What influence did Akko have on Europe ?
Akko is old Acre or Acco and is in Israel. At one time it was a leading port city in the Middle East and competed for trade with such highly regarded places as Constantinople in Greco-Rome and Alexandria in Greco-Egypt.
It starts out as a settlement on a mount sometime between 2000 and 1500 BC. Back then it was called Tel Akko, or Tel el-Fukhar, or Mound of Potsherds.
Pot-sherds are fragments of pottery. These ceramic shards can contain great information about history since ceramic pottery was often decorated with pictorial stories or anecdotes of the time the clay was moulded.
Akko becomes St Jean d'Acre in about 1100 AD when the crusaders founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem. After a few years of crusader battles against fortified Akko the city is surrendered to King Baldwin I. The crusaders got busy in rebuilding the city and fortified it as best they could. They invested plenty of time and money in securing the seaport at Acre. However their efforts were no match for the Muslim who recaptured the Akko mound in 1187 at the Battle the Battle of the Horns of Hattin. A Muslim victory for Saladin meant that the Christian were once again moved off St John's Acre.
But King Richard I of England soon returns and in 1191, with the help of Philip Augustus, King of France, he leads a third crusade and ousts the Muslims.
A long time before these battles the Tel el Fukhar had been a Phoenician port of trade and a pivot point in mercantilism along the silk trade road. It was a point that could take goods from the middle east or even the far east to the any location along the Mediterranean shores. It was such a good location that it attracted the mighty armies of Alexander the Great who won it over. Tel Akko becomes Ptolamais.
These notes are just thoughts and the fuller story is told here under Akko : The Maritime Capital of the Crusader Kingdom.
