The Accursed Tower

In 1291 Acre was the principal remaining stronghold of the Crusader states on the mainland of the Holy Land. Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Khalil assembled a major army to finish the conquest begun by his predecessors, while the city’s defenders included the military orders, Italian merchant communities and the forces of the crusader nobility. Roger Crowley follows the siege from the tightening Mamluk encirclement through bombardment, mining, assaults on the walls and the increasingly desperate defence led in part by the Templar grand master Guillaume de Beaujeu.

The narrative culminates in the collapse of Acre’s defences and the evacuation or destruction of the remaining mainland crusader positions. Crowley uses contemporary Christian and Muslim testimony to reconstruct both the military mechanics of the siege and the civilian catastrophe inside the city. The book places the fall of Acre within the longer decline of the crusader presence in the eastern Mediterranean rather than treating 1291 as an isolated final battle.