Tent Work in Palestine — Part 90

The Moslems were at prayer. A peasant, in a gorgeous head-shawl, a dark blue jacket, and a robe (kumbâz) of pink and white stripes, was performing the usual genuflections and prostrations. A wooden torch, six feet high, in imitation of the wax torches brought from Mecca (such as exist at Jerusalem in the mosque), is placed on either side of the Mihrab, and to the right is a handsome marble pulpit. A long inscription in yellow letters on a blue ground runs round the walls of the mosque. Two beautifully carved stone tombs are shown in the courtyard near the minaret; but the tomb of the founder is in the north-east corner of the town.

Passing through the crooked, narrow, ill-paved lanes of Acre, where huge camels jostle the crowd of bright-coloured peasants and Bedawin, we visited the "galères,” or convict prison, so much dreaded by the natives, because hard labour is enforced on the prisoners. The dark vaults are entered by a wooden door, from between the bars of which heads and arms were stuck out, the convicts shouting for charity--the whole scene a perfect pandemonium.

There were no less than 300 cavalry in Acre, well mounted on fine half-bred horses; but the place has no real strength, and its fortifications could not resist the attacks of modern warfare.

Acre is not a city famous in Scripture. It is noticed, indeed, under the names Accho and Ptolemais; but the Jews were not a maritime people, and it had not, therefore, in their eyes, the importance which afterwards made it "the key to Syria.”

The Crusaders recognised at once the value of its position, and Baldwin I. besieged it in 1103, as soon as Jerusalem was secured. The garrison were relieved by a fleet from Tyre; but, in the following year, it fell into the hands of the Christians, after twenty-five days' siege. In the disastrous year, 1187, Saladin took it without a blow; but the place was too important to be lost, and the Christians again took it in 1191. In 1229, the Knights Hospitallers settled here, whence its modern title, St. Jean d'Acre; but it was finally lost, in 1291, when the son of Kalawûn levelled it to the ground.

In its palmy days, the town contained a church to St. Andrew, of which a few arches still remain near the sea; a second of St. Michael, now destroyed; a third of St. John, possibly now a mosque; a castle, where the modern barrack stands; a hospital of the Knights of St. John, now the military hospital; and a patriarchate, now perhaps a monastery. On the south the mole ran out south-east and east, closing in the port, and terminated by the rock and tower of El Manâra. There were two lines of wall on the north and east, and in the angle was the famous tower called "Tower of Flies,” or "Maledictum,” which long resisted King Richard, when besieging the town from the great mound called Turon, on the east, where also Napoleon made his attack.