Haifa, Israel.
Travel & Tour
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Audrey DeLange
November 1999.

Acre or Akko, is located on the seacoast of the northwest coast of Israel. Its population is largely Arab and its most impressive building is Acre's mosque. Acre has a long history of conflict and war as one civilization was replaced by another, the conquerors simply built entirely new cities on top of those that they had destroyed. Beneath the Muslim buildings lie the ruins of a fortress and other buildings constructed by Christian Crusaders who at one time (1104 - 1291) dominated the region. Acre is located in the Northern District of Israel near Haifa about 14 miles away. It's population today is about 37,000. It contains a densely populated Old City, with mosques, caravanserais, fortifications, Crusader buildings, bazaar and an old harbor. Akko is known for its iron and steel works, chemical, ceramic, and metalworking industries. Archaeological work has unearthed about 5 % of the city exposing streets and shops, as well as the knights� chapel and dining hall. On some of its plaster walls, the 800-year-old drawings remain beautifully clear. Historians believe that people lived in Acre for nearly two hundred years until 1291 AD, when the Moslem Mamelukes conquered it and the city became deserted. A massive complex of buildings occupied by the Knights of Saint John, called the "Crusader city" is located opposite the Ahmed el-Jazzar Mosque in Akko. It was buried under a great mound of earth on which Ahmed el-Jazzar built his Citadel. The history of Akko goes back to the Canaanite period. It was originally situated on Tell el- Fukhtar 1.25 miles east, where excavations were carried out starting in 1973 by an international team of archaeologists. Under Hellenistic and Persian occupation levels were the remains of a Canaanite settlement which may have been occupied as early as in 3000 B.C. Akko was also conquered by both Pharaohs Tuthmosis III and Ramesses II, who recognized the importance of Akko. The Phoenicians who had settled here were driven out in about 640 B.C. by Assurbanipal. In 261, the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy II, renamed it 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. Then 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 Akko. In A.D. 67 Vespasian used Akko, along with Caesarea, as a base for his campaign in Palestine. Akko prospered during Byzantine times and, from the seventh century, under the Omayyads, while 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 Saint Jean d'Acre and built a palace and the massive building called the Crypt of Saint John, sinceAcre was the headquarters of the Knights of Saint John. The Italian cities of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice established trading posts in Akko, and it soon developed into a flourishing port town. Then in 1187 A. D. the Crusaders surrendered Akko to Saladin, but Akko was recovered in 1191 by Richard Coeur de Lion. After the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 Acre became capital of the Crusader kingdom and contained a population of about 50,000. In 1219 St Francis of Assisi visited the town and established a nunnery. During his Crusade in 1228 the Emperor Frederick II landed in Akka an Louis IX of France in landed 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 1221 A. D. he took revenge, and the Crusader kingdom came to a bloody end. After the destruction of Akko it remained uninhabited for over 200 years, when it was rebuilt by the Druze emir Fakhr ed-Din in the 17th century. In about 1750 A. D. Akko was enlarged by Daher el-Amr, and this process continued by his successor Ahmed el-Jazzar (the "Butcher"), a native of Bosnia, who ruled as Pasha from 1775 to 1805. 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 the British forces captured Akko from the Turks in 1918, it had an Arab population of about 8,000. In 1920 and again during the Second World War the British authorities used the Citadel as a prison for Jewish underground fighters. Akko was then occupied by Israeli troops on May 17th 1948. Old Acre is on UNESCO�s list of sites for the preservation of global culture. Acre's history is also closely tied to the history of Haifa due to their very close proximenty to each other.

Akkr Port & Mosques	Akkr Port & Mosques
Acre Port	Acre Port & Mosques
Mosque of El-Jazzar Pasha, Akko	Huge Columns Knights Hospitalliers Quarters
Crusaders Castle	Crusaders Castle
Citadel Crusader and Turkish	Crusaders Castle
Crusaders Castle	Crusaders Castle
Crusaders Castle Arch	Crusaders Castle
Crusaders Castle	Crusaders Castle
Crusaders Castle	Crusaders Castle
Crusaders Castle	Crusaders Castle
Underground Crusader City	Minaret In Old Town Akkr
Acre City Street	Acre City Street
Al Jazzar Street	Acre City Street
Acre City Street	Acre City Street

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