Ashkelon founded
949 BCE.
Shown on the map at 31.670°, 34.546°.
Ashkelon ( ASH-kə-lon; Hebrew: אשקלון, romanized: ʾAšqəlōn, IPA: [ʔaʃkeˈlon] ; Arabic: عسقلان, romanized: ʿAsqalān) or Ashqelon, is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, 50 kilometres (30 mi) south of Tel Aviv, and 13 kilometres (8 mi) north of the border with the Gaza Strip. The modern city is named after the ancient seaport of Ascalon, which was destroyed in 1270 and whose remains are on the southwestern edge of the modern metropolis. The Israeli city, first known as Migdal (Hebrew: מגדל), was founded in 1949 approximately 4 km inland from ancient Ascalon at the Palestinian town of al-Majdal (Arabic: الْمِجْدَل, romanized: al-Mijdal). Its inhabitants had been exclusively Muslims and Christians, and the area had been allocated to the Arab State in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine; on the eve of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War the inhabitants numbered 10,000 and in October 1948, the city accommodated thousands more Palestinian refugees from nearby villages.
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