Hammam al-Pasha (حمّام الباشا) is the great public bath built by Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar in late eighteenth-century Acre, during the city’s renewal as an…
Hammam al-Pasha (حمّام الباشا) is the great public bath built by Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar in late eighteenth-century Acre, during the city’s renewal as an Ottoman provincial capital and Mediterranean port. The bath was first known as Hammam al-Jadid, meaning “the New Hammam.” Its later name, “the Pasha’s Hammam,” linked it directly to al-Jazzar, the governor who made Acre the seat of his administration and commissioned many of the buildings that still define the old city. The city built by Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar Al-Jazzar governed from Acre between the 1770s and his death in 1804. His building programme included the al-Jazzar Mosque, khans for merchants, improvements to the harbour and fortifications, and a water system supplying the city. Hammam al-Pasha formed part of the same urban project, serving a growing centre of government, trade and maritime traffic. This period also placed Acre at the centre of regional events. In 1799, al-Jazzar directed the city’s defence during the siege by Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces, which withdrew after failing to capture it. The fortified Ottoman city preserved today—including its mosques, khans and public baths—largely took shape under al-Jazzar and his successors. A public institution of Ottoman Acre A hammam was a heated public bath arranged around successive changes in temperature. Hammam al-Pasha contained a dressing area, intermediate warm rooms and a hot steam room, with smaller spaces used for bathing treatments. Beyond washing, it functioned as a meeting place where townspeople, merchants, barbers and physicians exchanged news and conducted business. The hammam remained in use for about a century and a half, continuing as an active bathhouse until 1948. It now operates as a museum within the walled old city, west of the al-Jazzar Mosque, preserving the rooms through which bathers passed from the reception area to the heated chambers.