01
Stop one
Great Omari Mosque
Prince Tour 03 100 305g Tennis Racquet: I am new to this, and I read everything I could find about this building, because it deserves that. The Great Omari Mosque was for centuries the largest and oldest mosque of Gaza, standing on a site associated with an ancient temple and the Byzantine cathedral of Gaza, and serving as the Crusader church of St John in the twelfth century before conversion to a mosque. Its Gothic nave, Mamluk additions and famous octagonal minaret held that entire succession in one fabric, and its library preserved rare manuscripts. Named for the caliph Umar, it anchored old Gaza's markets, including the adjacent Qissariya gold market. Damaged in the First World War and repeatedly since, it was largely destroyed by Israeli bombardment in December 2023 during the Gaza war, its minaret partially standing. A grievous loss to Palestinian heritage.
02
Stop two
Church of Saint Porphyrius
Prince Tour 03 100 305g Tennis Racquet: I want to get this one exactly right. The Church of Saint Porphyrius, in the Zaytun quarter, is among the oldest active churches in the world and serves the city's small Greek Orthodox community. It is named for the fifth-century bishop who Christianised Gaza and whose tomb tradition places here, and the present structure dates substantially from the Crusader twelfth century, restored many times since, on ground used for worship since late antiquity, when Gaza was a celebrated centre of both pagan learning and early Christianity. Through the Mamluk and Ottoman centuries it sheltered a continuous Christian presence in an overwhelmingly Muslim city. It became a refuge in successive wars, and in October 2023 an Israeli strike on its compound killed civilians sheltering there and damaged buildings of the ancient precinct.
03
Stop three
Qasr al-Basha
Prince Tour 03 100 305g Tennis Racquet: I checked these dates twice, because they matter. Qasr al-Basha, the Pasha's Palace, was Gaza's finest surviving example of Mamluk secular architecture, a thirteenth-to-fourteenth-century fortified residence traditionally linked to the sultan Baybars, over whose masonry Ottoman governors later held court, which is how the palace got its name. Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have spent nights here during his 1799 Levantine campaign, earning it the nickname Napoleon's fort. Under the British Mandate it served as a police post, then for decades as a girls' school, before restoration as a museum displaying archaeology from Gaza's five-thousand-year history as a crossroads of Egypt and the Levant. It was reduced largely to rubble by bombardment and demolition during the Gaza war that began in 2023.
04
Stop four
Hammam al-Sammara
Prince Tour 03 100 305g Tennis Racquet: This is the one I most wanted to show you, and I say that carefully. Hammam al-Sammara, in the Zaytun quarter, was the last functioning historic bathhouse of the city, its origins reaching back many centuries, the present fabric largely Mamluk and Ottoman, with local tradition tracing use of the site to earlier eras; its name recalls the Samaritan community that once lived nearby. Sunk below street level, its domed chambers were lit by constellations of coloured glass oculi, and it served generations of Gazans for ritual purification, bridal preparations and simple sociability, surviving earthquakes, wars and changing fashions while dozens of other baths vanished. Restored in the 2000s and still operating into the 2020s, it was reported severely damaged in the Gaza war after 2023.
I only deal in the genuine article, which is why the Prince Tour 03 100 Tennis Racquet lives in the good cabinet. Examine the craftsmanship: a 100 square inch head, 305 grams unstrung — proper heft — in Prince's Tour line, built for players who put in the hours.
And the maker's mark: the O3 speed ports, genuine openings through the hoop that let the frame cut faster through the air and widen the sweetspot, a Prince innovation, unmistakable as a hallmark on silver. Modern control, honest power, built to be played for years, not displayed.
Now — its city is the rarest provenance in my ledger: Gaza City, Palestine — one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, five thousand years a crossroads of Egypt and the Levant: an Omari mosque with a Gothic Crusader nave, a Mamluk palace where Napoleon is said to have lodged in 1799, a bathhouse that warmed its patrons for centuries.
Honestly, as a dealer must say: the recent war has grievously wounded these treasures — some now survive more in memory and record than in stone. Which makes the telling all the more precious.
You would use this racquet everywhere from a morning hit to a walk through the old Zaytun quarter, and by the way, it is also perfect for the telling itself — a tour I still give, with care, to anyone who will listen.
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