HOW THE CHRISTIANS WERE DRIVEN OUT OF CAESAREA.

HOW THE CHRISTIANS WERE DRIVEN OUT OF CAESAREA

A lengthy and detailed article by Avi Sasson, Roy Marom and Saleh Kharanbeh in the latest issue of ‘’Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly’‘ (Vol. 158 No. 2, 2026, pp. 196-218) describes the extant remains of a former agricultural settlement at Caesarea – known as ‘’Bayyarat al-Khuri’‘ (’‘The Priests’s Orchard’‘), an estate formerly belonging to the Jerusalem Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church. I find it fascinating as it describes, on the basis of this example, just how complex issues of ‘’Who owns which bit of the land?’‘ and ‘’For how long have they owned it?’‘ and ‘’How did they acquire it?’‘ and ‘’To whom did it belong before?’‘ are described in academic depth rather than in emotional and polemical melodrama. This has become especially relevant in times when almost everyone and every institution from local Pet-Lovers’ Associations down to the ‘Church of England’ are accusing Israel of ‘’genocide’‘.

It is interesting to me that archaeologists are always finding and excavating and describing ruins all over the region, ruins created because at some point someone put enormous effort into building thick walls and defensive structures and heavy gates round the places where they lived and wished to continue living - because, clearly, they did not trust their neighbours - and then a little later these neighbours destroyed what they had built and burned it down, leaving where a village or town had once stood merely a few relics, foundations, coins, arrow-heads and broken pottery - and bones - to excite the later archaeologists. Nobody ever seems to put this together with more recent history.

I have therefore decided to spread a part of this article more widely. It may help readers to counter some of the more ignorant arguments. Taken from this (I have edited out the sources, footnotes and references etc.) :

‘’The Church‘s Caesarea properties consisted of residential and sacred precincts within the Bosnian town established ca. 1880, including St. Paul’s supposed prison cellar and the remnants of Caesarea’s Crusader cathdral. Church properties inside the Bosnian town served as an occasional retreat for Church elders….

The agricultural estate is located southeast of the Bosnian town and sits within the confines of Caesarea’s Roman Hippodrome. A ‘’Taphos’‘ monogram, crowning Bayyarat al-Khuri’s gateway, attests to its association with the Jerusalem Patriarchate’s Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, comprised of ethnically-Greek clergymen.

In this paper we argue that Russian Imperial sponsorship facilitated the Greek Orthodox Church’s rural development initiatives before the advent of the First World War. The Church enjoyed a special status, akin to other European-sponsored Christian institutions in the Ottoman Empire. After the fall of the Romanov Dynasty however, the Church lost its privileged status. In some cases – like this one – their land acquisition and rural agricultural development efforts abated because of competition with other local actors and the Zionist movement. Indeed, during the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 Caesarea’s Christian inhabitants found themselves isolated and vulnerable to attack, and after the murder of Father Hanna al-Khuri (1938) they abandoned the site…

Herod the Great (37-4 BCE) established Caesarea Maritima on the site of the Phoenician settlement of the Tower of Straton and called it after his benefactor, the Roman emperor Augustus (27 BCE – 14 CE). Caesarea served as the seat of Roman procurator Pontius Pilate and became Judea’s main port. The city figures repeatedly in the Book of Acts. It was here, according to Christian belief, that the Holy Spirit was bestowed for the first time upon gentiles (Acts 10:1-8, 44-48). Caesarea was the home of Philp the Evangelist (Acts 21:8). The apostle Paul departed from Caesarea to Tarsus (Acts 9:30) and other missionary journeys (Acts 21:7-8). Here, he spent two years in prison before being sent to stand trial in Rome (Acts 24:27). During the Byzantine period, Caesarea Maritima was the capital of Palestina Prima, and home to important Fathers of the Church, such as Eusebius. The city was the seat of a bishopric, and many of its bishops participated in ecumenical councils. The Arabs conquered Caesarea in 643 CE and for the next four and a half centuries it remained under Muslim rule. The Crusades brought Caesarea, now a mere town, into Latin / Catholic control (1099 – 1265 CE). Christian control of Caesarea ended with the Mamluk conquest, demolition and abandonment of the town. However, many churches continued to maintain titular sees named after the ancient site.

[It has been] suggested that in the 19th century the Patriarchate of Jerusalem of the Greek Orthodox Church may have sought to buy lands in historically-important regions that lacked a significant Christian presence as ‘’an attempt to restore the Patriarchate to its former heyday’‘. In this connection it is significant that Caesarea remains the see of a titular metropolitan of the Patriarchate.

Transational Migration, Rural Development

The late Ottoman period witnessed profound economic transformations that reshaped both the physical landscape and the patterns of land tenure across the region. Beginning with the 1858 Ottoman Land Code, the state sought to regularize property ownership and increase its fiscal control over agricultural production. The new legislation incentivized private registration of rural lands, which previously had often been held collectively or under customary usufruct. This codification of land rights coincided with broader imperial ambitions to modernize agriculture, expand cash-crop cultivation, and integrate Palestine into the global market economy. Along the coastal plain and in the inland valleys, landlords began investing in citrus orchards, tobacco fields and grain plantations, often relying on irrigation innovations and mechanical technologies. Simultaneously, port cities like Jaffa and Haifa experienced significant commercial growth, fostering export-oriented agriculture and attracting infrastructure development – including railway lines and improved roads – that further stimulated investment in rural land.

Initially, the area stretching from east of Caesarea and its adjacent coastal wetlands northwards to the Kabara Marshlands did not support permanent settlement. Instead, the semi-nomadic Turkmen and the Ghawarneh, or Marsh Arabs, camped about the wetlands. Following the Ottoman Land Law (1858) and especially at the end of the 1870s and in the early 1880s, notables acquired ownership of vast estates and direct taxation gave them new impetus to put the land into cultivation.

Around 1880 CE the Ottoman authorities resettled the ruins of Caesarea with Bosnian Muslim refugees escaping the Austro-Hungarian occupation of their country. A pre-planned town was constructed within the city walls of the Crusader town and it served as the centre for a sub-division (mudiriye) in the Sub-district of Haifa. Later on, most of the Bosnian population moved to the main cities, to be replaced by Circassians and Arab migrants from surrounding regions. The area outside the walls of Caesarea was registered in the name of Sadeq Pasha, the Governor of Acre and brother of one of the viziers in the Ottoman Government. Bosnian and other Ottoman functionaries founded the estates of al-Zughraniyya, Burj al-Kheil, al-Manshiya, Hudaydun and al-Sufafa.

Bayyaat al-Khuri was one of several hundred agricultural plantations established during the 19th century in Palestine’s coastal plain. In addition to the above-mentioned administrative reforms, the foundation of Bayyarat al-Khuri reflects the broader geographic changes in the Levant during the Late Ottoman period. This phase of settlement and economic expansion mirrored the rise of Beirut as an international entrepôt on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

Legal Context: Church endowments and their administration.

The Greek Orthodox Church has long been the largest church in Palestine. The Patriarchate in Jerusalem operated under a dual institutional and legal identity. As a religious body within the Ottoman millet system, it enjoyed juridical autonomy, with the Patriarch serving not only as ecclesiastical leader but also as community representative before the state. This status enabled the Church to accumulate and administer extensive land holdings across Palestine, including through mulk (private) and waqf (religious endowment) titles.

In accordance with late Ottoman land law, any property owned by a religious institution, whether formally designated or not, was effectively considered a waqf, since it was held in perpetual trust for the benefit of the religious community.

Consequently, even properties colloquially referred to as ‘’convent land’‘ or private Church holdings were typically registered, or treated administratively, as religious endowments. The Church’s land administration practices, including its financial independence, real estate leasing mechanisms and internal land revenue allocations, were shaped by this hybrid mulk-waqf logic and often involved clergy-administered estates generating income for communal institutions such as schools, cemeteries, or monastic orders.

…… The Patriarchate’s land portfolio functioned both as a spiritual trust and as a political-economic instrument. The dual status of these lands complicates their legal interpretation under colonial and post-colonial regimes, as seen in the post-1948 conflicts over ecclesiastical land ownership and leasing.

Historical Context : Ecclesiastical rural estate in Caesarea.

The expansion of Greek Orthodox Patriarchate properties in Palestine during the late Ottoman period was deeply shaped by Russian imperial patronage…. [This] allowed the Patriarchate to assert itself materially through land acquisitions and architectural projects. After the end of the Crimean War in 1856, Russia paid increasing attention to Palestine, and used the Greek Orthodox Church to expand its influence on Ottoman domestic matters The Russian Empire endowed the Church wih donations, either directly or through revenues from the increasing numbers of Russian pilgrims frequenting Palestine. The Church’s territorial activities in Palestine peaked during the last decades of Ottoman rule. The Church focussed its attention on establishing agricultural estates near communities or sites of religious significance, like Jericho, the Jordan Valley, and around Tiberias and Nazareth.

During the reign of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Damian I (1897-1931), in 1909 Sadeq Pasha sold to the Greek Orthodox Church 600 dunams of land south of the Roman Caesarea – al-Shuna Road. Sadeq Pasha sold his remaining lands, north of the road, to the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), a property company promoting the Jewish colonization of Palestine. Similarly, the Greek Orthodox Church purchased six dunams of built-up area in the Bosnian town, around the ruins of the Crusader cathedral. The precise financial mechanisms behind the purchase of Bayyarat al-Khuri remain opaque….

The Church and JCA (and since 1927 its successor organisation, the Palestine Jewish Colonial Association, PICA) competed for control of Caesarea’s remaining lands. [Some] explain the establishment of Bayyarat al-Khuri as a strategic move to forestall Jewish settlement in the area. The Orthodox Church acquired 2,700 dunams in Caesarea. These ecclesiastical purchases initially precipitated the settlement of Greek Orthodox Christians alongside Caesarea’s Muslim inhabitants. In the 1922 Census, 32 Christians lived in Caesarea. However, over time their numbers dwindled and by the 1931 Census only 19 of them remained in Caesarea.

British Mandatory topo-cadastral maps show JCA / PICA owned the barren areas north of the Caesarea – Shuna road, while the Greek Orthodox Church owned the more fertile, cultivated area to its south. Bayyarat al-Khuri was mistaken for a ‘’Greek Convent’‘ and was marked as a religious endowment of the Greek Orthodox Church. This is an indicator of the land’s effetive juridical status within the endowment regime (waqf al-kanisa al-rumiyya), as any church property was, by definition, or evntually became an endowment. ….

The Greek-Cypriot priest Hanna al-Khuri who resided in the Bosnian village tended Bayyarat al-Khuri and tilled its land with the help of local workers….. However, the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 irreversibly ended Christian presence on the site. In the summer of 1938 an armed company of rebels, allegedly from Caesarea, Irtah or ‚Attil, kidnapped Fathr Hanna the priest and his younger brother. The armed company led the brothers towards Tulkarm and murdered them. Such acts of political violence were common during the Arab revolt and many a life was lost due to internal disagreements between rival revolutionary factions.

With its resident priest dead and in tandem with the ongoing Land Settlement operations in Caesarea, the Church secretly negotiated with PICA to dispose of its lands, marking a line of action foretelling subsequent dealings. The sides exchanged messengers …. to sign a contract promptly. According to this correspondence, the newly-elected Patriarch of Jerusalem, Timotheus I (1935-55) allegedly agreed in principle to dispose of all the Church’s land in Caesarea, on condition of his confirmation by the Mandate Authorities……’‘

So - We see with this example that Land purchases by the Greek Orthodox Church but financed by Russian money from the 1880s, adjacent to an abandoned ancient town that had been re-settled by the Ottoman State with Bosnian refugees but was later settled with Circassians and Christians, eventually led (following the murder of Christians by Arabs) to the purchase by a Jewish Fund for land acquisition (funded by foreign Jewish donations) to settle Jews. One wonders what role any Palestinians played in this sequence….. or whether the ‘’Waqf‘’ perpetuity of ownership accorded to religious institutions applies also to, for example, Yeshivot and synagogues in Hebron, the Old City of Jerusalem etc.

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