Haifa and the Northern Coast Feature

First mentioned in the Talmud, the area around Haifa had two settlements in ancient times. To the east, in what is today a congested industrial zone in the port, lay Zalmona, and 5 km (3 mi) west around the cape was Shiqmona.

The Crusaders conquered Haifa when it was an important Arab town and maintained it as a fortress along the coastal road to Akko for 200 years; it was lost and repeatedly regained by the Christians. During this period, in 1154, the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (the Carmelite order) was founded on the slopes of Mt. Carmel by a group of hermits following the principles of the prophet Elijah and the rules of poverty, vegetarianism, and solitude.

After Akko and Haifa succumbed to the Mamluk Sultan Baybars in 1265, Haifa was destroyed and left derelict. It was a sleepy fishing village for centuries.

The city reawakened under the rule of Bedouin sheikh Dahr el-Omar, who had rebelled against direct Ottoman rule in the mid-18th century and independently governed Akko and the Galilee. In 1761 Dahr ordered the city to be demolished and moved about 3 km (2 mi) to the south. The new town was fortified by walls and protected by a castle, and its port began to compete with that of Akko across the bay.

Napoléon, too, came to Haifa, though only briefly, and en route to ignominious defeat at Akko during his Eastern Campaign. Napoléon left his wounded at the Carmelite Monastery when he beat a retreat in 1799, but the French soldiers there were killed and the monks driven out by Ahmed el-Jazzar, the victorious pasha of Akko.

The religious reform movement known as the Templers founded Haifa's German Colony in 1868; the area has been lovingly restored. The city became the center of the Baha'i faith in the early 20th century. With the creation of a deep-water port in 1929, Haifa's development as a modern city began. By the time the state of Israel was declared in 1948, Haifa had a population of more than 100,000. Today it's the country's third-largest city, home to 265,000 Jews and Arabs.