The City of Haifa
Haifa is Israel's third largest city, the capital of northern Israel and gateway to the Galilee, and home to over a quarter of a million residents. Its outstanding record of coexistence among its diverse population of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Bahá'is, Druze and Ahmadis is a model of cultural and religious pluralism and harmony.
The city is built on the fertile slopes of Mount Carmel, whose name in Hebrew means vineyard, and overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. This mountain is the greenest part of Israel and its richest in water, vegetation, animals and natural landscapes. Local and visiting hikers and bicyclists enjoy the trails and vistas of the 21-acre Carmel National Park. At the base of the mountain, the city's wide strand of tawny shore provides access to outdoor swimming, diving, surfing and sailing year-round. Moreover, Haifa provides an ideal spot for windsurfing. In 1996, the city hosted the World Windsurfing Championships.
The city's natural setting of mountain and bay has led some world travelers to compare modern Haifa's urban beauty to that of San Francisco and Wellington, New Zealand. This is best appreciated by taking the city's Scenic Drive; visiting the vantage points offered by the Bird's-Eye Lookout on the 30th floor of the University of Haifa's Eshkol Tower at the top of Mount Carmel and the Louis Promenade in central Carmel; descending the 200 steps of the Bahá'i Gardens' 19 landscaped terraces, which are sculpted into Mount Carmel's northwestern slopes; or riding the airborne gondolas of the city's charming Cable Car from its mountaintop station beside Stella Maris Monastery to its seaside station beside the Bat Galim Promenade.
Animal lovers may visit the Carmel National Park's Hai-Bar Nature Reserve, where such wildlife as fallow deer, roe deer, eagles and vultures once native to the area's Mediterranean scrub forest have been reintroduced, and the Haifa Educational Zoo, located in central Carmel's tranquil Gan HaEm (Mother's Park). It is delightful to reach the zoo by riding Haifa's funicular, the Carmelit, whose single track, two trains and six stations make it among the world's smallest subways.
Haifa is also an academic center featuring two great universities – the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Haifa -- and four teacher-training colleges. Its cultural life is served by museums, theaters, concert halls, sports and recreation venues, restaurants, shopping malls and fine hotels. It is home to the annual Haifa International Film Festival (est. 1983), the largest and most important celebration of cinema in Israel. In spectator sports, fans may choose from league-leading soccer clubs and professional basketball teams.
A hard-working city, Haifa is at the forefront of the Israeli and international high-tech R&D and manufacturing industries, and thus at the forefront of Israel's future. Amdocs, Elbit, Intel, Microsoft, Philips and many other cutting-edge companies are located in the Matam high-tech industrial park at the southern entrance to the city; IBM has an office atop Mount Carmel on the University of Haifa campus. The city's broad natural harbor serves as Israel's main seaport for incoming and outgoing cargo. Petrochemical industries, oil refineries processing 66 million barrels of crude annually, and ammonia storage facilities are concentrated in the Haifa Bay area. Tourism is nevertheless Haifa's number one economic resource due to the city's rich beauty and history. You are cordially invited to visit us and see for yourself!
* The text is indebted to Ben-Artzi, Dr. Yossi. Haifa, Capital of the North. Haifa Municipality, 1995, trans. M. Rosovsky.
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Historical Perspective
Haifa's present status as a city of diverse faiths and shrines, and as a world hub of high-tech and heavy industry, trade and transport, education and culture, has been foreshadowed by a recorded past that begins in the 3rd century CE, and by a prehistory that can be traced in archeological artifacts dating as far back as the 16th century BCE.
Elijah's Cave has given Haifa its religious significance for three faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In Mishnaic and Talmudic times (352 BCE – 500 CE), Haifa was deemed to be the residence of sages and to have a rich Jewish community.
Some scholars explain Haifa's name to derive from Mount Carmel, which shelters (chofeh) the city. Others point to the Hebrew word for shore (chof). Christian tradition associates the name with Caiaphas, High Priest of Jerusalem during Jesus' time, or Kepha, the Aramaic name of Jesus' disciple Peter. What we know for a fact is that an ancient settlement bearing the name Haifa appears in 3rd century written sources in connection with the founding of a coastal community of fisherman, farmers and traders.
Owing to Haifa's location at the geographical crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe, this port city has attracted conquest and re-conquest by a succession of empires from antiquity through modern times. Throughout the centuries and millennia, Haifa's fortunes have cyclically ebbed and flowed depending on the strategic and defensive designs imposed upon her by her series of rulers. The ancient Persians; the medieval Byzantines, Arab-Muslims, Crusaders and Mamluks; the Ottoman Turks and Mandate-era British – all have left their historical imprint on the city.
The 7th century CE Arab-Muslim conquest of Byzantine-era Palestine brought development to Haifa. In the 9th century, the city maintained sea trade links with Egypt and had flourishing shipyards. By the 10th and 11th centuries, it was enjoying an economic and cultural boom. Its Jews were engaged in trade and shipping, and its Muslims in government and administration. Glass production and the production of dye from marine snails were among the city's lucrative commercial enterprises.
This prosperous era came abruptly to an end in the summer of 1100, when the Crusaders besieged Haifa for a month by land and sea. The Crusaders coveted the coastal plain because it would shore up their rule in Jerusalem and sustain their connection with Europe. The city's Jews fought back ferociously, and in revenge, the European invaders destroyed Haifa's fortifications and the shipyards that were the source of its livelihood and massacred its citizens. Haifa was reduced to its original status as a small townlet of fishermen, farmers and merchants.
Eventually, the Crusaders allowed the survivors to return to their city and redevelop it as a secondary port to Acre. Christians and Muslims constituted the majority population at this time, with a Jewish minority that remained chiefly on account of Elijah's Cave and the city cemetery.
In 1265, the Mamluk army commanded by Baibars, a charismatic Muslim leader, captured Haifa from the Crusaders. His victory ushered in a 300-year period in which the Mamluks systematically and deliberately destroyed the Holy Land's coastal cities in order to prevent the Crusaders' return by sea. Haifa was left desolate.
The city's fortunes took a turn for the better beginning in 1516 with the Ottoman victory over the Mamluks, which brought about a 400-year period of Ottoman dominion. At first Haifa came back to life slowly as it lay in the shadow of Acre, its large and powerful neighbor. By the beginning of the 17th century, however, shipping had increased in Haifa anchorage, which served as an alternative to Acre during storms or raids by pirates.
During this phase of Ottoman rule, Mount Carmel and Haifa were governed by the Bedouin Turabay family, which practiced tolerance toward non-Muslim inhabitants. The Carmelites, who traced their beginnings to the Crusader period in Haifa, found it propitious finally to return from Europe to Mount Carmel, and there they built the Stella Maris Monastery. The Carmelites' influence on Haifa steadily grew by virtue of their medical and educational contributions to the citizenry and because of the monastery and its clean and well-appointed hostelry.
The history of modern Haifa begins in the mid-18th century with Dhaher El-Omar, Bedouin governor of the Galilee under nominal Ottoman supervision, who annexed Haifa to his domains. Dhaher sought a defensible location on which to build a settlement to guard the way to Acre. For this purpose, he razed the old city and rebuilt and fortified it at a new location about 2 kilometers east, using the stones of the ancient city for the new city's wall and various other structures. From this focal point, the city began to spread eastward and westward along the seashore.
Another major turning point in modern Haifa's growth occurred in the years 1832-1840, when the governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, rebelled against his Ottoman overlords, marched his army from Egypt to invade the Ottoman province of Syria, and besieged and captured Acre. Under the aegis of the Egyptian government, which also displayed great tolerance to non-Muslim minorities, new settlers arrived in Israel and Haifa.
Haifa's prestige only grew once the Ottomans had re-conquered Acre from the Egyptians, in 1840, and reasserted their dominion. The Acre merchants, made nervous by the recent tug of war over who would rule their city, relocated themselves to Haifa Bay. Haifa began to gain renown as a city with good mooring for ships and good conditions for commerce.
By the 1860s, the city had outgrown its defensive wall, which was gradually dismantled. The old stones were used for the construction of new quarters along the roads leading out of the city westwards and eastwards and up the mountain. It is at this time that the Templers immigrated to Haifa and founded the German Colony at the base of Mount Carmel. The Templers' influence on Haifa was to rival that of the Carmelites in their day. They introduced the use of carriages for passengers and goods, paved carriageways to Nazareth, built a modern hotel, operated a soap factory and established a network of workshops, services and businesses that largely determined the city's course of development.
At this same time, Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Bahá'i faith, arrived in Haifa from his native Persia, where he had been persecuted. The Bahá'is share credit with the Templers for the city's growth in this period. The Bahái Gardens and Shrine of the Báb of today are but the most visible sign of the worldwide Bahá'i community's lasting relationship with Haifa.
Haifa took another great step forward when, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman government chose Haifa as the main Mediterranean station for the Hijaz Railway, a prestigious undertaking during what ironically turned out to be the Empire's waning years. In 1905, the Hijaz Railway Station was inaugurated – it is known today as Haifa East Station – an historic event in regional terms that attracted laborers, merchants and peoples to the city. In 1907, a modern pier with cranes was opened as an extension of the track to unload large cargoes, among them railway carriages and locomotives.
With the laying of the Hijaz Railway, Haifa promised to become an important communications city that could look forward to a brilliant future in industry and technology. This informed the decision to open the Technion – now the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology – a project begun by German Jewish benefactors in the Ottoman period just prior to World War I and completed under British rule in 1925.
On the eve of World War I, Haifa was a lively, economically thriving port city with a population of 24,000, most of whom were Muslim; 20% of whom were Christian Arab of approximately ten denominations and were the city's leaders; and 15% of whom were Jews. There was also a plethora of Europeans. Fighting for the city lasted only two days, and took place without destruction and slaughter. In September 1918, British Mandate authorities took control. It was now the turn of the British and the Jews to promote Haifa's intensive development.
The most significant British Mandate contribution to the city was the construction of Haifa Port, which gave an immense boost to the city's economy, caused a massive influx of population, and spurred a demand for land and large-scale construction. Refineries were planned for Haifa for oil that was to flow in from Iraq, and the main workshops of the Palestine Railway were built. The port was dredged and the coastal area beside it reclaimed.
Haifa was a mixed city during the Mandate. Tens of thousands of Jews reached Eretz Israel in the 1920s and 1930s, and many opted for Haifa with its range of occupations and opportunities for entrepreneurial success. Muslims and Christians also migrated to the city.
Construction along the city's three level zones -- the coastal plain, the middle terrace, and the watershed atop Mount Carmel -- progressed intensively throughout the Mandate era. Jews built new commercial districts. The leading building contractors were Jewish, and the Jews steadily acquired the middle terrace of Carmel slope, Hadar Hacarmel. The ascent up the Carmel went even further in the late 1920s and 1930s. Also in the 1930s, the krayot or bay towns were built with a strong link to Haifa's industrial zone.
In the 1931 census, Haifa had a population of 50,000, 31% of whom were Jews. By 1944, the population had grown to 128,000, 52% of whom were Jews. Economic interests surpassed national interests, and Jews and Arabs worked side by side in large factories and plants.
Nevertheless, Haifa was not detached from the struggle between Arabs and Jews. It was Haifa's Jews who conducted the major part of the struggle against the British over immigration and illegal immigration, with mass demonstrations and paramilitary operations. The built-up areas at the time displayed a distinct communal and national distribution. The old city, whose walls had disappeared, became a crowded and poor Kasbah inhabited by Arabs of all communities. From the Kasbah, Muslim quarters developed eastward and Christian districts spread to the west as far as the German Colony; the Hadar Hacarmel neighborhood was an autonomous Jewish entity.
An unmistakable front line formed between the Arab town and the Jewish town, which was also the confrontation line when fighting erupted between them in 1947. Mutual hostile acts turned into real warfare in the city and into a struggle for mastery of the roads and junctions. In 1948, on Passover Eve (21-22 April), forces of the paramilitary Jewish Haganah gained control of Haifa. Tens of thousands of Arab citizens abandoned their city, and only 3,500 of them, mostly Christians, remained.
With the establishment of the State of Israel, the city made a fairly rapid recovery from war mainly owing to Haifa's being the gate of immigration to the country by virtue of the port. Thousands of immigrants were absorbed into abandoned Arab districts, existing neighbourhoods were enlarged, and new residential districts were constructed with the tendency being to penetrate the steeper-lying areas.
Simultaneously, Haifa's municipal and communal leaders and citizens of all faiths set about actively mending the fabric of Arab-Jewish coexistence that war had rent. Patterns of coexistence and mutual respect were re-established. Today, Haifa is a model for the possibility of Arabs and Jews living together in equality and coexistence everywhere in Israel.
In the 1980's, with the development of stepped-building methods, Haifa experienced a dizzying rate of construction in which the steepness of mountainsides was no longer relevant. Millions of cubic meters of rock were gouged out and entire valleys filled to the top. The year 1989 marked the start of mass immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia. Haifa opened its arms to 43,000 of these newcomers, who account for 15% of the city's current population. Together with this increase in population, commercial and industrial activity has grown, the educational network has expanded, and cultural and recreational venues have multiplied. In historic Haifa, the future is now!
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Historic Sites
Khayfa al-Atika (Ancient Haifa)
Harat al-Kana'is (Churches Quarter)
Bahá'i Gardens and Shrine of the Báb
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