My
new book is out this autumn – and I hope it will prove a gripping read.
The UK and US editions
In
March 2018 I made a trip to Acre in Northern Israel – Akka in Arabic, Akko in
Hebrew – as part of the research for
writing the book. I wanted to explore the place where the crusaders
made their last stand in the Holy Land in 1291 against an enormous Islamic
army.
I
thought I was prepared. I had read all the research literature I could get hold
off. I had studied archaeologists’ reports and pinned their various attempts to
map the medieval city on my study wall. I wanted to get a sense of thirteenth
century crusader Acre, its topography, quarters, principle buildings, the
position taken up by the besieging Islamic army of the Mamluks. Above all I
wanted to find out as much as I could about its defences. My unfolding book was
full of the names of its towers and gates, descriptions of its moats and
bridges. Where had the Accursed Tower been? The crucial Gate of St Anthony? The
ominous Tower of Blood? And what did they look like?
The
only picture we have of the Accursed Tower: in a thirteenth century map.
Our information about the layout of crusader Acre comes from contemporary maps like this.
I
left a snowy England on the last day of February and stepped into brilliant
Mediterranean sunlight. What confronted me was much more complicated than my
months of book work had suggested. Old Acre, the ancient city, is a tiny place,
but deceptive and as dense as Venice – winding streets, tiny squares, arches,
dead ends, the domes of mosques, glimpses into courtyards – always ending
somewhere by the sea. Above all it’s a Middle Eastern city, largely
Palestinian, in which calls to prayer mingle with the sound of church bells.
A
skyline of turquoise domes
Everything
leads back to the sea: ‘Akka won’t be afraid of the sound of the waves’ (Arab
proverb)
I
found the city walls impressive. Double-lined, with a deep ditch, they ring the
peninsula of the old city from shore to shore. From the ramparts it’s possible
to look out over the new town of Akko outside and imagine the defence, or back
into the harbour:
The
problem is that the walls I was standing on were constructed in the eighteenth
century, probably from plundered medieval stone. They kept Napoleon at bay in a
much later Mediterranean power struggle. I spent a little time with archaeologist Danny
Syon of the Israel Antiquities Authority who disabused me of many of my more
fanciful assumptions. Almost nothing remains of the famed defences. He showed
me the one small stretch of crusader footing to a section of wall that’s now
gone:
All
the towers that the crusaders defended have vanished. Archaeological digs have discovered
the remnants of some foundations, burnt in the final sacking of the city, but
nothing exists above ground. I was little the wiser. Academic debate continues
as to the size of the medieval city and the exact position of the walls.
Instead
I found a much more complex scattering of crusader fragments built into later
additions in a city whose street plan probably dates back to the long Arab
presence. Everywhere Acre tantalises and perplexes, offers clues that one can’t
quite read. My pleasantly cool Airbnb was vaulted with arches probably built
during the crusader period.
A
confusing jumble of interlocking arches – in a medieval Airbnb?
This
is a city – if we can call it one now – of immense antiquity and importance to
the Middle East and the Mediterranean world. Everyone’s been here from the
Bronze Age on: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Saladin, Richard
the Lionheart, the Ottomans and Napoleon. The layers of history lie one on top
of another in rich profusion. And it’s absolutely fascinating.
This
chunk of rock is all that’s left of a small port used by the Pisan merchant colony
in the city.
Everything
in Acre leads down to the harbour, once one of the most important in the
Mediterranean. Here goods were loaded and unloaded in an inner basin –
archaeologists are still pondering exactly what was where. Fishing – the
traditional activity of the local people – has declined, due largely to
industrial pollution from nearby Haifa. (Perhaps nothing’s quite recent about
this: all the sewage and the offal from butcher’s shops and the stinking
effluent from tanneries poured into the medieval harbour – which was known as the
Filthy Sea.)
Now
the harbour’s main function seems to be providing speedboat thrill rides for
tourists. The boats make tight turns, throwing out massive bow waves to the
sound of blasting Arabic technopop. The passengers squeal in fear and delight. The
last remnant of the medieval Tower of Flies that once enclosed the breakwater
watches impassively.
One morning I walked out of Acre through modern suburbs to
get a perspective from a prominent hill a few hundred metres to the south. Here
the first inhabitants settled in the Bronze Age, and from this vantage point a
succession of armies have conducted siege campaigns: Guy de Lusignan and
Richard the Lionheart bottled up Saladin’s garrison for 683 days from 1189-91
before taking it back. Then in a final reversal of fortune the siege by the
Mamluk Sultan Khalil a century later in 1291 that killed off the Holy Land
crusades. I tried to imagine Khalil’s ceremonial red tent erected on the hill’s
summit and his massive army ranged below, surrounding the Christian city in a
great arc that stretched from shore to shore. Now the crest is surmounted by a
later aspirant to Acre, the metal outline of Napoleon looking like a brandy
advertisement.
I
strolled along the fine sandy beach that stretches ten miles south to Haifa, as
far as the mouth of the river Naiman that waters the fertile Acre plain and
provided the city with food. The fine sand created a local industry in glass
making from the time of the Phoenicians on.
Bird
prints in the sand that once provided glass for the Middle East – and Europe
The
Naiman
Back
in Acre I made a visit to the compound
of the Knights of St John, the Hospitallers, which remains the most impressive
remnant of its crusader days – and its touristic highlight – a warren of
pillared halls, vaults and courtyards, displays of medieval pottery and
graffiti, which give a sense of the enormous wealth that the military crusading
orders possessed.
The
refectory – the dining hall – of the Hospitallers
A gargoyle shines in the dark
In a courtyard, a replica banner
provided me with the emblem of the Knights that became the cover to the UK
edition of the book.
At
the entrance to the compound there are collections of perfectly spherical limestone
balls – the artillery that bombarded the city from giant Mamluk catapults. Some
of these were quarried and transported from rock strata twelve miles away – harder
than the city walls. The heaviest weigh up to 165 kilos.
I
was also desperate to see what, if anything was left of the Templars’ Castle.
Situated on the sea shore, it had been a formidable and magnificent complex,
and the site of a dramatic last stand until its outer walls were undermined and
collapsed. Instead I found just a shallow basin of sea, in which, when the
water is still, you can discern the faint outline of foundations.
Across
the street from the lost castle there’s a more imposing Templar memorial. A
nondescript doorway leads down steps into the cool dark. For a small entrance
fee you can descend into a subterranean world and gain a real sense of the Order’s
wealth and power. The Templars’ tunnel runs for three hundred metres beneath
the city. Constructed from extraordinarily well-cut stone, it’s an eerie place,
dimly lit, curving away from you in an unknown direction. As the street noise
fades, you hear, or think you can hear, ominous sounds: the mutter of voices, a
cock crowing, the trickle of running water. Some of it is faked – an audio
installation – but it’s a place where the distant past seems close. You emerge,
surprised and blinking into brilliant sunlight close to the port. As with so
many aspects of the city there’s uncertainty about the tunnel’s function. The
most likely explanation is that it provided the Templars with secure access to
and from the harbour, safe from quarrelling rival factions who controlled
access above ground.
For
ten days I poked and pried among Acre’s courtyards and alley ways. A day with local
guide Andrew Abado helped me understand the medieval city more deeply. He took
me into people’s cellars – deep underlayers – and picked out discernible
features of medieval houses, gateways and warehouses, rebuilt or incorporated
into other structures.
A fragmentary crusader building
The
pleasures of wandering in Acre seemed endless, despite its small size. I sat in
mosque courtyards and in the caravanserais that accommodated Ottoman merchants,
put my ear to the doors of churches where services were being conducted in
Greek and in Arabic, stumbled on small squares – tiny breathing spaces in a
dense urban space - where children played football, and experienced a lot of
street art.
A caravanserai for Ottoman merchants
In a backstreet, a monument to
Britain’s wars with Napoleon
A household celebrates a return
from the Hajj
The
people of Acre seem to have a taste for creating murals and surrealist sculptures:
The
long covered market street is a souk for tourist souvenirs – toy boats, water
pipes, evil eyes – as well as more useful things: fish, fruit and falafels:
The
city’s soundscapes were vivid: squeals of kids on the speedboat rides, the
somnolent cooing of pigeons, the more bloodcurdling shriek of a peacock that
seemed to live on my roof, the echo of footfalls fading down alleys, the almost
silent swoosh of electric bikes surprising the unwary from behind, the rustling
of palm trees in the spring breeze.
At
evening Acre reverts. The shop shutters in the market street close with a firm
clang. The gawdy souvenir stalls vanish. The street turns to stone.
The
theatre of twilight is entrancing. A Jewish shopkeeper unhooks the dresses
hanging from his stall with a long pole. Backgammon games in a barber’s shop. A
woman cooking in a kitchen. A tailor sewing by lamplight. A man leads a gamely trotting pony that shies
at the sparks from a welding torch as someone erects a metal structure over a
gate. A cyclist swishes by, holding flowers in one hand with a snake round his
neck.
At
the day’s end the sea wall overlooking the vanished Templars’ castle becomes the
place to promenade, meet friends and listen to the waves. A group of women in
headscarves occupy a semi-circle of stone benches, chat and smoke waterpipes; a
horse is hitched to a No Parking sign; the café is illuminated. Offshore,
anchored merchant ships look like aircraft carriers. From here in late May 1291
the last desperate defenders of Acre scanned the horizon in vain for signs of rescue.
The
speed boat thrills go on into the gathering night. Then sounds die away. My
book closes where the Holy Land crusades stopped - at the sea’s edge: ‘After
dark, just the slap of water, the fruit stalls still lit, the lighthouse and
the moon.’
