2018

Acre (Hebrew: Acco) is a city in the northern coastal plain region of the Northern District, Israel at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. 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. The important land routes meeting here are the north–south one following the coast and the road cutting inland through the Plain of Esdraelon; Acre also benefits from one of the very rare natural harbours 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 4000 years ago. The old part of the city, where the port and fortified city were located, protrudes from the coastline, exposing both sides of the narrow piece 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. The Crusader structures called the Knights’ Halls or the Citadel of Acre originally served as the Knights Hospitaller Compound. They extend over an area of c. 8,300 square meters. At the beginning of the 1990’s the structural condition of the Hall of Pillars in the Knights Hospitaller compound became unstable. This became apparent when cracks started to appear in the vaults in the hall and soil and mortar fell from the vault’s core into the hall below. In the wake of engineering measures that were adopted to save the hall, the Old Acre Development Company decided to go forward with the restoration and development of the underground complex for tourism purposes. This decision resulted in an extensive archaeological excavation, which was conducted from 1992 to 1999 by the Israel Antiquities Authority and financed by the Ministry of Tourism.

The el-Jazzar Mosque was the project of its namesake, Ahmad Pasha el-Jazzar, the Acre-based governor of the Sidon and Damascus provinces, who was equally famous for his cruelty, impressive public works, and defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Siege of Acre in 1799. El-Jazzar ordered the mosque’s construction in 1781 and had it completed within the year. Despite lacking architectural training, el-Jazzar was the architect of the mosque, drawing up its plans and design, and supervising its entire construction. In addition to the mosque itself, the complex included an Islamic theological academy with student lodging, an Islamic court and a public library. The mosque was built for religious purposes, but its grandiose size and additional functions were also intended by el-Jazzar to serve as a means of consolidating his political legitimacy as ruler of Syria. He modeled the mosque on the mosques of Istanbul, the Ottoman capital. The el-Jazzar Mosque was built over former Muslim and Christian prayer houses and other Crusader buildings. Building materials for the mosque, particularly its marble and granite components, were taken from the ancient ruins of Caesarea, Atlit and medieval Acre. El-Jazzar commissioned several Greek masons as the mosque’s builders. There is a tughra or monogram on a marble disc inside the gate, naming the ruling Sultan, his father, and bearing the legend "ever-victorious". Adjacent to the mosque is a mausoleum and small graveyard containing the tombs of Jazzar Pasha and his adoptive son and successor, Sulayman Pasha, and their relatives.