to the Templars, but in 1187 it returned to Muslim rule.
Various archaeological soundings, carried out in the northern part of the hill on which the present city stands, have revealed traces of occupation from the end of the second phase of the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic period.
BIBLI: K. Galling, Bibliches Reallexikon, Tübingen 1937, col. 172; W. J. Phythian-Adams, Reports on soundings at G., in Pal. Expl. Quart., 55 (1923), 11–30.