Arsuf

Apollonia (Ancient Greek: Ἀπολλωνία; Hebrew: אפולוניה), known in the Early Islamic period as Arsuf (Arabic: أرْسُوف, romanized: Arsūf) and in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem as Arsur, was an ancient city on the Mediterranean coast of today's Israel. In Israeli archaeology it is known as Tel Arshaf (תֵּל אַרְשָׁף). Founded by the Phoenicians during the Persian period in the late sixth century BCE, it was inhabited continuously until the Crusader period, through the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods, during the latter being renamed to Sozusa (Ancient Greek: Σώζουσα, or Sozusa in Palaestina to differentiate it from Sozusa in Libya). It was situated on a sandy area ending towards the sea with a cliff, about 34 kilometres (21 mi) south of Caesarea. It fell to the Muslims in 640, was fortified against Byzantine attacks and became known as Arsuf. In 1101 it was conquered by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and was a strategically important stronghold in the Third Crusade, during which the Battle of Arsuf (1191) was fought nearby. The fortified city and the castle fell to the Mamluks in 1265, when both were completely destroyed. The site of Arsuf (also Apollonia–Arsuf אַפּוֹלוֹנְיָה-אַרְסוּף) is now in Herzliya municipality, Israel (just north of Tel Aviv). The site was intensively excavated from 1994. In 2002 Apollonia National Park was opened to the public.

The city is first recorded under its Greek name Apollonia in the final decades of the Persian period (mid-4th century BCE). In a long-standing suggestion, first proposed by Clermont-Ganneau in 1876, it was assumed that the Greek name was given due to the interpretatio graeca of the Canaanite deity Resheph (ršp) as Apollo (as god of the plague), suggesting that the settlement would originally have been a "Phoenician" foundation. The Semitic name ršp would then have been "restored" in the medieval Arabic toponym of Arsūf. There is indeed no archaeological evidence for a settlement prior to the Persian period, and Izre'el (1999) upholds this identification, suggesting that the Semitic name might have been preserved by the Aramaic-speaking Samaritan community. The Samaritan chronicle of Abu l-Fath (14th c

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).