Short answers, pulled from the story.
Gaza City has a history of habitation going back at least 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the world. The earliest recorded settlement in the region was an ancient Egyptian fortress at Tell es-Sakan, inhabited until around 3000 BC. The city's name first appears in the military records of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III in the 15th century BC.
Gaza City had a recorded population of 590,481 as of 2017, making it the most populous city in the Palestinian territories at that time. The 2023 Gaza war caused most of the population to be displaced, rendering that figure outdated. Before the war, Gaza City had one of the highest overall population growth rates in the world, with a population density comparable to that of New York City.
Gaza was the last city to resist Alexander the Great on his march toward Egypt, and he besieged it for five months before capturing it in 332 BC. After the city fell, its inhabitants were either killed or taken captive. Alexander then repopulated Gaza with people from neighboring areas and reorganized it as a Greek polis.
Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi'i was born in Gaza in 767 AD and spent his early childhood there. He went on to found the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence, one of the four major schools of Islamic law in Sunni Islam. His birthplace in Gaza is one of the city's most significant contributions to Islamic intellectual history.
The Ridwan family governed Gaza City for over a century during the Ottoman period, beginning with governor Ridwan Pasha. Under Ahmad ibn Ridwan and later Husayn Pasha, the city experienced what historians describe as its last golden age, serving as the virtual capital of Palestine. During this era the Great Mosque was restored, six new mosques were built, and commerce flourished; the period ended when Ottoman officials replaced the family in direct governance.
The 2023 Gaza war destroyed or damaged numerous significant sites. The Great Mosque of Gaza, which had stood since Arab rule in the 8th century, was destroyed by Israeli bombing. The Church of Saint Porphyrius, the third oldest church in the world, was partially destroyed on the 19th of October 2023, killing at least 18 civilians sheltering inside. The Public Library of Gaza was destroyed by airstrike on the 27th of November 2023, and Qasr al-Basha, a Mamluk-era villa used by Napoleon, was destroyed in 2024.