Les murailles d'Acre franque

Abstract

The walls of the Frankish city of Acre, by Benjamin Z. Kedar An examination ot the historical maps ot Frankish Acre proposed over the past 150 years reveals that the location of the city's outer walls remains an enigma. This is so because Acres outer walls have never been excavated and the location of its northern and eastern quarters has not been known. A systematic scrutiny of the relevant medieval texts, of hitherto unassociated archaeological finds, of a painting prepared by a French expedition in about 1686, of a portolan chart of ca. 1707, of plans drawn by Richard Pococke in 1738 and Carsten Niebuhr in 1766 and by Napoleon Bonaparte's engi- neers in 1799, as well as of travelers' accounts and aerial photographs, have allowed to offer a hypothesized course of Acre's walls.