Acre

The most commonly spelled as Akko is a city in the coastal plain region of Israel’s Northern District . The city occupies an important location, as it sits on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, traditionally linking the waterways and commercial activity with the Levant. Acre also benefits from one of the very rare natural harbors on the coast of the Land of Israel. This location helped it become one of the oldest cities in the world, continuously inhabited since the Middle Bronze Age, some 4,000 years ago.

Acre is the holiest city of the Bahá’í Faith and Acre is a mixed city that includes Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze.

Al-Jazzar Mosque

City walls

In 1750, Zahir al-Umar, the ruler of Acre, utilized the remnants of the Crusader walls as a foundation for his walls. Two gates were set in the wall, the “land gate” in the eastern wall, and the “sea gate” in the southern wall. The walls were reinforced between 1775 and 1799 by Jazzar Pasha and survived Napoleon’s siege. The wall was thin: its height was between 10 metres (33 ft) and 13 metres (43 ft) and its thickness only 1.5 metres (4.9 ft).

Acre’s Old City has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Since the 1990s, large-scale archaeological excavations have been undertaken and efforts are being made to preserve ancient sites. In 2009, renovations were planned for Khan al-Umdan, the “Inn of the Columns,” the largest of several Ottoman inns still standing in Acre. It was built near the port at the end of the 18th century by Jazzar Pasha. Merchants who arrived at the port would unload their wares on the first floor and sleep in lodgings on the second floor. In 1906, a clock tower was added over the main entrance marking the 25th anniversary of the reign of the Turkish sultan.

Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in al Birweh, an Arab village in the Acre region which became part of the new state of Israel in 1948.