Acre is a city of layers: a fortified port whose ramparts drop straight into the sea, whose lanes are covered by vaults, and whose skyline mixes minarets, domes and the masts of fishing boats. In one of its quarters stands the Zawiyat al-Shadhiliyya, at once mosque and zawiya — the lodge of a community attached to the Shadhili Sufi tradition, one of the great brotherhoods of the Muslim world. Behind a modest doorway, a courtyard, a prayer hall and rooms for gathering compose a place of study, hospitality and collective remembrance, where chanting has its own architecture of sound. Filmed in 4K, the programme approaches the building with the discretion the place requires, and situates it in the daily life of the old city: the fish market, the sea walls, the light of the eastern Mediterranean on worn stone. A rarely filmed facet of the religious landscape of the Holy Land.
