Acre, Israel

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mosques, caravanserais, fortifications, Crusader buildings, bazaar and old harbor, is in striking contrast to the modern city of Haifa, only 23km/14mi away. Akko has an iron and steel works and chemical, ceramic and metalworking industries.

History

The history of Akko goes back to the Canaanite period. It was originally situated on Tell el- Fukhtar (2km/1.25mi east, near the stadium), on which excavations were carried out from 1973 onwards by an international team of archaeologists. Under Hellenistic and Persian occupation levels were revealed remains of a Canaanite settlement which the most recent findings suggest may have been occupied as early as 3000 B.C. The town was conquered by Pharaohs Tuthmosis III and Ramesses II, who recognized the strategic importance of its site. The Phoenicians who had settled here were deported in 640 B.C. by Assurbanipal. From 532 B.C. to the Greek conquest in 332 B.C. Akko was Persian. In 261, while under the sway of the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy II, it was renamed Ptolemais. In 219 it passed into the hands of the Seleucids, rulers of Syria, but was able to maintain its independence as a city-state. The Hasmoneans made two unsuccessful attempts to take Akko. In 30 B.C. Herod the Great received Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, here, and later built a gymnasium in the town. In A.D. 67 Vespasian used Akko, along with Caesarea, as a base for his campaign in Palestine. The town also prospered in Byzantine times and, from the seventh century, under the Omayyads, when it was the port for the Ommayad capital of Damascus. The Crusaders were unable to take the town until 1104, five years after their conquest of Jerusalem. They renamed it St Jean d'Acre and built a palace and the massive vaulted structure known as the Crypt of St John (Acre was the headquarters of the Knights of St John). The Italian cities of Genoa, Pisa and Venice established trading posts in the town, and it developed into a busy and flourishing port town. In 1187 the Crusaders were compelled to surrender the town to Saladin, but it was recovered in 1191 by Richard Coeur de Lion. After the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 Acre became capital of the Crusader kingdom, with a population estimated at 50,000. In 1219 St Francis of Assisi visited the town and established a nunnery. In 1228 the Emperor Frederick II landed here during his Crusade, as did Louis IX of France in 1250 after his unsuccessful campaign against Damietta. Soon afterwards there was a bitter conflict, almost amounting to civil war, between the two religious orders, the Knights Hospitallers of St John and the Templars. In 1290 the Crusaders slaughtered large numbers of Muslims. When the Mameluke Sultan El-Ashraf Khalil captured the town in the following year he took his revenge, and the Crusader kingdom came to a bloody end after an existence of just under 200 years. After the destruction of the town it remained uninhabited for over 200 years, until its rebuilding by the Druze emir Fakhr ed-Din in the 17th century. Around 1750 it was enlarged by Daher el-Amr, and this process was continued by his murderer and successor Ahmed el-Jazzar (the "Butcher"), a native of Bosnia, who ruled as Pasha from 1775 to 1805. In 1799, with British help, he withstood a siege of the town by Napoleon. From 1833 to 1840 Akko was held by Ibrahim Pasha, who defeated the Turks in Palestine with his Egyptian forces but was compelled by the European powers to withdraw. In the latter part of the 19th century Akko lost its importance as a port to Beirut and then Haifa. When British forces captured the town from the Turks in 1918 it had a population of 8,000, most of them Arabs. In 1920 and again during the Second World War the British authorities used the Citadel as a prison for Jewish underground fighters. The town was occupied by Israeli troops on May 17th 1948.