Caesarea in 1187
Keisarya, historically known as Caesarea and Caesarea Maritima, is a coastal town in northern Israel, located midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Caesarea Maritima was built by King Herod the Great of Judea from 25 to 13 BC as a major port city, and it was originally known as "Strato's Tower", as it was located at the site of a former Phoenician naval base named for King Strato I. In 10 BC, Herod renamed the city in honor of the Roman emperor Augustus, the adoptive son of Julius Caesar. It later became the capital of the Roman province of Iudaea in 6 AD, serving as the official residence of its governors, such as Antonius Felix and Pontius Pilate. Caesarea became an early Christian center due to Philip the Evangelist's missionary efforts, and it was at Caesarea that Paul the Apostle baptized Cornelius the Centurion and his household in the first Christian baptism of a gentile. Paul visited Caesarea twice more, and he was imprisoned there for two years before being sent to Rome. In 451 AD, after Jerusalem became a patriarchate, Caesarea became the first of its three metropolitan sees. In 640, the Byzantine Romans lost Caesarea to the Rashidun Arab general Amr ibn al-As, and it was partially destroyed upon its conquest. The harbor was allowed to silt up and was unusable by the 9th century. In 1101, Caesarea was reconquered by Christian Crusaders, and Caesarea returned to being a fortified city with running waters, palm gardens, and orange and citron trees. By 1187, Caesarea had a population of 19,091, with 68% adhering to Christianity and 32% to Islam. Caesarea was under Crusader control from 1101 to 1187 and from 1191 to 1265; Louis IX of France fortified the city in 1251 amid the Seventh Crusade, but the Mamluk general Baibars conquered the city in 1265 and had its fortifications destroyed in order to prevent its re-emergence as a Crusader stronghold. It was an uninhabited ruin until the 17th century; by 1664, Caesarea had 100 Moroccan families and 8 Jewish families, and, by 1806, it was still a poor ruin inhabited by fishermen and their families. In 1884, Bosnian immigrants fleeing Austria-Hungary's 1878 annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina established the village of Qisarya. In 1948, following Israel's declaration of independence, Yitzhak Rabin's Palmach unit conquered the vacant town, as its residents had fled following an earlier Lehi attack. In 1952, the modern Jewish town of Caesarea was founded near the ruins of the old city, and it came to have 5,170 residents by 2018.
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