ABSTRACT
Crusader Acre maintained in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries many of the physical features it had inherited from the preceding Arab period, yet a major change occurred in its urban area and configuration with the emergence and expansion of a new suburb. The first reference to the suburb appears in 1120, sixteen years after the conquest of Acre, when Baldwin II confirmed a grant of two carruchae of land in the suburbio Tholomaidis to the monastery of St. Mary in the Valley of Josaphat. The completion of the two walls was of considerable importance for Acre. First, these walls substantially enlarged the city's protected territory: as illustrated by the medieval maps of Acre, Montmusard was about half the size of the Old City and may have covered around 16 hectares. Moreover, the walls ensured the safety of an area in which a much needed urban development could rapidly proceed.
