The Great Siege of Acre

After Salah al-Din (Saladin, rahimahu Allah) had shattered the Crusader army at Hattin in 1187 and recovered Jerusalem and most of the coast, the port-city of Acre, the finest harbour of the Levantine coast, had passed into Muslim hands. In 1189 Guy of Lusignan, the freed king of Jerusalem, with the remnants of the Crusaders and a swelling stream of reinforcements arriving by sea from the West, laid siege to Acre, hoping to make it the base for the recovery of the kingdom. There followed one of the longest and most terrible sieges of the whole age, for the besiegers were themselves besieged: while the Crusaders pressed the walls of Acre from the land, Salah al-Din's army lay encamped on the hills behind them, so that the two hosts were locked together around the city for nearly two years, in a war of assault and counter-assault, sortie and battle, through which famine and epidemic disease killed great numbers on both sides. The struggle drew in the leading powers of the Latin West, and the kings Philip of France and Richard of England arrived with fresh armies and fleets in 1191. At last the garrison of Acre, exhausted, starving and despairing of effective relief, surrendered the city upon terms in July 1191. The fall of Acre was a heavy blow that gave the Crusaders the foothold from which the rump Kingdom of Jerusalem would survive on the coast for another hundred years, until Acre itself fell again, to the Mamluks, in 1291. This scene depicts the double siege of Acre, the walled port between the two armies. In keeping with the project's ethics any figure is anonymous and at a distance.