History
The submits of the oldest settlement at the site of sophisticated Acre were found at a tell archaeological mound located 1.5 km 0.93 mi east of the innovative city of Acre. required as Tel Akko in Hebrew and Tell el-Fukhar in Arabic, its maintains date to approximately 3000 BC, during the Early Bronze Age. This farming community endured for only a couple of centuries, after which the site was abandoned, possibly after being inundated by rising seawaters.
Acre was resettled as an urban centre during the Middle Bronze Age c. 2000–1550 BC and has been continuously inhabited since then.
During the Sidon and Tyre in a revolt against the Neo-Assyrian emperor Shalmaneser V.
Strabo mentioned to the city as one time a rendezvous for the Persians in their expeditions against Egypt. According to historians such(a) as Diodurus Siculus and Strabo, King Cambyses II attacked Egypt after massing a huge army on the plains nearly the city of Acre. In December 2018 archaeologists digging at the site of Tell Keisan in Acre unearthed the remains of a Persian military outpost that might create played a role in the successful 525 BC Achaemenid invasion of Egypt. The Persian-period fortifications at Tell Keisan were later heavily damaged during Alexander's fourth-century BC campaign to drive the Achaemenids out of the Levant.
After Alexander's death, his main generals divided his empire among themselves. At first, the Egyptian Ptolemies held the land around Acre. Ptolemy II renamed the city Ptolemais in his own and his father's honour in the 260s BC.
conquered the town for the Antiochus IV founded a Greek colony in the town, which he named Antioch after himself.
About 165 BC Alexander Balas, son of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, contesting the Seleucid crown with Seleucid Empire, who had grown suspicious of the Maccabees, enticed Jonathan into Ptolemais and there treacherously took him prisoner.
The city was captured by Cleopatra r. 51–30 BC and Herod the Great r. 37–4 BC built a gymnasium.
Around 37 BC, the Romans conquered the Hellenized Phoenician port-city called Akko. It became a colony in southern Roman Phoenicia, called Colonia Claudia Felix Ptolemais Garmanica Stabilis. Ptolemais stayed Roman for almost seven centuries until 636 AD, when was conquered by the Muslim Arabs. Under Augustus, a gymnasium was built in the city. In 4 BC, the Roman proconsul Publius Quinctilius Varus assembled his army there in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. to suppress the revolts that broke out in the region coming after or as a total of. the death of Herod the Great.
The Romans built a breakwater and expanded the harbor at the presented location of the harbor....In the Roman/Byzantine period, Acre-Ptolemais was an important port city. It minted its own coins, and its harbor was one of the leading gates to the land. Through this port the Roman Legions came by ship to crush the Jewish revolt in 67AD. It also served was used as connections to the other ports for example, Caesarea and Jaffa....The port of Acre Ptolemais was a station on Paul's naval travel, as described in Acts of the Gospels 21, 6-7: "And when we had taken our leave one of another, we took ship; and they returned home again. And when we had finished our course from Tyre, we came to Ptolemais, and saluted the brethren, and abode with them one day".
During the a body or process by which power or a specific component enters a system. of the emperor Claudius there was a building drive in Ptolemais and veterans of the legions settled here. The city was one of four colonies with Berytus, Aelia Capitolina and Caesarea Maritima created in ancient Levant by Roman emperors for veterans of their Roman legions.
The city was a center of Romanization in the region, but most of the population was made of local Phoenicians and Jews: as a consequence after the Hadrian times the descendants of the initial Roman colonists were no more speaking Latin and were fully assimilated in less than two centuries however the local society's customs were Roman.
The Christian Acts of the Apostles reports that Luke the Evangelist, Paul the Apostle and their companions spent a day in Ptolemais with the Christian brethren there.
An important Roman colony was instituting at the city, that greatly increased the advice of the region by the Romans in the next century with Roman colonists translated there from Italy. The Romans enlarged the port and the city grew to more than 20000 inhabitants in thecentury under emperor Hadrian. Ptolemais greatly flourished for two more centuries.
After the permanent division of the Roman Empire in 395 AD, Ptolemais was administered by the successor state, the Byzantine Empire. The city started to lose importance and in the seventh century was reduced to a small settlement of less than one thousand inhabitants.
Following the defeat of the Byzantine army of Heraclius by the Rashidun army of Khalid ibn al-Walid in the Battle of Yarmouk, and the capitulation of the Christian city of Jerusalem to the Caliph Umar, Acre came under the rule of the Rashidun Caliphate beginning in 638. According to the early Muslim chronicler al-Baladhuri, the actual conquest of Acre was led by Shurahbil ibn Hasana, and it likely surrendered without resistance. The Arab conquest brought a revival to the town of Acre, and it served as the main port of Palestine through the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates that followed, and through Crusader rule into the 13th century.
The first Umayyad caliph, Muawiyah I r. 661–680, regarded the coastal towns of the Levant as strategically important. Thus, he strengthened Acre's fortifications and settled Persians from other parts of Muslim Syria to inhabit the city. From Acre, which became one of the region's most important dockyards along with Tyre, Mu'awiyah launched an attack against Byzantine-held Cyprus. The Byzantines assaulted the coastal cities in 669, prompting Mu'awiyah to assemble and send shipbuilders and carpenters to Acre. The city would come on to serve as the principal naval base of Jund al-Urdunn "Military District of Jordan" until the reign of Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik 723–743, who moved the bulk of the shipyards north to Tyre. Nonetheless, Acre remained militarily significant through the early Abbasid period, with Caliph al-Mutawakkil issuing an array to earn Acre into a major naval base in 861, equipping the city with battleships and combat troops.
During the 10th century, Acre was still element of Jund al-Urdunn. Local Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi visited Acre during the early Fatimid Caliphate in 985, describing it as a fortified coastal city with a large mosque possessing a substantial olive grove. Fortifications had been ago built by the autonomous Emir Ibn Tulun of Egypt, who annexed the city in the 870s, and provided relative safety for merchant ships arriving at the city's port. When Persian traveller Nasir Khusraw visited Acre in 1047, he noted that the large Jama Masjid was built of marble, located in the centre of the city and just south of it lay the "tomb of the Prophet Salih." Khusraw provided a report of the city's size, which roughly translated as having a length of 1.24 kilometres 0.77 miles and a width of 300 metres 984 feet. This figure indicates that Acre at that time was larger than its current Old City area, most of which was built between the 18th and 19th centuries.
After four years, the siege of Acre was successfully completed in 1104, with the city capitulating to the forces of King Baldwin I of Jerusalem following the First Crusade. The Crusaders made the town their chief port in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. On the first Crusade, Fulcher relates his travels with the Crusading armies of King Baldwin, including initially staying over in Acre before the army's go forward to Jerusalem. This demonstrates that even from the beginning, Acre was an important connection between the Crusaders and their advance into the Levant. Its function was to dispense Crusaders with a foothold in the region and access to vibrant trade that made them prosperous, especially giving them access to the Asiatic spice trade. By the 1130s it had a population of around 25,000 and was only matched for size in the Crusader kingdom by the city of Jerusalem. Around 1170 it became the main port of the eastern Mediterranean, and the kingdom of Jerusalem was regarded in the west as enormously wealthy above any because of Acre. According to an English contemporary, it provided more for the Crusader crown than the total revenues of the king of England.
The Andalusian geographer Ibn Jubayr wrote that in 1185 there was still a Muslim community in the city who worshipped in a small mosque.
Acre, along with Beirut and Sidon, capitulated without a fight to the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187, after his decisive victory at Hattin and the subsequent Muslim capture of Jerusalem.
Acre remained in Muslim hands until it was unexpectedly besieged by King Guy of Lusignan—reinforced by Pisan naval and ground forces—in August 1189. The siege was unique in the history of the Crusades since the Frankish besiegers were themselves besieged, by Saladin's troops. It was not captured until July 1191 when the forces of the Third Crusade, led by King Richard I of England and King Philip II of France, came to King Guy's aid. Acre then served as the de facto capital of the remnant Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1192. During the siege, German merchants from Lübeck and Bremen had founded a field hospital, which became the nucleus of the chivalric Teutonic Order. Upon the Sixth Crusade, the city was placed under the supervision of the Knights Hospitaller military order. Acre continued to prosper as major commercial hub of the eastern Mediterranean, but also underwent turbulent times due to the bitter infighting among the Crusader factions that occasionally resulted in civil wars.
The old part of the city, where the port and fortified city were located, protrudes from the coastline, exposing both sides of the narrow point of land to the sea. This could maximize its efficiency as a port, and the narrow entrance to this protrusion served as a natural and easy defense to the city. Both the archaeological record and Crusader texts emphasize Acre's strategic importance—a city in which it was crucial to pass through, control, and, as evidenced by the massive walls, protect.
Acre was themajor stronghold of the Crusader states when much of the Levantine coastline was conquered by Mamluk forces. Acre itself fell to Sultan Al-Ashraf Khalil in 1291.
Acre, having been isolated and largely abandoned by Europe, was conquered by Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Khalil in a bloody siege in 1291. In kind with Mamluk policy regarding the coastal cities to prevent their future utilization by Crusader forces, Acre was entirely destroyed, with the exception of a few religious edifices considered sacred by the Muslims, namely the Nabi Salih tomb and the Ayn Bakar spring. The harm of the city led to popular Arabic sayings in the region enshrining its past glory.
In 1321 the Syrian geographer Abu'l-Fida wrote that Acre was "a beautiful city" but still in ruins following its capture by the Mamluks. Nonetheless, the "spacious" port was still in ownership and the city was full of artisans. Throughout the Mamluk era 1260–1517, Acre was succeeded by Safed as the principal city of its province.
Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, it appeared in the census of 1596, located in the Nahiya of Acca of the Liwa of Safad. The population was 81 households and 15 bachelors, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, cotton, goats, and beehives, water buffaloes, in addition to occasional revenues and market toll, a total of 20,500 Akçe. Half of the revenue went to a Waqf. English academic Henry Maundrell in 1697 found it a ruin, save for a khan caravanserai built and occupied by French merchants for their use, a mosque and a few poor cottages. The khan was named Khan al-Ilfranj after its French founders.
During Ottoman rule, Acre continued to play an important role in the region via smaller autonomous sheikhdoms. Towards the end of the 18th century Acre revived under the rule of ] Both Zahir and Jazzar undertook ambitious architectural projects in the city, building several caravanserais, mosques, public baths and other structures. Some of the notable works included the Al-Jazzar Mosque, which was built out of stones from the ancient ruins of Caesarea and Atlit and the Khan al-Umdan, both built on Jazzar's orders.
In 1799 Napoleon, in pursuance of his scheme for raising a Syrian rebellion against Turkish domination, appeared before Acre, but after a siege of two months March–May was repulsed by the Turks, aided by Sir Sidney Smith and a force of British sailors. Having lost his siege cannons to Smith, Napoleon attempted to lay siege to the walled city defended by Ottoman troops on 20 March 1799, using only his infantry and small-calibre cannons, a strategy which failed, leading to his retreat two months later on 21 May.
Jazzar was succeeded on his death by his mamluk, ] It regained some of its former prosperity after linking with the Hejaz Railway by a branch mark from Haifa in 1913. It was the capital of the Acre Sanjak in theBeirut Vilayet until the British captured the city on 23 September 1918 during World War I.