Acre

Who holds it

Name

King Aimery and Queen Isabella, through the viscount of Acre (name not pinned)

Title

Royal city

Since

Recovered 12 July 1191; royal

Confidence

high

Royal status certain; the viscount's name for 1200 not found.

Lord in 1200

The king and queen (royal domain); the king's viscount presides over the burgess court.

Overlord

King Aimery and Queen Isabella.

How things stand that morning

Royal capital under the truce; no threat that winter beyond the quarrels of the communes and orders.

Wealth

The richest place of the kingdom; no figures in the sources used.

Military

Walls, royal castle, the orders' houses, the communes' fortified quarters.

Threats

• Fire and faction in the crowded quarters
• Fighting between the communes
• A breach of the truce that would bring war to the plain

Charter

No commune of the burgesses. Frankish burgesses live under the Court of the Burgesses (Cour des Bourgeois), presided over by the king's viscount with burgess jurors; the market court of the Fonde, with Syrian and Latin jurors under a bailli, hears the cases of the local Christians and of the market. The Italian communes have their own courts in their quarters. A sworn commune of Acre appears only in 1232 (later).

Council

No town council in the Italian sense: the viscount and the jurors of the Court of the Burgesses, and the consuls or viscounts of each commune in its quarter.

Communities

Franks of every Western nation; the Venetian, Genoese and Pisan communes and Provencals; Greek Orthodox (Melkite) and Syriac Orthodox Christians; Armenians; a Jewish community (Benjamin of Tudela counted about 200 in the 1170s, before 1187); Muslim merchants coming and going under the truce; Muslim villagers in the plain.

Fairs and markets

No fairs recorded. The year turns on the spring and late-summer passages, when the fleets bring pilgrims and goods from the West and load spices, silk, sugar and cotton.

Militia

Burgesses owe sergeant service in the king's host when the kingdom is called out; no figures in the sources used.

Walls and castle

The old city stands on a promontory with a harbour on its southern side, protected by a mole with the Tower of Flies at its end and a chain across the inner basin. The land walls were rebuilt after the siege of 1189-1191; the form of the double wall and the enclosure of the growing northern suburb of Montmusard are not pinned for 1200. The royal castle stands in the north of the old city; the Templars' fortified house at the south-western point on the sea; the Hospitallers' compound in the north of the old city.

Trade and crafts

The caravan trade from Damascus (spices, silk, dyestuffs and goods of the Indian trade) that runs under the truce; sugar from the plain; the pilgrim traffic and its ships, hostels and money-changers; the customs of the Chain at the harbour and the dues of the Fonde for the land trade. An English contemporary claimed Acre yielded the crown more than the king of England's whole revenue (quoted on Wikipedia; a boast, not a figure).

Places of note

• Recordane (Kurdani), the Hospital's mill: Mill and springs on the Na'aman river, held by the Hospital.
• Doc (Da'uk), the Temple's mill: Mill on the Na'aman river, held by the Temple (position approximate).

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Acre's institutions are known mostly from thirteenth-century lawbooks; its state in 1200 is drawn from them cautiously.

On the map: The district follows the plain between the Ladder of Tyre and the Kishon; the foothill villages are Ayyubid.

Primary sources for Kingdom of Jerusalem

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Book of the Two Gardens, on the Reigns of Nur al-Din and Saladin, and its Sequel, Abu Shama (Shihab al-Din Abd al-Rahman al-Maqdisi) (about 1240 to 1267, at Damascus). The Rawdatayn ends with Saladin's death in 1193 and matters for 1200 as the store of Imad al-Din al-Isfahani's lost al-Barq al-Shami and of al-Qadi al-Fadil's letters, quoted at length, which describe the Ayyubid princes, the Jazira and the frontier a few years earlier. Read online
• The Chronicle of Ernoul and Bernard the Treasurer, Ernoul, squire of Balian of Ibelin, and later compilers (the 1187 core soon after the event; the whole in its present form 1227 to 1232). The Ibelin household's version of events in Outremer. Read online
• The Old French Continuation of William of Tyre (Eracles), Anonymous continuators, the earliest drawing on Ernoul (about 1220 to 1277; the first continuation (1184 to 1197, the Lyon Eracles) compiled about 1230 from material of the 1190s). For the Latin East at 1200 it narrates the aftermath of the Third Crusade: the truce of 1192, the succession to Jerusalem through Queen Isabella's marriages to Henry of Champagne (died September 1197) and Aimery of Lusignan, Aimery's rule as king of Jerusalem from 1198 while king of Cyprus, the German crusade of 1197 to 1198 and the recovery of Beirut and Sidon, the truce with al-Adil of 1198, the Antioch succession quarrel between Bohemond IV and Leo of Armenia, and the Pisan plot against Aimery. Read online
• Chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines (about 1227 to 1241, at the Cistercian abbey of Trois-Fontaines in Champagne). The widest net of any Latin chronicle for 1200, compiled from dozens of sources, many now lost. Read online
• The Chronicle of Smbat Sparapet (Sempad the Constable), Smbat Sparapet, brother of King Hetum I of Cilicia (about 1270 to 1276). The Cilician court chronicle, drawing on Matthew of Edessa for its early part and on family memory later. Read online
• The Eloquent Exposition of the Conquest of Jerusalem, Imad al-Din al-Isfahani (al-Katib) (about 1192 to 1193). Saladin's secretary's ornate account of the conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade, ending with Saladin's death in 1193. Read online
• The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad (after 1193, probably between about 1198 and 1228, at Aleppo). Ends with Saladin's death in March 1193 and so gives no event of 1200, but it is the formative portrait of the Ayyubid house of 1200: al-Adil, al-Afdal, al-Aziz and al-Zahir Ghazi as Saladin's lieutenants, the Mosul and Jazira campaigns, the war of Acre and the treaty of Jaffa of 1192. Read online
• Calendar of the Acts of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Various, calendared by Reinhold Rohricht (documents 1097 to 1291; calendar published 1893, Additamentum 1904). A chronological calendar of every charter, letter and treaty of the Latin East then known, with date, parties, witnesses and the edition where each is printed. Read online

7 more in the sources library for The Latin East and the Ayyubids.