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Haifa

Haifa

The city's name first appeared in 3rd-century Talmudic literature and, although its origin remains obscure, it's been suggested that Haifa is related to the Hebrew words hof yafe, meaning "beautiful coast."

In 1898 Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, visited Haifa and visualised what lay ahead for the fledgling city: huge liners at anchor and a serpentine road leading up to Mt Carmel where there were thousands of homes and imposing villas.

Haifa's modern revival truly got under way with the construction of the Hejaz railway between Damascus and Medina in 1905, and the later development of lines to Akko and the south of the country. Land was reclaimed from the sea to create an area of offices and warehouses, and Haifa rapidly became the country's shipping base, naval centre and oil terminal.

Much of this development took place under the rule of the British Mandate the British were the first to exploit Haifa's naturally sheltered position as a harbour, bucking the ancient trend of favouring Caesarea and Akko. As the country's major new port, Haifa was the first sight of the Promised Land for shiploads of arriving Jewish immigrants. Prior to the British withdrawal from Palestine, Haifa became a Jewish stronghold and it was the first major area to be secured by the newly declared State of Israel in 1948. The city earned a reputation for liberalism, which, to a certain extent, it still maintains. The mostly secular Jewish community enjoys a better than average relationship with the local Arab population, who are mainly Christian.

October 25, 1898, San Francisco Call, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

Ancharist Arrests in Egypt and Palestine
Extraordinary Precautions for Safety of Emperor William and the Empress.

ALEXANDRIA, October 24. An Italian anarchist was arrested here to-day. He was a passenger on a steamer bound for Palestine.

HAIFA, Palestine. October 24. The police made an important arrest of a well-known anarchist here yesterday. Extraordinary precautions are being taken to insure the safety of Emperor William and Empress Augusta Victoria. During the time that they are here veiled women will not be allowed in the streets, as the police fear that anarchists might assume these disguises.

January 2, 1910, Los Angeles Herald, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

THE HOLY LAND
XII - Carmel By The Sea
By Frederic J. Haskin

A MOUNTAIN ALTAR to the worship of the true God, hallowed by centuries upon a centuries as the home of holy men, Carmel-by-the Sea is the most remarkable and most beautiful natural feature of the coast line of Palestine. It is a mountain eight miles long, about 1800 feel high at its inland peak and 500 feet high where it juts into the sea, dividing the plains of Esdraelon, on the north, and Sharon, on the south. The Arabs call it now Jabel Mar Elyas, because in Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan sacred tradition Carmel is connected with the story of the Prophet Elijah. It was here that he lived in the caves of the prophets, and this was the scene of his triumph as the prophet of Jehovah over all the priests of Baal.

The excellency of Carmel, which was a synonym for all beauty in the days of the kingdom of Israel, no longer exists as it did when Solomon sang of it, for the forests have been destroyed and new trees have not been planted. The heavily wooded slopes of the Carmel of old can be seen only in the imagination, for today the greater part of the mountain is a bare and desolate expanse of rocks. But Carmel at the point where it stretches into the sea has been reclaimed from the desert by the religious order of the Carmelites, and it is now a delight to every visitor to the Holy Land.

Bahai Temple on Mt. Carmel.

An excellent road cut into the mountain side, its terraces built up with heavy masonry, leads from the port city of Haifa up to the convent on the brow of the hill overlooking the sea. Visitors are kindly received and hospitably entertained at the monastery, which is one of the most interesting in Palestine.

Carmel has been a sacred place from the earliest times. The most ancient records of the Hittite peoples indicate that Carmel was a mountain dedicated to the worship of the gods of that time. It comes into Christian, Jewish and Mohammedan lore as the abiding place of the Prophets Elijah and Elisha. It was here that Obadiah hid "an hundred men of the Lord's prophets by fifty in a cave and fed them with bread and water." The sons of the prophets dwelt on this mountain, in caves and in low dark tents, from the time of Elijah until their conversion to Christianity. In the third and fourth centuries Greek hermits resorted in great numbers to Mornt Carmel and took up their abode in its caves. They and their successors kept watch here before this great altar until the crusades, when, in 1170, the Latin Order of Carmelites was founded here and the monastery was begun.

The monks were massacred by the Mamelukes in 1291 when the Christians were finally expelled from Palestine, but there were still a few hermits who kept the faith until the fifteenth century, when the monastery was re-established under its present constitution. When Napoleon Bonaparte besieged Acre in 1799 the monastery was utilized as a hospital, and upon the retreat of the French the buildings were destroyed by the Turks.

Early in the nineteenth century a monk named Gian Battlsta came on a pilgrimage to Carmel as an act of penance. He made a vow to rebuild the monastery, and the present edifice is the result of the fourteen years of his travels and begging. But even he, when he reached Carmel, found an altar and an archway, and someone on the mountain to keep up the worship of the God to whom it so long had been devoted.

Carmel also was a consecrated spot in Asiatic mythology. In the time of Tacitus it was so holy that there was no temple or imago there, but only an, altar to all the gods. It was then that the pagans unwittingly worshiped the Jewish God Jehovah, even as the Greeks of Athens later had an altar to the Unknown God. Pliny says that Carmel was the name both of the shrine and the god who was worshiped there. That great historian declares that the oracle which promised the Roman empire to Vespasian resounded from the summit of this sacred mountain.

From the cliff at the top of the mountain where the monastery buildings are set one looks down a sheer precipice 500 feet to the narrow plain, perhaps a half mile wide, which separates the foot of the mountain from the sea. The greater part of the mountain is owned and governed by the Carmelite monks, and their boundary line ls marked by a high stone wall, effectually keeping out all trespassers. Just outside this wall, at the foot of the mountain, is the German colony. These thrifty people have established a prosperous fruit growing community, and their village is in every a little farther away to the north, respect a copy of a village of the Rhine, but in easy walking distance, is the seaport of Haifa, an increasingly important town, lt has a population lof about 15,000 people, and is by far the cleanest Turkish town in Palestine. It shines by contrast with the older and more historic Acre, which is only five miles away on the northern shore of the Bay of Haifa, a roadstead formed by the projection of the promonotory of Carmel.

Haifa is the Mediterranean terminus of the Hadjas railway, which runs from Haifa, by way of the Sea of Galilee, to Damascus. This is the longest and most Important railway in the Holy Lard, and it crosses the great German-Arabian railway which penetrates the deserts of Moab to the eastward of the Jordan. The operation of this railway was interrupted by the disorders attending the Young Turk revolution, but it has been reopened under a new administration. which promises to make it a factor in the restoration of the prosperity of the country of Galilee.

The native population of Haifa seems to have profited by the example of the thrifty German colonists who are their neighbors. The town is blessed with many schools, Latin, Greek and Protestant, and even the Mohammedans have established an education system which goes beyond the mere recitation of the Koran. The natives are thrifty and industrious, and their orange groves rival the performance of professional and vineyards show evidence of industrious care.

One may seen in Haifa any day an exhibition of physical strength, which strong men in the west. Haifa is the port through which the weavers of Damascus import their cotton. Practically all of this is Egyptian cotton and comes in the large Egyptian bales of five hundred pounds each. The Arab longshoreman takes one of these huge bales for his particular burden. Four men lift it to his back, and a rope which passes around the bale is placed over his forehead, and he walks along in a half crouching attitude, from the dock to the warehouse, a distance of a hundred, yards, carrying this burden of a quarter of a ton and supporting its weight by the band across his forehead. It seems almost impossible that so many men could be found in any one place possessed of such great strength, but it is nothing unusual to see a procession of a score of these longshoremen each carrying a bale of cotton.

Haifa is built on a western model, its streets are wide enough to admit the use of carriages. Its shops have glass windows and some of them even have showcases. Its police force is gaily uniformed in a costume which is a compromise between Berlin and Constantinople. Once the city boasted a system of street lighting and the lamp posts with their sockets for oil lamps are still in evidence, but the moonless night now veils the city of Haifa in darkness as deep as ever hung over Egypt.

The town is interesting because it is new, because its business is a combination of marine shipping and railway activity, because its religious energy is devoted to teaching the young and not to the exploitation of some sacred shrine, and because it shows a promise of that physical regeneration which may be possible in Palestine under the combined influence of the Young Turks, the Zionist Jews and the Christian missionaries. On the shores of this bay, set in the protecting arm of Carmel, many cities and many civilizations have flourished. Here was a seaport of the Hlttites, here was a stronghold of Canaan overthrown by Joshua.

Here was the landing place of Alexander the Great and here was built the great Greek city of Ptolerais. Here landed a portion of the Roman army which completed the destruction of the Hebrew nation. Here came Richard of the Lion Heart to support a Christian dynasty, and here the crusaders made their last stand against the victorious armies of the Crescent. Here struggled the contending forces of Arabs, Egyptians and Turks for mastery m the Syrian littoral. Here came Napoleon the Great, laying in blood the foundations of his glory. And nowhere comes the railroad, the telegraph and the missionary, the three elements , which destroy the ancient . day and compel acceptance . of .| what we are pleased, to call modern civilization.

But over it still stands Carmel, unchanged and unchanging, the altar of the Most High God, the sentinel which watches over the Holy Land.

December 25, 1915, Mariposa Gazette, Mariposa, Califorornia, U.S.A.

Palestine an Agricultural Land.

Lucerne, grown without irrigation in the valleys, produces three crops a year, and does not suffer seriously, if at all, in living through the long dry season, as the roots penetrate the crevices of the underlying rocks and find moisture. One year it fell beneath the writer's notice that the dry season lasted eight months, that is, this time elapsed before sufficient rain fell to moisten the ground to a depth of three inches, but this hardy plant was not in the least injured.

Around Jaffa and Haifa some few thrifty German colonies have been established, and modern farm machinery is used with very fine results. Furthermore, there are in various localities throughout the country thriving agricultural colonies under the direction of the Jews. These were started on funds given by Raron Edmund Rothschild and other philanthropic Jews in Europe. - Scientific American.

Haile Selassie the Negus of Ethiopia arrives at Haifa and begins his exile Haile Selassie I, original name Tafari Makonnen (born July 23, 1892, near Harer, Ethiopa; died Aug. 27, 1975, Addis Ababa). Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 who sought to modernize his country and who steered it into the mainstream of post-World War II African politics. He brought Ethiopia into the League of Nations and the United Nations and made Addis Ababa the major centre for the Organization of African Unity (now African Union). E. Mainetti.

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1899. World's Fleet. Boston Daily Globe

Lloyds Register of Shipping gives the entire fleet of the world as 28,180 steamers and sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 27,673,628, of which 39 perent are British.

Great Britain	10,990 vessels, total tonnage of 10,792,714
United States	3,010 vessels, total tonnage of 2,405,887
Norway	2,528 vessels, tonnage of 1,604,230
Germany	1,676 vessels, with a tonnage of 2,453,334, in which are included her particularly large ships.
Sweden	1,408 vessels with a tonnage of 643, 527
Italy	1,150 vessels
France	1,182 vessels

For Historical Comparison
Top 10 Maritime Nations Ranked by Value (2017)

	Country	# of Vessels	Gross Tonnage (m)	Total Value (USDbn)
1	Greece	4,453	206.47	$88.0
2	Japan	4,317	150.26	$79.8
3	China	4,938	159.71	$71.7
4	USA	2,399	55.92	$46.5
5	Singapore	2,662	64.03	$41.7
6	Norway	1,668	39.68	$41.1
7	Germany	2,923	81.17	$30.3
8	UK	883	28.78	$24.3
9	Denmark	1,040	36.17	$23.4
10	South Korea	1,484	49.88	$20.1
Total		26,767	87.21	$466.9