ABSTRACT
It is perhaps ironic that, like the Templar Order itself, the urban headquarters of the Templars have almost entirely disappeared. The irony lies in the fact that the destruction of the Templar buildings had nothing to do with the fate of the Order in the early fourteenth century.1 The destruction of the Templar Quarter in Jerusalem was carried out by Saladin in 1187 as an act of purification of the Muslim holy site. As the Temple Mount was not returned to the Franks in 1229 when the treaty signed between the Egyptian Sultan al-Kamil and Frederick II gave them control over the rest of the city, the Templars never rebuilt their quarter in Jerusalem. In Acre substantial remains of the Templar Quarter survived the Mamluk destruction of 1291, but these were dismantled with the Turkish resettlement from the middle of the eighteenth century. The Bedouin governor Dahr al-Umar used the Templar palace as a source of building stone. It was almost completely demolished by 1752 and only minor fragments have survived the destruction of the last three centuries.2 In addition, a rise in the level of the sea has inundated the area of the Templar palace.
