Crowley - The Accursed Tower: the fall of Acre and the end of the Crusades

Copyright 2019 by Roger Crowley

Cover design by Ann Kirchner

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First Edition: October 2019

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Names: Crowley, Roger, 1951author.

Title: The Accursed Tower : the fall of Acre and the end of the Crusades / Roger Crowley.

Other titles: Fall of Acre and the end of the Crusades

Description: First Edition. | New York : Basic Books, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019019102 | ISBN 9781541697348 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781541699724 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Acre (Israel)HistorySiege, 1291. | Crusades13th15th centuries.

Classification: LCC D171 .C66 2019 | DDC 956.94/032dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019019102

ISBNs: 978-1-5416-9734-8 (hardcover), 978-1-5416-9972-4 (ebook)

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For Richard and Sophie

And it is worth noting that they say that Our Lord, when he travelled beside the Syrian sea, did not enter this city, but cursed one of its towers, which today is called Accursed by the inhabitants. But I believe rather that it took its name from another source. When our men laid siege to the city, this tower was the most strongly defended of all; whence they called it the Accursed Tower.

W ILBRAND VAN O LDENBURG, VISITOR TO A CRE, 1211

The Crusader States in the Thirteenth Century.

The Siege of Acre, 1291.

1095	Pope Urban II preaches crusade in France.
10961099	The First Crusade.
1099	The crusaders besiege and sack Jerusalem.
1104	King Baldwin captures Acre.
11471149	The Second Crusade.
1171	Saladin becomes ruler of Egypt. Start of the Ayyubid dynasty.
11711185	Saladin consolidates Ayyubid rule over Palestine and Syria.
1187	Saladin defeats a crusader army at Hattin, takes Acre, and regains Jerusalem.
11891192	The Third Crusade, led by Philip Augustus of France, Frederick I (Holy Roman Emperor), and Richard I of England.
11891191	The crusader siege of Acre.
1192	Treaty between Richard and Saladin, and departure of Richard.
12021204	The Fourth Crusade sets out from Venice but deviates to capture Christian Constantinople.
12171219	The Fifth Crusade attacks Egypt but is defeated in the Nile Delta.
1228	Frederick II regains Jerusalem by treaty.
12391241	Small crusading ventures by Theobald of Champagne and Richard of Cornwall.
1244	The Khwarazmians sack Jerusalem. The city is finally lost.
1245	Pope Innocent IV sends an embassy to the Mongols.
1247	Louis IX plans a crusade.
12481254	The Seventh Crusade.
1248	Louis invades Egypt, his army is defeated in the Nile Delta, and Louis is captured.
12481250	The end of the Ayyubid dynasty. The slave Mamluks gain control of Egypt.
1250s	Baybars emerges as leader of the Bahriyyah Mamluks.
1258	The Mongols sack Baghdad.
1259	Qutuz gains control of Egypt.
1260	The Mongols under Hleg sack Aleppo and take Damascus. The Mongol army is defeated at Ayn Jalut. Qutuz is assassinated, and Baybars becomes sultan of the Mamluks.
12601264	Baybars tightens his grip on power and reforms the army.
12651271	Baybars embarks on systematic destruction of crusader castles. Acre is repeatedly raided.
1268	Baybars takes Antioch.
1270	The Eighth Crusade. King Louis IX attacks Tunis and dies there.
1271	Edward of Englands crusade to Acre. Baybars captures Krak des Chevaliers.
1277	Baybars dies. Qalawun gains the Mamluk sultanate.
1289	Qalawun takes Tripoli.
1290	The massacre of Muslims at Acre provides the excuse for Qalawuns attack. The Mamluk army is mobilized. Qalawun dies, and Khalil becomes sultan.
1291	Khalil attacks and destroys Acre. All remaining crusader outposts in Outremer fall.
1293	Khalil is assassinated by a group of Mamluk emirs.

I N THE SPRING of 1291, the largest army that Islam had ever assembled against the crusaders in the Holy Land was moving toward the city of Acre. It was, by all accounts, an extraordinary spectaclean immense concourse of men and animals, tents, baggage and supplies, all converging on Christendoms last foothold. The aim was to deliver a knock-out blow.

Forces had been drawn widely from across the Middle Eastfrom Egypt five hundred miles to the south, from Lebanon and Syria as far north as the banks of the Euphrates, from the great cities of Cairo, Damascus, and Aleppoa gathering of all the regions military resources. The elite troops were enslaved Turkish-speaking warriors from beyond the Black Sea, and the army included not only cavalry, infantry, and specialist supply corps, but enthusiastic volunteers, mullahs, and dervishes. The campaign had inspired a popular fervor for holy warand a less pious one for booty.

Visible in this panorama, a vast array of outfits, devices, and armor: lordly emirs in white turbans; foot soldiers in conical metal helmets, chain mail, and leather scale tunics; cavalry armed with short bows, their animals covered in colorful cloths and saddles embroidered with heraldic insignia; camel-mounted musicians playing kettledrums, horns, and cymbals; fluttering yellow banners and weapons of all kindsmaces, javelins, spears, swords, siege crossbows, carved stone balls, naptha for the manufacture of Greek fire and clay grenades. Oxen strained to haul carts laden with timbers from trees felled in the mountains of Lebanon and fashioned in the workshops of Damascus. These timbers were the prefabricated components of stone-throwing catapultsknown in the Islamic world as