Apollonia–Arsuf

A Mamluk sultan besieged this coastal castle for forty days, nearly died in its moat, then wiped the town off the map for good.

historicalmilitary

In 1265 the Mamluk sultan Baibars brought his army to a walled town on the cliffs north of what is now Tel Aviv. The siege lasted forty days. At one point the defenders rushed out into the moat and very nearly killed him there. When the walls finally gave, the people inside were killed or sold as slaves, and the town was razed. The destruction worked. The place had been lived in without a break for roughly eighteen centuries, since Phoenician settlers arrived in the late sixth century BCE. After Baibars, it was simply abandoned. A geographer writing in the following century recorded that it contained no inhabitants at all. What survived above ground was the medieval city wall, a moat, a Crusader castle with a double ring of walls, and a harbour with built jetties sheltered behind a sandstone reef. Archaeologists began digging in earnest in the 1990s, and the ruins opened as a national park in 2002.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
In 1265, sultan Baibars, ruler of the Mamluks, captured Arsuf after 40 days of siege, after almost getting killed in the moat by a sortie of the defenders.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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