About us. Special themes. Major programmes. For the Press. Help preserve sites now! Join the , Members. Search Advanced. By Properties. The present Old City dates to Ottoman times, including the magnificent seawalls, and it sits on top of a Crusader city that is still being excavated. This underground Crusader city is so well preserved because the Muslim conquerors Ahmad the Butcher never destroyed it; they just built right over it.
The famous Citadel here was a prison during the Ottoman era and later used by the British for the same purpose as well. The city changed hands many times and has become an archeological wonderland of Templar Knight tunnels, Turkish baths, ancient walls, mosques, synagogues, and Crusader era buildings, many still under excavation with fabulous dungeons, great halls, gothic churches, and a hospital.
In , extensive restoration work on her seawall revealed a 2,year-old naval pier that appears to have been used as a dry dock to repair ships. Coins and an abundance of Greek pottery fragments were also discovered in the effort. These current Ottoman walls are young in comparison, a mere years-old, but they sit on the original Crusader walls below.
To fully appreciate this ancient fortress, consider walking her ramparts that go along the entire city or take a boat ride around the Old City an especially interesting option. Acre was the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a once-mighty Crusader state. Its former capital, the city of Jerusalem, had been captured by the Muslim military genius Saladin back in Perched on the coast of the Mediterranean, the new capital of Acre served as a major trading hub and crucial nerve centre for the Crusader presence in the region.
In , however, it came under assault from an ominous enemy: the Mamluk Sultanate. They eventually rose up to establish their own dynasty to rule Egypt and Syria from the midth Century. The time of the Ayyubid Dynasty, forged by the great Saladin, was over. The Crusaders now had to deal with the fearsome aggression of the Mamluks, who were determined to drive the Western forces from the Middle East.
The Mamluk Sultan Qalawun had his sights set on Acre after having already taken another Crusader state, the County of Tripoli, in He just need a good pretext to launch an attack, and that came in August A group of reckless Italian crusaders, sent over to Acre to serve as reinforcements in the event of an enemy attack, wound up in an ugly confrontation with Muslim locals in Acre, killing them.
He himself would die that same year, which meant it was his son, Al-Ashraf Khalil, who would lead the eventual charge against Acre. Seven weeks later, in June, King Richard I of England hove into view with 25 ships, fresh from his conquest of Cyprus. En route, they had overtaken a large Muslim supply ship loaded with men for the relief of Acre. The arrival of the new French and English Crusaders renewed Frankish hopes. He preferred the intricacies of siege warfare as opposed to the hand-to-hand battle relished by Richard.
Although the English king lacked ruling experience, he had gained renown as a fierce fighter endowed with great personal courage.
The timbers supporting the mine shaft were then set on fire. Above ground, a ferocious mangonel bombardment further weakened the tower, which soon collapsed. Committing any able-bodied man who could bear arms to the breach, the Muslim defenders were barely able to fend off the attacking Franks. Mighty siege engines continued to hurl heavy rocks and fire pots at the weakening city. Sickness, however, struck both Philip and Richard, the latter seriously. Called leonardie by Ambroise, the disease resembled scurvy, with a wasting of body and loss of hair.
Saladin was unable to break through the ring of besiegers to relieve Acre. Volunteer swimmers carried messages from the city to the gathered emirs, pleading for help. A final appeal was sent out on July 7. They probably sensed they would all be massacred if the Christians were forced to take the city by storm.
The first siege of Acre had taken nearly two years and may have cost more than , Christian casualties. The tenacity of the opposing armies, coupled with the bloodletting and abominable living conditions, led at least one historian to liken the siege to the terrible Battle of Verdun in The final savagery of the siege took place after the city had fallen.
Squabbles had already caused contact to be broken with Conrad of Montserrat and Philip Augustus, the latter returning to France, but the Franks still were strong enough to win stirring victories at Arsuf and Jaffa.
The recapture of Jerusalem, however, was a goal not to be attained. Acre knew relative peace and prosperity as a Christian city over the next century. The rise of the Mamelukes, ferocious slave-warriors from Egypt, in the mid- 13th century signaled an end to the Frankish states of the Levant.
In , Jaffa and Antioch, former Frankish strongholds, were captured. A series of truces kept the Mamelukes at bay until negotiations broke down in Tripoli was destroyed as the sultan Qalawan turned his attention to driving all Christians out of Palestine. Acre, by then, had been heavily fortified with double walls and a string of 12 towers set at irregular intervals on both the inner and outer walls. The bulk of the defense rested on the knights of the Teutonic, Templar and Hospitaler military orders.
On April 5, , Khalil arrived before the walls of Acre. His siege engines rained stones and fire pots upon the city. Khalil ordered a general assault on Acre on Friday, May Driven by the boom and bang of drums and cymbals, the white-turbaned Mamelukes rushed the walls as mangonels and archers kept up a blistering fusillade.
They stormed the Accursed Tower, rebuilt after its destruction a century earlier. A furious counterattack led by Hospitaler Marshal Matthew of Clermont stymied the Mamelukes for a time, but their numbers were too great.
Tower after tower fell.
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