Acre ( ), known in Hebrew as Akko (, , ) and in Arabic as Akka (, , ), is a city in the coastal plain region of the Northern District of Israel.
The city occupies a strategic location, sitting in a natural harbour at the extremity of Haifa Bay on the coast of the Mediterranean's Levantine Sea."Old City of Acre." , UNESCO World Heritage Center. World Heritage Convention. Web. 15 April 2013 Aside from coastal trading, it was an important waypoint on the region's coastal road and the road cutting inland along the Jezreel Valley. The first settlement during the Early Bronze Age was abandoned after a few centuries but a large town was established during the Middle Bronze Age. Continuously inhabited since then, it is among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth.Petersen, 2001, p. 68 It has, however, been subject to conquest and destruction several times and survived as little more than a large village for centuries at a time.
Acre was a hugely important city during the Crusades as a maritime foothold on the Mediterranean coast of the southern Levant and was the site of several battles, including the 1189–1191 Siege of Acre and 1291 Siege of Acre. It was the last stronghold of the Crusaders in the Holy Land prior to that final battle in 1291. At the end of Crusader rule, the city was destroyed by the Mamluks, thereafter existing as a modest fishing village until the rule of Daher al-Umar in the 18th century.
In 1947, Acre formed part of Mandatory Palestine and had a population of 13,665, of whom 10,930 were Muslim and 2,490 were Christian, and 105 were Jewish. As a result of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and subsequent 1948 Arab–Israeli war, the population of the town dramatically changed as its Palestinian-Arab population was expelled or forced to flee; it was then resettled by Jewish immigrants. In present-day Israel, the population was in , made up of Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Baháʼís. In particular, Acre is the holiest city of the Baháʼí Faith in Israel and receives many pilgrims of that faith every year. Acre is one of Israel's mixed cities; 32% of the city's population is Arab. The Old City of Acre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Names The ultimate etymology of the name is unknown.Acre: Historical overview (Hebrew) but appears to be Northwest Semitic. Acre is first recorded in Egyptian hieroglyphs in the execration texts c. 1800BC by the name ʿky, reconstructed by Anson F. Rainey as *ʿ-k-ya > *ʿAkkâ-ya. The Amarna letters also mention an Akka in the mid-14th centuryBC,Burraburias II to Amenophis IV, letter No. 2 and Shmuel Aḥituv gives the Canaanite form as *ʿAkā.
The Akkadian form Akku appears in the 7th century, and in the Hebrew Bible, the name is עַכּוֹ ʻAkkō. This long ā to long ō transition has been interpreted as evidence of the Canaanite shift. It was, however, not universally applied, as several scholars note the final ā form persisted well into the first half of the 1st millennium CE, and a Jewish Palestinian Aramaic form with a final long ā was also extant.
Acre was known to the Greeks as Ákē (), a homonym for a Greek word meaning "cure". Greek legend then offered a folk etymology that Hercules had found curative herbs at the site after one of his many fights.The Guide to Israel, Zev Vilnay, Ahiever, Jerusalem, 1972, p. 396 This name was Latinized as Ace or Acce (used by Pliny).
Under the Diadochi, the Ptolemaic Kingdom renamed the city Ptolemaïs and the Seleucid Empire called it Antioch. As both names were shared by a great many other towns, they were variously distinguished. The Syrians called it (, in Greek Antiókheia tês en Ptolemaΐdi).
Under Claudius, it was also briefly known as Germanicia in Ptolemais (, in Greek, Germaníkeia tês en Ptolemaΐdi). As a Roman colony, it was notionally refounded and renamed or after its imperial sponsor Claudius; it was known as for short.
Acre's original West Semitic place name is preserved in the Arabic form Akka (), and was revived as the city's official name again following the Muslim conquest of Syria, as one of the cities of Jund al-Urdunn.
It was in the Crusader States' Kingdom of Jerusalem that the 'r' was inserted into its Latin name, becoming Acre. The name Saint-Jean-d'Acre (Modern ) used for the Knights Hospitaller's headquarters in the city, came to used for the city itself during this period. This name remained quite popular in the Christian world until modern times, often translated into the language being used: Saint John of Acre (in English), (in Spanish), (in Catalan), (in Italian), etc.
History
Acre lies at the northern end of a wide bay with Mount Carmel at the south. It is the best natural roadstead on the southern Phoenician coast and has easy access to the Valley of Jezreel. It was settled early and has always been important for the fleets of kingdoms and empires contesting the area, serving as the main port for the entire southern Levant up to the modern era.
The ancient town was located atop Tel ʿAkkō (Hebrew) or Tell al-Fuḫḫār (Arabic, Tel el-Foukhar, meaning "tell of the clay/sherds"), east of the present city and north of the Na'aman River. In antiquity, however, it formed an easily protected peninsula directly beside the former mouth of the Na'aman or Belus.
Early Bronze Age
The earliest discovered settlement dates to around 3000BC during the Early Bronze Age, but appears to have been abandoned after a few centuries, possibly because of inundation of its surrounding farmland by the Mediterranean.
Middle Bronze Age Acre was resettled as an urban centre during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA, –1550BC) and has been continuously inhabited since then. Egyptian execration texts record one 18th-century ruler as Tūra-ʿAmmu (Tꜣʿmw). Further to the north was the important MBA site of Tel Kabri dominating the Akko plain.
Late Bronze Age Acre was listed as "Aak" among the conquests of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III.
In the Amarna Period ( BC), there was turmoil in Egypt's Levantine provinces. The Amarna Archive contains letters concerning the ruler(s) of Acco. In one, King Biridiya of Megiddo complains to Amenhotep III or Akhenaten about the king of Acre, whom he accuses of treason for releasing the captured Hapiru king Labaya of Shechem instead of delivering him to Egypt.Amarna Letter EA245. Excavations of Tel ʿAkkō have shown that this period of Acre involved industrial production of pottery, metal, and other trade goods.
Iron Age Acre continued as a Phoenician cityBecking, Bob (1992): The Fall of Samaria: An Historical and Archaeological Study, Brill, , pp. 31–35 and was referenced as a Phoenician city by the Assyrians. Josephus, however, claimed it as a province of the Kingdom of Israel under Solomon.
Around 725BC, Acre joined Sidon and Tyre in a revolt against the Neo-Assyrian emperor Shalmaneser V. There is a clear destruction layer in the ruins, probably dating to the 7th century BC.
Classical Age Persian period Acre served as a major port of the Persian Empire, with Strabo noting its importance in campaigns against the Egyptians. According to Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, Cambyses II attacked Egypt after massing a huge army on the plains near the city of Acre. The Persians expanded the town westward and probably improved its harbor and defenses. In December 2018, archaeologists digging at the site of Tell Keisan in Acre unearthed the remains of a Persian military outpost that might have played a role in the successful 525 BC Achaemenid invasion of Egypt. The city's industrial production continued into the late Persian era, with particularly expanded iron works.
Hellenistic period
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."2,500-Year-Old Persian Military Base Found In Northern Israel". 2015. Haaretz.Com. Retrieved December 26, 2018. .Powell, Eric. 2018. "A Persian Military Outpost Identified In Israel – Archaeology Magazine". Archaeology.Org. Retrieved December 26, 2018. .
After Alexander's death, his main generals divided his empire among themselves. At first, the Egyptian Ptolemies held the land around Acre. PtolemyII renamed the city Ptolemais in his own and his father's honour in the 260sBC.
conquered the town for the Syrian Seleucids in 200BC. In the late 170s or early 160sBC, AntiochusIV founded a Greek colony in the town, which he named Antioch after himself.
About 165BC Judas Maccabeus defeated the Seleucids in several battles in Galilee, and drove them into Ptolemais. About 153BC Alexander Balas, son of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, contesting the Seleucid crown with Demetrius, seized the city, which opened its gates to him. Demetrius offered many bribes to the Maccabees to obtain Jewish support against his rival, including the revenues of Ptolemais for the benefit of the Temple in Jerusalem, but in vain. Jonathan Apphus threw in his lot with Alexander; Alexander and Demetrius met in battle and the latter was killed. In 150BC Alexander received Jonathan with great honour in Ptolemais. Some years later, however, Tryphon, an officer of the Seleucid Empire, who had grown suspicious of the Maccabees, enticed Jonathan into Ptolemais and there treacherously took him prisoner.
The city was captured by Alexander Jannaeus (ruled –76BC), Tigranes the Great (r. 95–55BC), and Cleopatra (r. 51–30BC). Here Herod the Great (r. 37–4BC) built a gymnasium.
Roman colony
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 nearly seven centuries until 636 AD, when it 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 order to suppress the revolts that broke out in the region following the death of Herod the Great.
During the rule 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 the ancient Levant by Roman emperors for Roman veterans.Butcher, 2003; p. 231 During the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), Acre functioned as a staging point for both Cestius's and Vespasian's campaigns to suppress the revolt in Judaea.
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 no longer spoke Latin and had become fully assimilated in less than two centuries (however the local society's customs were Roman). An important Roman colony () was established at the city that greatly increased the control of the region by the Romans over the next century with Roman colonists translated there from Italy. The Romans enlarged the port and the city grew to more than 20,000 inhabitants in the second century under emperor Hadrian. Ptolemais greatly flourished for two more centuries.Hazlitt, W. (1851) p.4
Byzantine period
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.
Early Islamic period