Acre, also known as Akko in Hebrew or Akka in Arabic, is a historic city that is located in northern Israel on a peninsula on Haifa Bay.
History
The city was founded as Haca around 2000 BC, when it first appeared in Egyptian sources. It was one of the few cities where the Canaanites were not driven out by the Israelites, and in 725 BC it joined Sidon and Tyre in revolt against Shalmaneser V of Assyria. Under the rule of Alexander the Great's Macedonian Empire, it became known as "Ptolemais", but after the Muslim conquest of Palestine in 638 AD, it was renamed to Akka when Sharhabeel ibn Hasana peacefully captured it. In 861 Caliph al-Mutawakkil transformed Acre into a major naval base defended by multiple lines of walls and towers. In 1104 it fell to Baldwin I of Jerusalem's forces and it became the chief port of the Crusaders. In addition, Acre was also a stronghold of the Knights Hospitallers, a religious order of black-clad knights that were originally supposed to be medics but also became warriors. By 1187, Acre had a population of 10,016, with 67% being Christian and 33% Muslim. In 1187 the city surrendered to the Saracens of Saladin, but in 1191 it was recaptured by Richard the Lionheart and Guy de Lusignan. Acre's strong defenses stood the test of time, but exactly 100 years later in 1291, the city fell to the Mamelukes, ending the crusades and destroying the crusader states.
The city of Acre transformed into a larger fortress, and under the rule of the Ottoman Empire (which destroyed the Mamelukes in 1517), Acre held out against a siege by Napoleon Bonaparte's French army in 1799 during the Egypt Campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1918 it came under the control of the United Kingdom's Mandatory Palestine after the end of World War II: by this time it was home to 4,883 Muslims, 1,344 Christians, 237 Jews, 51 Baha'i, and 10 Druze, and in 1946 the population reached 13,000. The fortress of Acre was made into a jail for Jewish resistance fighters, who fought for an independent Jewish state - ironically, it was supposed to be a part of a future Arab state. In March 1948 42 Jews were massacred by Arabs, and on 17 May the Jews of the new nation of Israel expelled 13,510 of the city's 17,395 Arab citizens, and the Old City became home to the Arabs.
Today, Acre has a population of 47,200 people, with 67.1% being Jewish, 25.3% Muslim Arabs, 2.4% Christian Arabs, and 5.2% Baha'is, Druze, and other citizens.
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