During this period the cedar logs for King Solomon's Temple were landed here after being floated down from the Lebanese ports by Hiram, King of Tyre. The Maccabees made of Jaffa a typically Jewish town; and, after its conquest by Pompey, it became a Roman Free City. During the ensuing century it was frequently bandied about between Rome and the Idumaean princes, and at one moment was given by Mark Antony as a love-token to Cleopatra. Christianity was introduced at an early period into Jaffa, where, in the house of Simon the Tanner, S. Peter saw the vision recorded in Acts, ix., 43.
Under Byzantine, Seljuq and Fatimite rule the history of Jaffa is comparatively uneventful, but with the advent of the Crusaders it again becomes varied. King Baldwin I. signed here the Treaty of Jaffa with the Genoese, the foundation of many future conquests, and Jaffa was constituted a county, the investiture of which was always given to the heir to the throne of Jerusalem. In that year of disaster to the Crusaders, 1187, the town was captured and destroyed by the brother of Saladin, was subsequently retaken by Richard Cœur-de-Lion, and was sacked by Bibars in 1267. In 1799 it was stormed by Napoleon.
In spite of its age, Jaffa offers little of interest to the visitor. The oldest part of the city clusters citadel-like on a rocky hill overlooking the harbour, its streets narrow and labyrinthine. At the southern end of the old city the site of the house of Simon the Tanner is shown in an insignificant little mosque, although the present tanners' quarter lies farther south, on the shore below the Ajami quarter.
To the north of Jaffa lies the Jewish township of Tel Aviv, much enlarged under the stimulus of recent Zionist development, and offering, in its European modernity, a striking contrast to the eastern character of Jaffa. Inland of Jaffa lie the orange groves for which the place is famous; for the German Templar colonies, see Part II., § 13.
Jaffa to Jerusalem.—Ludd, so called by the British troops but properly Lydd, the ancient Lydda, is the junction for the Kantara-Haifa and Jaffa-Jerusalem railway lines.
