CHAPTER 2

THE POLITICS OF ACRE

So far we have only looked at the physical layout, the existing infrastructure, and the demographic trends of Acre and its hinterland during the period studied here. The aim of this chapter is to reconstruct a political history for this region with Acre as the focal point. A number of chronicles from the period itself and shortly afterward exist, often written by eyewitnesses. They touch on Acre in various forms, dealing with one ruler or another, with regional or communal affairs of various groups, with the history of the vilayets or with the major urban centers such as Damascus and Aleppo. These chronicles provide a wealth of information, though the specific agendas of the authors are often recognizable and much of the information of interest to us comes in anecdotal or incidental form. French consular reports can often be very helpful here in providing a different perspective and a fairly precise time frame for the sequence of events as they evolved.

Modern historians have difficulties in classifying Acre and its hinterland. It was neither the precursor of an independent state nor the center of a later nationalism; as it evolved in the eighteenth century it neither constituted an Ottoman administrative unit nor predetermined later Mandatory entities, as did Mount Lebanon for instance. The region at the beginning of the eighteenth century can be best described as a border region whose contours are not clearly defined: Haifa was under the control of Nablus, i.e. it belonged by extension to the vilayet of Damascus. But it was also called “Little Malta” because no government authority reached to there and pirates used it as a refuge. Nazareth and Tiberias had been under Druze control, i.e., indirectly under the authority of the governor of Sidon, but while Tiberias reverted directly to the latter, Nazareth had moved under the control of Nablus, i.e., the governor of Damascus. On the whole the position of the governor was exceedingly weak. Different elements such as Bedouin tribes in the Galilee, the Metualis in the bordering mountain range of Jabal al-‘Āmil, the Druze, and the ruling elite of Nablus all pursued local rivalries without much direct interference by the Ottoman governors of Sidon and Damascus, not to speak of the Ottoman government itself. In this vaguely defined political borderland Acre and its realm slowly took political and economic shape, and inserted itself like a wedge between the vilayet of Sidon and that of Damascus, eventually taking over the former and reducing the latter. It is this process that I aim to trace in this chapter. Since the political development of Acre and its realm was, as we shall see, heavily influenced by the dominant political presence of its first three rulers, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār, and Sulaymān Pasha, it seems helpful also to use the political career of each as an organizing principle for this chapter.

ẒĀHIR AL-‘UMAR’S RISE TO POWER AND THE FORMATION OF THE REALM OF ACRE

Two biographies of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar (d. 1775) were written by contemporaries or near contemporaries: one was by Mikhā’īl Niqūlā al-Ṣabbāgh,¹ and the other by ‘Abbūd al-Ṣabbāgh. Mikhā’īl was the grandson of the most important vezier of Ẓāhir, Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh. He had a great sense for the anecdotal detail but a complete disregard for chronological sequence and was more concerned with the good image of Ẓāhir and his vezier than with precise dates. Mikhā’īl apparently also wrote a biography of his grandfather Ibrāhīm.² ‘Abbūd was also related to Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh.³ Since Ibrāhīm, as we shall see, was closely associated with Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, both authors take a rather favorable, if not apologetic, approach to their subject—Mikhā’īl more so than ‘Abbūd. However, all later biographical material relies most heavily on these two biographies. For some important aspects of al-‘Umar’s life in Acre, though, other chronicles, mentioned below, the French consular reports, as well as Mariti’s travel report, provide an independent source.

Ẓāhir al-‘Umar al-Zaydānī was a local man, a leader of men, a consummate politician and an astute merchant. He was born around 1690 into a family of some standing in the region between Tiberias and Safed. The Zaydānī clan was most likely of Bedouin background, and had settled in the region of Tiberias in the second half of the seventeenth century. Ẓāhir’s father, al-‘Umar, and grandfather, Zaydān, were already multazims of Tiberias, a position they were granted by the amirs of the Druze who, in turn, were the tax-farmers for all of Mount Lebanon by authority of the governor of Sidon. An uncle, ‘Alī, obtained the tax-farm for Dāmūn, close to Acre. At the same time the Zaydānīs carried on a lively trade from the Galilee to Damascus and Aleppo. They established contacts with families in Damascus and relations with tribes in the region. With the death of al-‘Umar at the beginning of the eighteenth century his oldest son Sa‘d became the head of the clan, but nominally his younger brother, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar al-Zaydānī, became the most powerful man since the family transferred all tax-farms into his name because “they did not want to have a name with the government.”⁴ The assumption was that in case of defaulted tax payments the government, i.e., the governor of Sidon, could only hold a young lad answerable but not the actual holders of the tax-farms. Around 1707 Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, still in his teens, was involved in a brawl, killing a man from Tiberias. His oldest brother, Sa‘d, thought it advisable to remove the Zaydānī clan from the region of Tiberias. The opportunity came in the form of an offer from the leaders of the Ṣaqr tribe to reside with them in ‘Arrāba, a village remote from major highways but almost equidistant from Safed, Tiberias, and Nazareth and not much further from Acre.

Events until the mid-1730s are not firmly dated. Ẓāhir al-‘Umar obtained some formal schooling from an ‘ālim by the name of ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Ḥifnāwī. As a young lad he roamed the countryside and learned to hunt and to fight. He played a major role in defending the village of Ba‘na against the rapacious governor of Sidon. This must have occurred some time between 1713 and 1718.⁵ His heroic defense of the village, his dramatic escape, his justice, and his moderation made him during these years, according to the chroniclers, into a regional folk hero.

In the 1720s Ẓāhir al-‘Umar won for himself a name among the peasants as a fighter and a man of justice but also drew the respect—based on his commercial rather than his martial abilities—of Damascene urbanites. Together with his brother Sa‘d he pursued the trade connections his father had already established. They would often travel with caravans from the Galilee to Damascus, selling and buying merchandise there. His visits to Damascus led to important social and commercial contacts and to a friendship with the ‘ālim ‘Abd al-Ghaffār al-Shuwaykī, who presumably came from Shuwayk, a village near Nablus. In his house he was introduced to one Sayyid Muḥammad of the Ḥusaynī Sharīfs, the elite of Damascus.⁶ The latter eventually offered Ẓāhir al-‘Umar his daughter in marriage. Ẓāhir’s Damascene wife found ‘Arrāba too small a place to live in and insisted on moving to Nazareth. When his wife’s father died he became the sole inheritor of the not inconsiderable fortune.⁷

The Ṣaqr tribe, roaming between Safed and Nablus, had a bad—but probably well-deserved—reputation as an unruly, dangerous element, making highways insecure, endangering commercial traffic, looting and plundering, and not paying taxes. The governor of Sidon tried to subdue them with the help of the people from Nablus. The Ṣaqr, feeling cornered or simply looking for ways to enhance their position, sought to improve their relations with the government. For the purpose of better representation with the Ottoman administration they looked for a notable or dignitary from the urban population as their official chief, one who could negotiate with the authorities better than they themselves could. Their choice fell on Ẓāhir al-‘Umar al-Zaydānī. This must have occurred around 1730.⁸ By choosing Ẓāhir rather than his older brother Sa‘d, the recognized leader of the clan, the Ṣaqr also made it clear that they had no intention of simply submitting to the will of the Zaydānīs. They probably hoped to use the Zaydānīs for their own purposes. They did not anticipate how quickly Ẓāhir al-‘Umar would use them for his own ambitions and then eventually drop them when they became an obstacle to his plans. The first result of this alliance was that Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, with the help of the Ṣaqr, took over Tiberias sometime around 1730. Cleverly preparing his move, he persuaded the governor in Sidon to sanction the usurpation and make him multazim of Tiberias and ‘Arrāba. The appointment itself was an indication of the receding power of the Druze amirs over the region: thirty years earlier ‘Umar, Ẓāhir’s father, had been appointed multazim of Tiberias by the Druze amirs and not directly by the governor of Sidon.

Ẓāhir al-‘Umar proceeded to make Tiberias his first real power base. Members of the Zaydānī clan joined him there, and he soon had a troop of some two hundred Zaydānī horsemen at his disposal. He appointed his cousin Muḥammad al-‘Alī as their commander.⁹ Efforts were also made to fortify Tiberias. He spent the 1730s working to expand his realm and consolidate his rule. He seems to have been a relatively just and reasonably fair ruler. According to the chronicler, people took refuge in his realm and volunteered to come under his rule.¹⁰ But he certainly also took military measures to assert his dominant position in the Galilee. In 1738 he conquered the castle of Jiddīn, which controlled the region of Tarshīḥa, Wabar, and Abū Sinān. After much negotiation and pressure Safed was surrendered to him by the local strongman and multazim Muḥammad Nāf‘i. A year later he besieged the fortified village of Ba‘na unsuccessfully. Eventually, marriage to the daughter of the ruler of Ba‘na achieved the desired result.¹¹ With this the whole northeast of the Galilee had come under Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s control.¹² In the west his cousin, Muḥammad ibn ‘Alī al-Zaydānī, controlled Dāmūn and eventually Shfā ‘Amr. The same cousin also commanded the Zaydānī horsemen who fought for Ẓāhir al-‘Umar. His brother Sa‘d had moved from ‘Arrāba to Dayr Ḥanā, adding to the presence of the Zaydānīs in the western Galilee. In the fights for Jiddīn Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had encountered a young Maghrebi mercenary, Aḥmad al-Dinkizlī, whom he hired and charged with building up a unit consisting of over a thousand of his compatriots.¹³ This troop of mercenaries would be costly, but liberated Ẓāhir from dependence on the voluntary Zaydānī horsemen and the Ṣaqr tribesmen, who were unruly and usually available for short periods only.

While consolidating and expanding his realm, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar began to come into contact with more powerful opponents. But here, too, it remains difficult to establish the exact sequence of events. The various accounts probably fused different events into one. Nazareth was the residence of his first wife and the hometown of his second. Gaining control over it was most likely a drawn-out process, punctuated by clashes with the people from Nablus. Nazareth and the plain of Marj ibn ‘Āmir belonged to the district of Safed but, in fact, had fallen under the control of Nablus. In the 1730s Ẓāhir al-‘Umar began to challenge the power of Nablus.¹⁴ At stake was control over commerce in Nazareth and over the trade routes between Nablus and Damascus.

This challenge mobilized the leaders of Nablus. Most immediately concerned were the al-Jarrār clan, originating from Janīn and having only recently risen to power when they made Ṣānūr, on the northern accesses of Nablus, their fortified base. They were able to draw to their side the Banū Ṣaqr, until then allies of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar. A battle ensued in the Marj ibn ‘Āmir. Forewarned that the Banū Ṣaqr would turn against him, Ẓāhir was able to win the battle with the help of his Maghrebi troops,¹⁵ his Zaydānī cavalry, and the active support of the people of Nazareth. He pursued the beaten Nabulusīs to the fortress of Ṣānūr. There he had to accept that he did not have the means to besiege the town. Thanks to the resistance of the al-Jarrār, he could not force the people of Nablus into submission, but he could maintain his control over his newly incorporated towns and regions, which now included the Marj ibn ‘Āmir and Nazareth.¹⁶ The successful resistance of the al-Jarrār clan to Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s attacks at Ṣānūr consolidated their ascendancy over the Ṭūqāns in Nablus. Eventually members of the al-Jarrār clan were appointed mutasallims of Nablus, a position they would hold until 1771.¹⁷ The al-Jarrārs concluded a peace agreement for Nablus with Ẓāhir, but they had suffered great losses with the defeat in Marj ibn ‘Āmir and were forced to surrender control over Nazareth and the surrounding region to him. For the next thirty years they would rally the forces of Nablus against further expansions of Ẓāhir to the south.

In the 1730s Ẓāhir al-‘Umar was able to carve out for himself a power base in the eastern Galilee, a region which had previously been a contested border region between the vilayets of Sidon and Damascus, represented locally by the Druze and the Nabulusīs respectively.¹⁸ Ẓāhir succeeded in pushing back both forces. There was no challenge to be anticipated from the governor of Sidon, whose power was waning and for whom Tiberias was of peripheral importance anyway. For the powerful governors of Damascus the situation presented itself differently: Ẓāhir’s growing realm between Tiberias and Safed straddled the trade route and communications between Damascus and Nablus, an important part of the province of Damascus. By extension communications with Egypt were also affected. Ẓāhir’s unchecked rise to power in the region therefore worried the governors of Damascus greatly.¹⁹

The rise of new local power centers in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century was not restricted to Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s expanding realm in the Galilee. In a sense, the foundation of the Arab Greek Catholic community in Damascus belonged to the same trend.²⁰ More important, however, was the rise of the ‘Aẓm clan in Damascus. With their arrival on the scene the Ottoman policy of appointing outsiders as governors of Damascus, and always for short terms only, was disrupted. During the career of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, 1725 to 1775, members of the ‘Aẓm family held the governorship of Damascus for a total of twenty-seven years. The consolidation of the family’s power in Damascus was accompanied by an attempt to expand it to other governorships, especially that of Sidon. Both governorships were repeatedly occupied simultaneously by members of the ‘Aẓm clan. ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Kurjī, a Mamluk of As‘ad Pasha al-‘Aẓm²¹ and therefore closely linked to the ‘Aẓms, pursued the same policy by having his sons appointed as governors of Sidon and Tripoli. Ẓāhir’s control over the trade between Damascus and Nablus and the continued expansion of his hold over the province of Sidon was bound to bring him into conflict with the governors of Damascus.

Sulaymān Pasha al-‘Aẓm had been governor of Sidon in 1733 and ruled Damascus as governor from 1734 to 1738 and from 1741 until his death in 1743. He had ample reason to observe with concern Ẓāhir’s fortification of Tiberias and his expansion to Safed and its surroundings, and to listen to the complaints from Nablus, which Ẓāhir had already successfully challenged. He tried to reduce Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s power by conquering the fortress of Tiberias. A first attack was carried out in 1738 but failed.²² In his second tenure as governor Sulaymān spent considerable efforts on the conquest of Tiberias. In 1741 he requested support from his nephew Ibrāhīm, governor of Sidon. But Ẓāhir defeated the latter’s troops near Acre.²³ The following year Sulaymān Pasha personally led the campaign against Tiberias and besieged it for some ninety days, supported by his nephew. The Jews in Tiberias had been forewarned by their coreligionists in Damascus about the imminent attack, but had decided to stay in Tiberias and support Ẓāhir al-‘Umar.²⁴ The latter protested his innocence and his loyal obedience to the authorities of the empire. He tried to negotiate with the pasha of Damascus, but to no avail. Eventually the pasha had to lift the siege because the time had approached for the pilgrimage caravan to Mecca, which he as governor of Damascus was obliged to lead. Ẓāhir used the interval to sway opinion in Istanbul to his favor by requesting the French merchants in Acre to send a message to their ambassador in Istanbul to exert pressure. Not sure this channel of communication would work, he tried to open a second one by asking the Jews in Tiberias to establish a conduit through their coreligionists in Damascus and Istanbul to the imperial government.²⁵ These efforts—such as they were—were of no avail. After his return from Mecca the pasha launched, in 1743, a renewed attempt to conquer Tiberias. But the campaign was barely under way when Sulaymān Pasha died. His successor, As‘ad Pasha al-‘Aẓm, had no further desire to press the campaign against Tiberias.

Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had survived the challenge against his dominant position in the eastern Galilee, and could now turn westward in earnest, and concentrate in particular on Acre. He had already demonstrated the seriousness of his ambitions for Acre when he had his nephew Muḥammad al-‘Alā arrested and killed. Muḥammad had once been commander of some of Ẓāhir’s troops and multazim of Dāmūn in the western Galilee. But when he appeared to gain influence in Acre, Ẓāhir moved against him.²⁶

The taking of Acre was a drawn-out and gradual process. Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had been aware of the commercial potential of Acre for a long time—by 1731 he had good relations with some French merchants there. Blanc and Treilhier are mentioned.²⁷ A local merchant, the Greek Catholic Yūsuf al-Qassīs, became his agent and representative in Acre.²⁸ Although commerce was probably lucrative for Ẓāhir, he understood that only political control over Acre would optimize business conditions for him. With the appointment of As‘ad Pasha al-‘Aẓm as governor in October 1743, a peaceful standoff with Damascus began, and lasted for the next fourteen years. Ẓāhir al-‘Umar could now afford to move on Acre in earnest. Cautious as ever, he tried first to obtain the tax-farm of Acre from the governor in Sidon by agreement. The governor of Sidon refused, despite his repeated requests. Clearly, he observed with great apprehension the rise to power of his multazim in the Galilee. Eventually, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar marched on Acre with troops, had the local multazim killed, and declared himself multazim. The astute observation of his brother Sa‘d, that the government would be in no position to oppose him, proved to be true.²⁹ In 1746 the French reported that since July Ẓāhir al-‘Umar was the “gouverneur et douanier d’Acre,”³⁰ which probably means that at that point he was officially invested as multazim of Acre. He himself, though, preferred for the time being to reside in his castle in Dayr Ḥanā a few miles outside Acre. In late 1750 Ẓāhir—now a man “qui peut tout ce qu’il veut” [able to fulfill his every desire]—made an enormous effort to have a wall built around Acre while the governor of Damascus was away for a few months on the pilgrimage. He fortified the city, had buildings constructed, and tried to populate the city.³¹ In 1757 he annexed Haifa and Tantura to his realm.³² From this time on, Acre can be said to be Ẓāhir’s base and a new center of local power on the coast of southern Syria, challenging the dominance of Damascus in profound ways. Officially though, Ẓāhir remained a multazim for the governor of Sidon. Only in 1768 was his preeminent position recognized by the Ottoman government when he was given the title of “Shaykh of Acre, Amir of Nazareth, Tiberias, Safed and Shaykh of all of Galilee.”³³ Finally, on March 9, 1774, he was about to be appointed governor of Sidon, an order that was, however, quickly rescinded by Istanbul.³⁴

Interwoven into and concurrent with the events of the conquest of the western Galilee and Acre are the conflicts and various alliances with the Metualis. This Shī‘ī Arab community lives in the mountainous region, now called Jabal ‘Āmil, stretching northwest of Safed to the coast at Tyre. Jabal ‘Āmil was part of the province of Sidon and was most often under the direct control of the Shihābī amirs of the Druze. After Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had established his authority over Safed in the late 1730s he came into direct contact with the Metualis, with whom relations had been good until then. But his territorial ambitions were bound to lead to clashes with them sooner or later.

Once more the time frame of the narrative is most difficult to establish. We have two sources for the relations between Ẓāhir al-‘Umar and the Metualis under Nāṣīf Naṣṣār: Mikhā’īl al-Ṣabbāgh’s history, written some twenty-five years after Ẓāhir’s death, and al-Rukaynī’s chronicle of Jabal ‘Āmil. The latter is rather dry and very economical in its information, but in many ways is the more reliable source. Al-Rukaynī was a contemporary of these events and apparently wrote his chronicle in the form of a diary. Hence his dating of events can be trusted more than all later sources.³⁵ All sources agree on the immediate cause for the clash—possession of two villages. They disagree on the outcome of the decisive battle, though they are unanimous that after the battle an alliance between the two sides was struck.

Ẓāhir al-‘Umar provoked the conflict by claiming as his own two villages which traditionally belonged to the Metualis: Balla and Yārūn.³⁶ In response the Metualis fought various skirmishes. At some point later a decisive battle was fought at Ṭarbīḥa. Āl Ṣafā, a nationalist Metuali historian of the early twentieth century, tried to depict this as a qualified victory for Nāṣīf Naṣṣār, while al-Ṣabbāgh claimed a clear victory by Ẓāhir al-‘Umar. The earliest source, al-Rukaynī, described the battle as a disastrous defeat for Ẓāhir, who suffered heavy losses.³⁷ Eventually an alliance between Nāṣīf Naṣṣār and Ẓāhir al-‘Umar was forged and ceremoniously pledged, whereby the latter committed himself to represent the Metualis to the governor of Sidon, regulating all their tax issues with him, and to defend them against incursions by the Druze amirs. In return the Metualis pledged military support for Ẓāhir.³⁸ Al-Ṣabbāgh places all these events somewhere between the takeover of Safed by Ẓāhir al-‘Umar and his conquest of Acre, i.e., somewhere in the 1740s.³⁹ From the context of his narration Āl Ṣafā implies that the events took place some time in the early 1750s.⁴⁰ Only al-Rukaynī provides us with precise and, most likely, reliable dates. The battle of Ṭarbīḥa took place on Oct. 7, 1766 (8 Jumada II 1180), and he gives the date of the treaty as Nov. 24, 1767, i.e., a whole year later. This would imply that the incorporation of Safed into Ẓāhir’s realm did not lead immediately to decisive clashes with the Metualis, but rather was followed by some twenty-five years of low-keyed conflict as well as cooperation.⁴¹ It is very likely that the border region and its villages between Jabal ‘Āmil and Ẓāhir’s realm remained contested for a long time, while at the same time the Metualis supported Ẓāhir al-‘Umar—for instance, against the Ṣaqr tribe—or Ẓāhir sent troops in defense of the Metualis against the incursion of Amīr Mulḥim Shihāb.

Only after fortifying Acre and enjoying high revenues from cotton exports did Ẓāhir al-‘Umar feel secure enough to challenge the Metualis seriously. But it remains doubtful whether it was this challenge that brought the Metualis to the negotiation table in Sidon. The outcome of the battle of Ṭarbīḥa was obviously open to interpretation. Also the fact that Nāṣīf Naṣṣār negotiated the alliance only a year later indicates that he did not act under the pressure of a defeat in battle. Nevertheless, the alliance enhanced and strengthened Ẓāhir’s position as ruler of the region. Apart from a mutual defense pact, the alliance’s most important element was Ẓāhir’s new role as the exclusive mediator between the governor in Sidon and the Metualis. This concerned in particular the tax payments of the Metualis, for which Ẓāhir took responsibility. In other words, he became de facto the multazim of the Jabal ‘Āmil region, though not appointed de jure by the governor of Sidon. The alliance enlarged Ẓāhir’s realm considerably and reinforced his military strength by adding the Metuali forces, who remained faithful allies almost until Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s dramatic end. For the Metualis the alliance implied the surrender of, at least, their financial autonomy and the acknowledgment of Ẓāhir as their overlord. As we have seen, Ẓāhir’s military strength cannot have been the decisive factor for this step by the Metualis. The cause is more likely to be found in the relations between the Metualis and the governor of Sidon. Since the early 1750s the governor of Sidon had started five major campaigns, usually with the help of the Druze, to subdue the Metualis and collect taxes from them perforce. Ẓāhir al-‘Umar and the Metualis shared the same interests in this point. Both aimed at reducing the authority of the governor of Sidon, and both were wary of the power of the Druze in the north. A political and military alliance made perfect sense, and was to prove its value in the following years in some fifteen joint military campaigns against the people of Nablus, the Druze, the governors of Damascus and Sidon, and in the conquest of Sidon⁴²—especially at a time when the governor of Damascus was again trying to extend his control over the region.

The years between 1744 and 1765 were a long, calm period in which Ẓāhir al-‘Umar consolidated his power. He moved his base from Tiberias to the coast. After fortifying Acre and making it his residence, Ẓāhir attached Haifa, Ṭanṭūra and Mount Carmel to his rule. These were probably most prosperous years in the Galilee, and trade flourished. By establishing a monopoly over the cotton exports, Ẓāhir was able to obtain maximum prices for cotton from the French. Cotton exports increased in value and quantity. Internal security was established and people from abroad moved to Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s realm to settle there and enjoy his benign rule. Ẓāhir had the good business sense not to exploit peasants to the point of destruction, but kept his financial demands to a more moderate level. He would even grant tax relief when harvests were bad or when immigrants undertook to put new land under cultivation. The population of Acre increased dramatically. Acre became the capital of the new de facto state. Administration and army became somewhat more institutionalized. Internal dissent among the tribes and family squabbles with his sons, who were ruling in his name in different districts, remained on the level of occasional skirmishes, as did border disputes with the Metualis. External threats did not exist. The governor of Sidon was in no position to challenge the discreetly expanding influence and power of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, and As‘ad al-‘Aẓm, the governor of Damascus, was for thirteen years preoccupied with the reconstruction of Damascus and apparently in no mood to confront the rising power of his neighbor. Not even the annexation of Haifa caused him to take serious measures against Ẓāhir.

The first rumblings of change could be heard when in 1761 ‘Uthmān Pasha, governor of Damascus, obtained a firmān from the Ottoman government to reattach Haifa to his province. He ordered the governor of Sidon, Muḥammad Pasha, to send troops to Haifa to occupy it for him. The full extent of the governor’s impotence quickly became evident. All he could send were thirty soldiers, and he had to ask a French captain to transport them from Sidon to Haifa, since he himself had no ship. Ẓāhir al-‘Umar simply had the ship seized, the troops arrested, and the captain fined.⁴³ He could feel secure, militarily as well as politically, and apparently had contacts in Istanbul who were able to deflect any serious measures against him. He had hosted a certain Ya‘qūb Agha, an official of the Ottoman government, who was on his way to Jerusalem. While this official was staying in Acre Ẓāhir had ingratiated himself with him, and a permanent relationship was established. In Istanbul Ya‘qūb Agha had close contacts with the qizlār agha and the ṣiliḥdār, a certain Sulaymān Agha. He wrote to them and had the orders to Muḥammad Pasha of Sidon rescinded.⁴⁴ Eventually Ya‘qūb Agha was executed, the qizlār agha died, and Sulaymān Agha was either exiled to Cyprus or became its governor in 1766.⁴⁵ These changes encouraged ‘Uthmān Pasha of Damascus to try again to obtain backing from Istanbul for his fight against Ẓāhir al-‘Umar. Ẓāhir turned to Sulaymān Agha in Cyprus for support. When Sulaymān Agha was returned to Istanbul he succeeded in arranging arbitration over Haifa. His own delegate was sent as the representative of Muḥammad Pasha to Acre, where the rest of the arbitration committee consisted of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh, and the muftī and qāḍī of Acre. Not surprisingly, the issue was decided in Ẓāhir’s favor.⁴⁶ But Ẓāhir must have recognized that ‘Uthmān Pasha was a tenacious enemy. It may have been this recognition that induced him to conclude the treaty with the Metualis in late 1767. With the death of Sulaymān Agha a few years later, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar lost all support in Istanbul and ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Kurjī, governor of Damascus, was able—after having placed his son Muḥammad as governor of Tripoli—to obtain the governorship of Sidon for his twenty-five-year-old second son, Darwīsh, in November 1770.⁴⁷ By July 1770 signs of new tensions could be detected. Ẓāhir al-‘Umar began new fortification work in Acre, perhaps upon hearing of the death of Sulaymān Agha in Istanbul, and had all male inhabitants of Acre, Muslim and Christians, armed with rifle, saber, and two pistols.⁴⁸ In the following months Ẓāhir succeeded in reconciling all his sons and forged thereby a powerful alliance.

In a sense, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had reached the zenith of his power: he controlled a firm alliance with the Metualis, his sons were—for the time being—united with him, neither the people of his realm nor his troops were in any mood to rebel, and in addition, he must have possessed considerable financial means, since the cotton export trade had been very profitable for two decades. Yet never had his position been as precarious as now: he had lost all contacts and protection in Istanbul—such as they had been. It was his luck that just then Istanbul was preoccupied with the Russian war. His major enemy, ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Kurjī, the governor of Damascus, was fiercely determined to eliminate him. For this purpose he had struck an alliance with the Druze and found enough support in Istanbul to have his sons invested as governors of Tripoli and Sidon, the province from which Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had carved out most of his principality. Nablus, to the south, also belonged to the province of Damascus and was controlled by the al-Jarrārs, who still bore a grudge against Ẓāhir. Strong but surrounded by an alliance of enemies and without backing from Istanbul, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar must have been in desperate need for an ally to support him. This ally he found in ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr in Egypt.

‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr had only recently established himself as sole ruler in Egypt and had conquered the Red Sea coast and the Hejaz. Strategic considerations caused him, like all strong autonomous rulers of Egypt before him, to turn his attention to Syria, which could serve as the base for an attack on Egypt or as the glacis of Egypt’s defense if it was under Egyptian control. In addition, ‘Alī Bey nursed an old animosity against ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Kurjī. When Istanbul’s attention and energies were absorbed by the war with Russia, the moment seemed to have come for a march on Syria. It is not clear which of the two, ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr or Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, who obviously shared common interests, initiated the alliance.⁴⁹ There is no doubt that Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh was the most influential policy maker in the government of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar and that the network of Syrian immigrants in Egypt had become powerful. It provided Ẓāhir al-‘Umar with the contact he was missing so badly in Istanbul and Damascus. In contrast to the Jews, the Greek Catholics were not an imperial millet with representation in Istanbul but a local minority without legal recognition, well established on the Syrian coast and in Egypt. Their interests were as local as those of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar and ‘Alī Bey al-Kabir, and they seem to have been instrumental in forging the alliance between the two.

In November 1770 ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr sent the first Egyptian troops to Gaza and Jaffa. With that step he set the stage for the last act of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s rule in Acre, five years which in human greed, hubris, and bravery, in dramatic, unforeseen turns of events, and in grandeur and catastrophe lacked nothing of Greek tragedy. The expeditionary corps of some 15,000 to 20,000 men, under the command of Ismā‘īl Bey, arrived in the region of Jaffa at the end of November.⁵⁰ He proceeded slowly but without encountering any resistance to Damascus. He arrived there just as ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Kurjī was setting out on the pilgrimage. Ismā‘īl Bey decided not to attack him, apparently because he thought it improper to do battle with the pilgrims.⁵¹ He returned with his troops to the coast of Jaffa, where he lingered during the spring without any particular plan. Ẓāhir al-‘Umar complained angrily to ‘Alī Bey about this inactivity, which gave other pashas the opportunity to collect troops in Damascus. In May 1771 ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr dispatched new troops, some 35,000, under the command of his Mamluk Abū ‘l-Dhahab, who moved quickly on Damascus, defeated the troops of ‘Uthmān Pasha, and in June entered the city. Apparently under the moral influence of the above-mentioned Ismā‘īl Bey, Abū ‘l-Dhahab turned in Damascus from a Saul into a Paul and saw the moral impropriety of waging war against the troops of the sultan, the defender of Islam. He left Damascus almost in panic and returned with his troops to Egypt.⁵² Ẓāhir al-‘Umar was stunned by this sudden change in the situation, and felt extremely vulnerable to the renewed threat from Damascus. He had just taken Sidon, together with his Metuali allies, from where Darwīsh Pasha, the son of ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Kurjī, had fled. In August he took Jaffa and fortified it with a 2,000-man garrison, and in September he, together with Metuali troops, inflicted a severe defeat upon ‘Uthmān Pasha west of the Bridge of Jacob’s Daughters in the Jordan Valley.⁵³ The attempt to take Ṣānūr in August failed, as did a later siege on Nablus in April 1772. In the meantime Ẓāhir’s son ‘Alī was carrying the war to the Ḥawrān, the high plain south of Damascus.⁵⁴ Although worried about his exposure and the force of the enemy, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar was actually able, after the withdrawal of the Egyptians, to expand his realm as never before. It now included Jaffa and Sidon, and a military presence in the Ḥawrān. Nablus, though cut off from its port, Jaffa, remained unconquerable.

May 1772 brought some reverses: ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr arrived in Acre as a refugee, having lost Egypt to Muḥammad Abū ‘l-Dhahab. In the same month Muḥammad Ṭūqān of the Nābulusī clan took Jaffa from Ẓāhir. ‘Alī Bey and Ẓāhir were forced to spend a great deal of energy and resources on the siege of Jaffa for the next nine months before they were able to wrest it from Nābulusī control. If they had any hope of bringing Egypt again under the control of ‘Alī Bey, Jaffa had to be in their hands. Indeed, ‘Alī Bey set out to Egypt in March 1773 only a month after Jaffa had been retaken. He was killed by Abū ‘l-Dhahab’s forces soon after his arrival.⁵⁵

From June 1772 the Russian fleet under Orloff cruised on the Syrian coast, supporting in a haphazard fashion the siege against Jaffa and also against Beirut, where since June Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār, who would before long become ruler of Acre, had entrenched himself, challenging the Druze for possession of the town. This led to a rapprochement between the Druze and Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, whose help they needed for conquering Beirut. The pro-Ẓāhir faction among the Druze gained strength against the Druze Amīr Yūsuf, ally of ‘Uthmān Pasha. In June 1773 a formal reconciliation between the Metualis, the Druze, and Ẓāhir took place. That step blocked the access of troops from Damascus to the coastal region. Still, it took until early October before the new alliance could dislodge al-Jazzār from Beirut.⁵⁶ Ever since the death of ‘Alī Bey, Ẓāhir had made great efforts to strengthen the defenses of Jaffa and to conquer Jerusalem—which, however, he failed to do.

At the beginning of 1774 the French consul in Sidon, de Taules, wrote in the report to his government that complete peace was reigning in Syria. The Russian fleet, with its unpredictable actions, had been withdrawn, and ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Miṣrī, who had been appointed as commander-general of all of Syria to reestablish law and order, seemed to accept the fact that he could not defeat Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, who now appeared to be very conciliatory.⁵⁷ The pasha negotiated with Istanbul to give Ẓāhir the governorship of Sidon, on condition that he pay all outstanding taxes. The official legitimization of Ẓāhir’s position seemed to be forthcoming when an edict from ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Miṣrī was sent on February 17, 1774, to Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, naming him governor of Sidon and Nablus, Gaza, Ramla, Jaffa, and Jabal ‘Ajlūn. ‘Uthmān Pasha referred to a decision by the sultan in this matter, although the final ratification of the appointment still needed the sultan’s signature.⁵⁸ For a moment it appeared as if Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, now an octogenarian, had reached a new peak in his extraordinary career.⁵⁹ He was to be the legitimate ruler of the whole Syrian coast from Gaza to Beirut, of Jabal ‘Āmil and all of Palestine, though he would have no actual control over Nablus and Jerusalem. He had an agreement with the Druze and no powerful enemy threatened his borders.

The only clouds on the horizon were his sons, who, getting on in age themselves, finally wanted power for themselves and punctuated the peace with repeated rebellions. ‘Alī, based in Safed and probably the most talented of the sons, became a particular problem. He challenged his father for control over villages in the Galilee. Only a precarious alliance with another son, Aḥmad, who resided in Tiberias and from there controlled Jabal ‘Ajlūn, enabled Ẓāhir to defeat ‘Alī. A third son, Sa‘īd, presented yet another challenge to his father. For the time being Ẓāhir could again establish his authority over his sons. But his resources were stretched to the utmost, and desertions became endemic among his Maghrebi troops. For want of pay they went over to ‘Alī.⁶⁰

The peace was precarious at best, and the legitimacy of Ẓāhir’s rule was lacking the final signature. By the summer of 1774 ‘Uthmān Pasha, who had assured Ẓāhir that the governorship of Sidon was his, had been called back and Muḥammad Pasha al-‘Aẓm had been appointed governor of Damascus. More important, the Ottoman government had in July 1774 signed the peace treaty of Kücük Kainarce with Russia, terminating thereby the threat to the very existence of the empire. It was now to demonstrate that it was by no means willing to make good on promises to provincial rebels, given under the duress of the war with Russia. The new pasha of Damascus, not able to defeat Ẓāhir militarily, promised to negotiate a pardon for him from the government. But there was no more talk of the governorship of Sidon. When the Ottoman government finally did grant Ẓāhir a general pardon in April 1775, it occurred almost simultaneously with the renewed invasion of Palestine by Muḥammad Abū ‘l-Dhahab, who had been encouraged by the government to do so, in order to destroy Ẓāhir’s power.⁶¹

Egyptian troops took Jaffa on May 20, 1775. The male population was put to the sword and the city was plundered. Upon the news, panic spread in Acre. All its inhabitants fled, depositing their valuables in the French khan in the hope that the khan would not be touched. Ẓāhir himself left on May 24. His son ‘Alī used the opportunity—somewhat pathetically—to enter the deserted city and proclaim himself governor of Acre. His glory lasted only a week, after which, under the threat of the approaching Egyptian troops, his soldiers plundered whatever was left in the city and disappeared.⁶² On the following day Muḥammad Abū ‘l-Dhahab moved into Acre.

The rule of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had collapsed. He and his vezier were refugees. His sons tried to cut personal deals with the invader. The army had disintegrated. Nothing could stop the Mamluk army. But once more Abū ‘l-Dhahab caused—though this time not deliberately—a complete turnaround in the situation. He suddenly fell sick and died on June 10. His Mamluks, well aware that the question of his succession would be settled in Cairo and not in Acre, broke camp almost immediately and left the next day in all haste toward the south. This left the city in anarchy and at the mercy of Maghrebi soldiery. An internecine struggle for the control of the city threatened to break out among the Maghrebi mercenaries, who had served different masters.⁶³ Only the diplomatic skills of al-Dinkizlī and the charismatic personality of Ẓāhir, returning to the city on June 12, succeeded in establishing discipline among the troops.⁶⁴

Once more, it seemed, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had saved his rule and realm, though severely battered, in the nick of time. But the death of Muḥammad Bey Abū ‘l-Dhahab, inconvenient as it was, did not change the determination of the government in Istanbul to bring this local rebel to heel once and for all. Almost immediately the government decided to send another expeditionary corps against Ẓāhir.⁶⁵ Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha, newly appointed admiral of the Ottoman navy, arrived in early August in the bay of Haifa with some eight ships. His major task, it seems, was to collect several years’ outstanding taxes from Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, without necessarily conquering Acre or killing Ẓāhir. Yet this is precisely what occurred within a few short weeks. Reports about the events that led to the violent end of Ẓāhir and his rule differ in their interpretation of the causes. The various narratives basically offer two versions. It is well worth looking into them more carefully, since they reflect very different and opposing perceptions of the weakness of the imperial center and its relations to its provinces striving for autonomy. The two historians of the al-Ṣabbāgh family seem to have much inside information, but their story has a particular slant. Both agree that there existed a willingness in principle to pay but that negotiations with Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha were sabotaged by the greed and ambitions of various people—the worst among them Aḥmad al-Dinkizlī, who betrayed his master of forty years.⁶⁶ A French report written immediately after the events seems to confirm parts of this narrative.⁶⁷

The second version is given by the historian Ḥaydar Aḥmad Shihāb—about whom more later—and sheds a very different light on the events. When Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha demanded the outstanding taxes be paid, Ẓāhir consulted with his top officials. Opinions were divided. Aḥmad Agha al-Dinkizlī advised payment of the debts and submission to the Ottoman authority. Ẓāhir concurred: “This is the right thing to do. I am an old man and I don’t have the nerve anymore for fighting and endless marches in the mountains. For me the most important issue is to die with a calm mind as an obedient [servant] of the Sultan.” But Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh, Ẓāhir’s vezier and chief financial administrator, demurred and claimed that the money was not available for these payments. Besides, he argued, “even if we had it and we gave a lot, the government would never be satisfied.… Shaykh Ẓāhir has no money but he has gunpowder and men, war and battle.” When al-Dinkizlī realized that al-Ṣābbāgh’s opinion had carried the day, he gave orders to his Maghrebi troops and the artillery not to fight: “We are Muslim people, obedient to the Sultan. For the Muslim, believing in One God, it is not permitted to fight against the Sultan in any form.” Thereupon the soldiers refused to fight, Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha took the city, and Ẓāhir was killed by a soldier while fleeing from Acre.⁶⁸ An anonymous report by an author who was perhaps Egyptian, more likely a Syrian living in Egypt, and probably a Muslim, tells a similar story, putting the blame squarely on al-Ṣabbāgh’s excessive greed.⁶⁹

The two men, Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh and Aḥmad Agha al-Dinkizlī, seem to have been personal enemies, and both tried to manipulate the octogenarian Ẓāhir. The two sources written by members of the al-Ṣabbāgh family put the blame for the final catastrophe squarely on al-Dinkizlī, although no motive for such an outrageous act of betrayal after forty years of loyalty is given. We can safely assume a deliberate attempt by both authors to exonerate their relative. Shihāb’s account seems more trustworthy, not only because it carries no familial prejudice, but also because it makes more sense in its general development. The anonymous account also documents Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh’s absolute refusal to seek a compromise and conciliation. This attitude is actually confirmed, as we shall see, by earlier observations by the French consul. The struggle between the two men shows, too, that there existed, beyond the personal rivalries, profound differences of opinion regarding politics, the role of the empire, and its future. It was, once more, the question of the relations between a weakening center and a provincial periphery teeming with tendencies toward autonomy.

In pursuit of his political aims Ẓāhir al-‘Umar was quite prepared, as we have seen, to disregard the will of the governor of Sidon, to kill his multazim, to arrest his soldiers, and in general to do battle with him. He also challenged the authority of the governor of Damascus when he extended his control to regions belonging to Nablus. Furthermore, at least twice he resisted, in the fortified town of Tiberias, attempts by the governor to subdue him militarily. He dealt with the French merchants on his own terms, sometimes with very little respect for treaties the French had signed with the sultan. He raised and maintained his own standing army and signed treaties with his neighbors in Nablus and with the Metualis. In short, he demonstrated a great deal of independence in his actions. Yet at the same time he was eager to maintain contact with Istanbul. During the siege in Tiberias he sent messages via the French and the Jews to present his case and to profess his obedience to the sultan. When his possession of Haifa was challenged by the governor of Damascus, he submitted to arbitration, though most likely he fixed the results. Nevertheless, it provided his expansion with legitimacy from the Ottoman government. He also seems to have paid taxes quite regularly—the ultimate proof of loyalty.

The situation was considerably radicalized in 1770, when, having lost support in Istanbul and threatened by a determined governor in Damascus, he forged his alliance with ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr of Egypt. The latter had his own motives for this alliance, and it has been repeatedly but inconclusively debated whether he himself was striving for total independence from the Ottoman Empire. We are, I believe, on firmer ground as far as Ẓāhir al-‘Umar is concerned. There is no doubt that he was willing to use the alliance to fight the governor of Damascus and to expel the governor of Sidon and that he profited from the occasion to expand his realm to the strategically important towns of Jaffa and Beirut. He was willing to do practically anything in the region to ensure his power, possibly even to defend himself against the admiral of the Ottoman fleet. But at the same time he was also eagerly negotiating to have his power legitimized by the Ottoman government and to be installed as governor of Sidon. When this did not work out, it was important for him to obtain a general pardon from the government. Even in his last struggle, his first direct confrontation with the Ottoman government, his automatic reaction seems to have been to comply with the demands of the government. The sentiment expressed by Aḥmad Agha al-Dinkizlī, that it was unacceptable for a Muslim to fight against his overlord the sultan, must have been a genuine one and was probably shared by Ẓāhir. It was the same sentiment that prompted Ismā‘īl Bey, the Mamluk commander from Egypt, and most likely also Muḥammad Abū ‘l-Dhahab, to abstain from attacking the amīr al-ḥājj and from following through with their conquest of Syria.⁷⁰ When Abū ‘l-Dhahab invaded Syria a second time, he immediately sent Ismā‘īl Bey as an emissary to Istanbul to negotiate the appointment as governor for him. For all participants, the framework of legitimacy for the exercise of political power remained the Ottoman Empire and appointment by the sultan.

But there are also other tendencies recognizable, which crystallized by the middle of the century and responded to the signs of weakness in the central government. The tendencies toward local autonomy, of which Ẓāhir al-‘Umar himself was part, reflected this weakness. The disastrous Russo-Turkish War, 1768–1774, introduced a new situation in the eastern Mediterranean. For the first time a European power, a fleet under Russian command, interfered directly along the Syrian coast, looking for possible allies against the Ottoman Empire. With that, local fights between pashas and local strongmen could acquire international dimensions. It was the introduction of modern international politics to the Syrian coast, conceptualized so aptly by Carl L. Brown as the “penetrated system.”⁷¹

The signs of weakness at the center were visible enough for prophecies about the end of the Ottoman dynasty and the fall of Istanbul to circulate in the Syrian region by 1758.⁷² Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh was the most unequivocal advocate of those who concluded that the Ottoman Empire was about to collapse and disintegrate. He belonged to a community, the Greek Catholics, that had itself arisen out of a challenge to the power of the patriarch in Istanbul and indirectly to the authority of the Ottoman government whose representative he was. It is reported, unfortunately without giving a date, that a European approached Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh, suggesting he declare Acre independent from the Ottoman Empire. In return Hapsburgian protection and financial support was to be offered. Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh was not disinclined to listen to the offer, but being a wary politician he suspected the European to be an agent provocateur sent by the Ottomans. When he asked for a written commitment, the emissary refused to give it.⁷³ And there was a curious incident during the siege of Jaffa by ‘Alī Bey and Ẓāhir. A ship with supplies for them was sent from Acre. Originally it flew the Russian flag, but then flew the one which Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh had provided.”⁷⁴ One can only speculate what this flag might have been, but it is not far-fetched to assume here an attempt at establishing symbols of sovereignty. In 1773 al-Ṣabbāgh had discussed with ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr, living in exile in Acre, the possibility of proposing a pact to the British to help ‘Alī Bey to conquer Arabia in return for naval bases in the Red Sea.⁷⁵ In the same year the French consul de Taules heard al-Ṣabbāgh say that “l’Empire Ottoman n’existoit plus, et qu’il n’y avoit dans le monde qu’une seule nation (la Russe) comme un seul Dieu dans le ciel.”⁷⁶* De Taules warned al-Ṣabbāgh about these illusions, and with a clairvoyance which would prove to be true for the next 140 years he wrote to al-Ṣabbāgh: “L’Empire Ottoman, quoiqu’on en dise, ne sauroit tomber. Il y a des puissances intéressées à le maintenir dans sa force, et c’est lorsqu’il risquera d’être entièrement abattu qu’on verra les secours accourir.”⁷⁷* This argument apparently left no impression on Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh. When in August 1775 the final crisis developed and the question arose whether to pay the outstanding taxes to the Ḳapūdān Pasha, it may have been al-Ṣabbāgh’s rivalry with Aḥmad Agha al-Dinkizlī or his often quoted greed that made him refuse the payments. But he could make this decision only because he had fatally underestimated the new lease of life the Ottoman Empire had obtained with the peace of 1774 and the European strategic concerns that would keep the Eastern Question—and the Ottoman Empire—alive for generations to come.

AḤMAD PASHA AL-JAZZĀR: CONSOLIDATION OF POLITICAL POWER, 1775–1804

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār and His Biographers

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was born into impoverished circumstances some time in the late 1730s in Bosnia. He died in 1804 in Acre as the undisputed governor of the province of Sidon, a position he had held for almost thirty years. Between these two dates lies a life of adventure, betrayal, cruelty, failure, and grandiose success. His career and personality were judged very differently by various of his contemporaries and later observers: “This lion, let loose against humanity;”⁷⁸ “Jamais aucun tyran, aucun usurpateur n’a répandu, de sangue froid et sans motive, autant de sang humain que Djezar.”⁷⁹ [No tyrant, no usurper has ever, coldly and without reason, spilt as much human blood as has Djezar.] “The right honorable, the magnificent counselor, the great vezier, the famous ruler Ahmad Pasha, known widely as al-Jazzār … in short he was one of the marvels of his age: anecdotes about him are too numerous to be recorded by the pen and memory cannot do justice to them. Collected, they would fill volumes. Had his only achievement been his victory over the French and his steadfastness in resisting [their siege] more than two months without interruption, that would have been enough.”⁸⁰

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was certainly an extraordinary man. He ruled for a generation over Acre and its realm, most often with the support of the Ottoman government, sometimes against its will. He distinguished himself by great courage, sober tactical thinking, and, apparently, by excessive rage and cruelty. His greatest achievement in the minds of his contemporaries, both Muslim and Christian, was his successful defeat of Bonaparte, who besieged him for two months in the spring of 1799 in Acre. In Muslim public opinion al-Jazzār became the defender of the faith, the fighter of the holy war. Biographies and long panegyric odes were dedicated to him by his contemporaries.⁸¹ For European observers al-Jazzār remained one of the few who had succeeded in defeating Napoleon. This fascination with al-Jazzār’s person led, in the first half of the nineteenth century, to a considerable amount of literary production.

It is therefore the more remarkable that since that time nothing more has been written about him, and in particular no scholarly monograph—with the exception of one unpublished M.A. thesis⁸²—has been dedicated to him. I suspect this has to do with some of the general motives for writing history. The early reports on him had drawn such an ambivalent or straight-out negative picture that no national historiography cared to claim him. His field of operation had been too far removed from Bosnia for any Bosnian nationalism to co-opt al-Jazzār as its own. Palestinian national historiography has tentatively integrated Ẓāhir al-‘Umar as a part of its history but did not care to burden its image with the ill repute of al-Jazzār.⁸³ The problem is more general and concerns all the late Mamluk establishments, which were ruling elites of decidedly foreign background. Egyptian national historiography has only recently begun to discuss the Mamluks in Egypt in the eighteenth century and is not at all certain how to evaluate their role.⁸⁴

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was a Mamluk and his bad press outweighed by far any positive image. Basically there seem to be two different approaches to the interpretation of his career. For convenience, we shall call them the French and the Arabic school of biographical interpretation. Both counted insightful and reliable observers among their authors.

To illustrate the difference in approach we shall take the descriptions of the first period of his life until he arrived in Syria. Two Arab contemporaries of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār give detailed accounts of this period. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī and Ḥaydar Aḥmad al-Shihāb both had excellent access to information about Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār. The first was a conscientious and sober chronicler living in Cairo who made it his business to get the most reliable information. The second, as secretary to Amīr Bashīr, had direct dealings with Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār. In fact, the two reports are often so similar that one wonders whether the authors worked from the same sources or corresponded with each other. But we have not the slightest indication that this was the case.⁸⁵

Both authors agree that Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār originated from Bosnia and had probably come to Istanbul around 1755 in his late teens. He worked as a barber and his job brought him in touch with the retinue of ‘Alī Bey Agha, who was appointed governor of Egypt in 1756. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār went to Egypt as a member of his household. For a while he served ‘Alī Pasha in the Citadel. It is possible that he then had a quarrel with one of ‘Alī Pasha’s followers—or perhaps he genuinely desired to go on the pilgrimage; whatever the reason, he left the Citadel and joined the service of Ṣāliḥ Bey, commander of the pilgrimage in 1758. The two became friends. Upon his return from the pilgrimage Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār entered, in rapid sequence, the service of several Mamluks. He began to wear the dress of the Mamluks and learned to speak Arabic. He acquired the skills of a Mamluk and began to advance in life. When one of his masters, ‘Abdallāh Bey, was killed by Bedouins, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār avenged him by setting a trap and killing some seventy of them.

This act of loyalty and revenge for his master gained him respect and acceptance from the Mamluks, who now gave him the sobriquet of al-Jazzār—“the Butcher.” From “Aḥmad, the Bosnian” he had now advanced to “Aḥmad Bey al-Jazzār.” In the monumental chronicle of Egyptian history by al-Jabartī, the sobriquet “al-Jazzār” appears as an honorary epithet—and not merely a description of profession. A certain Yūsuf Bey acquired the name “al-Jazzār” under circumstances identical to those of Aḥmad Bey: he slaughtered a great number of Bedouins. It may be that the term was only used with regard to the fight against Bedouins.⁸⁶ It certainly was meant as a term of respect and did not reflect a perception of general cruelty of character, as later European writers were inclined to believe. ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr was impressed by al-Jazzār’s courage and loyalty. He made him his protégé and promoted him. He also used him as his private strongman and occasionally asked him to liquidate personal enemies. Aḥmad al-Jazzār “had changed the profession of the razor for that of the sword”⁸⁷ and though he was not, properly speaking, a Mamluk, he was accepted as one of the “numbered Amirs.”

His career in Egypt, however, came to an abrupt end in September 1768 following one final intrigue. ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr, who upon his return from exile in Upper Egypt had allied himself with Ṣāliḥ Bey, now felt that the latter had become a threatening rival and asked his two henchmen, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār and Muḥammad Abū ’l-Dhahab, to assassinate him. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār balked at the thought of killing his old friend and even went secretly to him to warn him. Ṣāliḥ Bey did not believe him and even mentioned the matter to ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr. The latter succeeded in reassuring him that all this had only been a test of the faithfulness of this followers.

When Ṣāliḥ Bey was finally ambushed and killed, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was present but did not draw his sword or participate in the assassination. After the deed Abū ‘l-Dhahab commented on Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s lack of enthusiasm, and may even have tried to set a trap and kill him. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār realized that ‘Alī Bey would never again trust him because of the loyalty he had displayed for Ṣāliḥ Bey. Seeing that his life was in danger, he fled immediately, telling his household to pretend that he was ill and could not be visited. Disguised as a Maghrebi he fled to Alexandria and embarked on a ship to Istanbul only hours before ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr’s men arrived in Alexandria to arrest him.

According to his own somewhat apologetic and not entirely true comments on his life in Egypt Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had gone there as a freeman and a Bosnian and therefore had to move from master to master since the Mamluks would never accept him as one of their own—an opinion which al-Jabartī shared.⁸⁸

Our knowledge of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s whereabouts and actions becomes somewhat vague after his departure. He may have drifted through Anatolia to Aleppo. Al-Jabartī claims that he returned secretly to Egypt in an attempt to link up with some Bedouin tribe to fight ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr, but had to flee again.⁸⁹

It is, however, certain that in 1770 he surfaced in Dayr al-Qamar in Lebanon, so destitute that he was forced to sell the clothes off his back to get food.⁹⁰ The Druze Amīr Yūsuf took an interest in him and had him fed and provided for. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār stayed for a while, went down to the coast, and, finding no employment, drifted to Damascus. His prospects did not improve and he made a short journey to Egypt, disguised as an Armenian, to collect some valuables and money from his house in Azbakiya.⁹¹ Fate finally offered him an opportunity when Amīr Yūsuf asked the governor of Damascus, ‘Uthmān Bey, to send him Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār and some troops in order to defend Beirut against the Russian fleet. Beirut became the first stepping-stone of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s career in Syria. He very quickly had its fortifications improved and then used it as a power base against Amīr Yūsuf, claiming that he was defending the interests of the Ottoman government. Only a four-month joint siege by Amīr Yūsuf and Ẓāhir al-‘Umar could dislodge him from there. His importance was emphasized, if only in a negative way, when in the same year 1772, Muḥāmmad Bey Abū ‘l-Dhahab offered Amīr Yūsuf 200,000 piasters for the head of al-Jazzār. The rivalries from the Egyptian years were still strong.⁹²

In summary, we get here a picture of a young adventurer, somewhat of a drifter perhaps, who knew how to ingratiate himself with his masters. He seized opportunities when they offered themselves: a man on the make, rising through the ranks and usually not hesitating to fight and kill when it was necessary or demanded from him. Constantly shifting alliances, intrigues, betrayal, and assassinations were surely at the time nothing extraordinary in the daily politics of the Mamluks in Egypt in their chronic power struggles.

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār spent formative years in Egypt among the Mamluks. He became an accomplished fighter, courageous and strong-willed, and also a man deeply loyal to friends and masters. He was admired by the Mamluks for his act of vengeance against the tribe who had killed his master. When requested to assassinate his friend and former master, Ṣāliḥ Bey, he had refused. Even after Ṣāliḥ Bey dismissed his warnings, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār couldn’t bring himself to participate in his murder, though he must have realized that this would put himself in danger and certainly would end his career in Egypt. It was an outstanding act of loyalty in those times of treachery.

How very different is the story told by the French school of interpretation! The first French reports we have about Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār are those of the great travelers Volney and Baron de Tott, the latter being at the time an adviser to the Ottoman government. They saw Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār in Acre in 1783 and 1784, respectively. To them should be added the French vice-consul in Acre, Renaudot, who wrote a lengthy report in July 1783.⁹³

Major later reports come from Olivier, who also met Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār in 1802, from Dénain in his general work on the French expedition to Egypt, and much later the first—and last—attempt at a general history of al-Jazzār Pasha by E. Lockroy.⁹⁴

Volney provides us with a motive for Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s departure from Bosnia: he had to flee after trying, at the age of sixteen, to rape his sister-in-law. In Istanbul he found himself destitute and sold himself into slavery to a merchant who shipped him to Egypt, where he was bought by ‘Alī Bey—presumably Volney means ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār distinguished himself through courage and a willingness to assassinate whomsoever he was ordered to kill. This earned him the title al-Jazzār. He hesitated only once to kill “either from humanity or some secret friendship” and even “remonstrated against the order.”⁹⁵ This forced him to leave Egypt. De Tott has very little to say about the early life of al-Jazzār except that he himself had taken the name of al-Jazzār “the butcher in which he gloried.”⁹⁶ Olivier, who met Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār almost twenty years later, has some features to add: al-Jazzār had to flee his homeland, at the age of seventeen, after stabbing a woman who did not submit to his wishes. After working as a sailor he drifted through Anatolia and sold himself to a Turkish slave trader. Once in Egypt he converted to Islam.⁹⁷ Sold to ‘Alī Bey, he distinguished himself with cold-blooded atrocities, for which his comrades gave him the title al-Jazzār. He had to flee Egypt when he showed scruples “dont il ne paraissait pas capable” [of which he seemed not capable].⁹⁸

Dénain follows by and large the earlier French reports. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s selling himself into slavery acquires now a more programmatic meaning: “il renonça à sa liberté comme il avait renonçé à sa patrie” [he renounced his freedom as he had renounced his fatherland]. Dénain emphasizes that Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār named himself “al-Jazzār,” a title which he made it a point to justify. Al-Jazzār refused to bring ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr the head of Ṣāliḥ Bey. But Dénain does not mention any motive for this refusal, and Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s behavior seems capricious. Like de Tott, he mentions an incident in which Christians in Beirut were immured alive upon the orders of al-Jazzār, but what were “a few” in de Tott’s narrative have become now “all the Greek Orthodox.”⁹⁹

In Lockroy’s account, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Turkish slave trader to whom al-Jazzār sold himself has become a Jewish merchant, probably a reflection of the increased anti-Semitism in Europe. The merchant received 1,200 francs for the boy. The story about the assassination of Ṣālīḥ Bey becomes garbled. According to Lockroy, ‘Alī Bey wanted to get at Abū ‘l-Dhahab by having his friend Ṣāliḥ killed. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār refused to carry out the order because he did not want to fall into disfavor with Abū ‘l-Dhahab. Yet the latter did not hesitate to kill Ṣāliḥ Bey himself. We should perhaps add here a further, Arabic, source from a time slightly earlier than Lockroy, but as confused. This source simply states that Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār one day invited eighteen Mamluks to his home, gave them dinner, made them drunk, and killed them all. Thereupon he had to flee Egypt.¹⁰⁰

In summary, a picture differing very much from that drawn by the contemporary Arabic sources is presented here. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār tries to rape even members of his family, he sells his freedom just as he renounces his fatherland, he takes pleasure in killing, he boasts of it and calls himself “the Butcher.” His loyalty to Ṣāliḥ Bey, when mentioned at all, is dismissed as an erratic move. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār is not just “a bad lot,” he is evil personified, “un Monstre.” Our French authors never tire of adding examples from all periods of his life to illustrate his bloodthirstiness and his capricious, cruel, and unreasonable behavior. Why was there an almost systematic effort to paint an even darker picture of a man who certainly had some highly unpleasant traits of character; and why is this tendency only to be found in the French writers? Volney, de Tott, and Renaudot, the French vice-consul in Acre, were not only professional men, educated visitors in a foreign society, they were also profoundly engaged in the political debate in their own country on the eve of the French Revolution. Renaudot, for instance, who set out to write a memo about French trade in the area, treats us to long paragraphs on political thought and despotism: “Dans un des plus beaux pays du monde, les hommes sont méchants, et Esclaves, et telle est la nature du Gouvernement Despotique que celui qui donne La Loi est plus Esclave que celui qui La reçoit. Un Pacha, avec deux milles hommes de troupes, peut-être les plus méprisables qu’il y ait au monde, fait trembler douze cent mille habitans: à Son tour il a les plus grandes frayeurs au milieu des misérables qui éxécutent ses volontés, toujours prestes à fléchir le genoux devant lui, ou prestes à lui porter le coup mortel.”¹⁰¹* On a more mundane level it should be added that a perusal of the French consular correspondence of the time shows the French merchants calling a tyrant practically any local ruler who was able to force the French to pay higher prices for local goods.

Volney writes: “In Turkey, as everywhere else, we must be convinced that arbitrary power in the sovereign is fatal to the state” and, echoing the thoughts of Voltaire in his play Mahomet, Volney tells us that the Koran incites fanaticism, demands total devotion, and thereby prepares the way for total despotism.¹⁰² Baron de Tott lectures us that “painting the weakness of the despot and the cowardice of his subordinate officers, who awe him at a distance, gives, at one stroke of the pencil, the picture of the Ottoman empire.”¹⁰³ “Dans des contrées où rien ne stipule la mesure des droits de ceux qui gouvernent sur ceux qui sont gouvernés, où l’abus de la force semble être inhérent au pouvoir, Djezaar eut l’art de passer tout le monde en injustices gratuites et en cruautés monomanes.”¹⁰⁴*

These comments about despotism were directed at the French reader and were part of the political debate in prerevolutionary France. The Ottoman Empire, two hundred years earlier admired and feared in Europe for its firm organization and effective centralism, served now as an example of the harmful effects of despotism. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār became the incarnation of this political pattern. He was consistently described as tyrant, despot, and usurper. Unfettered by the limits of law, he committed crime upon crime. His picture, as the tyrant par excellence, could not be drawn in colors too dark or bloody.

One reason for the choice of al-Jazzār for this role had to do simply with the accessibility of Acre for Europeans. It was easier to observe at first hand al-Jazzār’s rule and its results than the unpleasantnesses inflicted, for instance, by the Shihābis upon each other, or the governors of Damascus upon its population. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār stayed in power much longer than anybody else, almost thirty years, but even after his death his fame lingered on as the first to have defeated Napoleon.

There is, of course, a further explanation for the gory descriptions that the French authors provide. Their reports belong to that at the time most popular genre of travel literature. This literature, to be sure, sought to inform and instruct but also to entertain. Dramatization and exaggeration were needed—especially when the journey itself had become rather commonplace, as was the case with the Holy Land in the early nineteenth century. When travelers followed each other in quick succession with their publications, they had to outdo their predecessors in their descriptions. This explains also why the descriptions of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s character and deeds became bloodier, more cruel, and, indeed, pornographic as time went by.

Even the approach to Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s citadel in Acre lets the reader shudder delightfully:

At the sight of these ruined fortifications, sad habitations of misfortune and desperation, my heart contracted with indignation and horror.… Having reached an alley we saw on one side the cannons arranged in front of the palace and on the other side well guarded a prison, whose doors, however, remain open so that the people can see those unfortunate ones, loaded with chains, destined for torture or the final martyrdom. Farther away a mosque surrounded by sycamores and finally a fountain decorated with marble and raised by the Aḥmad Pasha for the poor. Vain monument of a false and sterile piety. We are made to pass the gate of the palace and are conducted through an obscure and sinister corridor to a large hall.¹⁰⁵

Most instructive is another incident which has all the ingredients for drama and good horrifying entertainment: intrigue, sex, bloody murder. In 1789, upon his return from the pilgrimage, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār believed he had evidence of amorous relationships between some of his Mamluks and some of the women in his harem. He chased away all those involved. So far all major sources agree. Al-Jabartī adds that he killed those he suspected in this affair. Ḥaydar Shihāb reports a highly dramatic battle in the palace between Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār and some faithful followers on the one side and the accused Mamluks on the other. The battle ended in a stalemate and the Mamluks were granted free exit from the city. The author reports nothing about later executions.

The Englishman E. D. Clarke, who visited Acre in 1801 and seems to have been a rather sober observer, concedes that Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār apparently killed seven of his wives when he had reason to suspect their faithfulness. But he doubts much of what is told about Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār. “Such stories are easily propagated, and as readily believed and it is probable that many of them are without foundation.”¹⁰⁶

Olivier, visiting only two years later, told how the older and less beautiful women were packed into boats to be drowned in the sea, others were sewn into leather sacks and thrown in the Gulf of Acre, others again were tortured and thrown alive into a cistern. Olivier then treats us to the last encounter between Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār and his most beloved wife “d’une beauté ravissante.” Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār accused her of unfaithfulness. Her denial of any wrongdoing infuriated him only more. Suddenly he cut off both her hands, which were clasped together, then he cut off her breasts. Not satisfied with this “le monstre … il lui fend le ventre! … Sa main se promène dans ses entrailles palpitants” [the monster … slit open her belly … His hand moves around in her throbbing intestines].¹⁰⁷

Olivier tells us all this, of course, only in order to raise our political consciousness. It might be useful, he explains, to describe such acts of cruelty in all this detail because it shows us how much a man can abuse authority which he inherited from his father or which he usurped.¹⁰⁸ Dénain obviously had read Olivier, too, but adds even more details: Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had all the women of his harem lined up naked and all those who showed signs of pregnancy had their stomachs cut open by him. Generally speaking, Dénain assures us that innumerable young slaves were put into the harem every year: they would come running trembling at the slightest wink of Aḥmad Pasha; weak women, whom the scimitar readies for pleasure, and “who more than once were transported in his arms from amorous spasms to spasms of death.”¹⁰⁹ And so on ad nauseam.

I have no intention of trivializing the cruelties Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār no doubt committed throughout his life. The testimony is too general and too consistent to dismiss all accusations against him. Years after his death the visitor to Acre was struck by the great number of mutilated persons—usually missing an eye, or ear, or part of the nose, or all three. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was toward the end of his life aware of the image Europeans had of him. In response he remarked: “They say that al-Jazzār is cruel and barbaric; he is only just.” About his style of government he commented that contrary to the accusations against him he was a just ruler, and “in order to govern the people of this land one cannot be too severe. But if I strike with one hand I recompense with the other. This is how I have maintained for thirty years, in spite of everybody, complete possession of all [the land] between the Orontos and the estuary of the Jordan.”¹¹⁰ This surely was a self-serving statement, but it also reflected an opinion widely shared by contemporary rulers and governors. The grand vezier Yūsuf, upon entering Syria in 1800, had a great number of rebellious elements executed. Abdallāh Pasha al-Aẓm, upon being appointed governor of Damascus in 1799, immediately had several enemies hung—mainly, one feels, in order to establish beyond doubt who could execute whom in the city. Neither, as we have seen, were the Mamluks in Egypt particularly concerned about shedding blood.

There can be no doubt that there was a streak of cruelty and perhaps of sadism in Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār. An uncontrollable temper, when provoked, often pushed him to violence; at other occasions he seems to have murdered in cold blood and for no visible reason. In 1789, when the rebellion of his own Mamluks presented the gravest internal challenge to his rule, he reacted violently, spilling the blood of anyone he suspected to be part of the conspiracy. As one chronicler reports: “After that event he became like a wild animal, so that nobody could stand before him and he believed in his imagination that the whole world was against him.”¹¹¹

In the context of his own times al-Jazzār’s cruelty seems not quite so outrageous—at least in the Egyptian context of internecine struggles he was one of the few to show any scruples and loyalty at all. We also might add that Napoleon thought nothing of having 4,000 of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s troops systematically executed in the dunes of Jaffa after they had become prisoners of the French. Napoleon probably had more people killed there in one day than Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār killed in a lifetime. In addition, the image of the cruel tyrant was built up in the French sources. Clearly, al-Jazzār served the French authors as an instructive example of the evil excesses of despotism and as a titillating monstrous attraction for the reading public.

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had a far more complex personality, and cruelty was only one of his character traits. De Taules, French consul in Sidon, was probably the first Frenchman to meet Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār personally. This was in 1773, during the time that al-Jazzār was attempting to establish a power base in Beirut. De Taules observed him to have a violent temper, which was only made worse through his excessive drinking. De Taules concedes “un certain esprit” [a certain intelligence] but expects nothing but “du bruit et du mal” [noise and evil] from this man.¹¹²

Volney found him “not destitute of talent and especially cunning,” in fact, “too cunning to shed blood while there are any hopes of getting money.”¹¹³ Renaudot, the French vice-consul who, living in Acre, must have had daily contact with Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār in the 1780s, drew a far more complex picture:

This Pasha is choleric, violent, carried away by his temperament, though he is not inaccessible; with patience and subtlety one can get one’s way with him. He is a mixture of vice and virtue. He has without doubt made the greatest efforts to contain his mad character in the space he had to travel through from his birth to the position which he has now reached. But like a volcano his irruptions were violent when he could enjoy full liberty … He guards his authority jealously and to excess. He wants to lord it over all, to judge everything, and his judgments always reflect the state of his soul. He is sometimes just, great, and generous, at other times furious and bloody. He stabs with one hand and gives his own blood with the other. He speaks of himself with great complaisance and is fond of flaunting his talents, his knowledge, his martial qualities, his bravado with which nothing can compare, and his military exploits. He lends his ear to flattery and cherishes the adulators.¹¹⁴

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had, indeed, some justification for boasting of his personal courage and physical stamina. At the age of about sixty he still scaled the walls of Acre and fought man-to-man with the French.¹¹⁵ He showed tenacity and the cool head of a superb tactician, as his defense of Beirut or the quelling of the rebellion of his Mamluks proved. The sheer length of his stay in power speaks for his political skills. He succeeded under unusually difficult circumstances which demanded much more from him than simple-minded repression and cruelty.

Apart from these qualities Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had considerable engineering skills, though we do not know where or how he acquired them. “He formed the plans, drew the designs, and supervised the execution” of building the mosque, the bazaar and the fountain.¹¹⁶ He was directly involved in the construction of the fortifications until his last years.¹¹⁷ He took an interest in gardening, and in his later years he showed a talent for making paper cutouts, with which he entertained his guests and his harem.

The later French visitors who drew such a negative picture of him reflect the complexity and even the positive characteristics of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s personality almost in spite of themselves when they report direct personal encounters with him. Olivier and Jaubert visited him in 1800 and 1802 respectively. Their personal impressions are confirmed by Clarke, the Englishman who met him in 1801. At the time al-Jazzār was over sixty with a white beard but still of muscular build and very agile.¹¹⁸ “Habile dans tout l’exercice du corps, il conserve encore tous les goûts de l’éducation qu’il a reçue parmi les Mamluks: il se sert également bien du sabre et du fusil; il monte un dromadaire et dompte un cheval fougueux avec autant d’adresse que d’agilité.”¹¹⁹* He apparently had given up drinking in 1791 when he made the Ḥajj.¹²⁰ Toward the end of his life he gave, in fact, the impression of an ascetic man. He received his visitors sitting on the ground under a palm tree, dressed in coarse cloth and with an old shawl on his head. He could have been mistaken for a beggar.¹²¹ At other times his guests would find him in common Arab dress, plain but clean, sitting on a board without any cushions or carpet. But Clarke also suspected that Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was “betraying as much ostentation in the seeming privations to which he exposed himself, as he might have done by the most stately magnificence.”¹²²

Nevertheless, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār does not seem to have been a man given to conspicuous consumption. The only exception was his building activity. This was partially done for security reasons—the extensive fortification of Acre; or for public benefit—the drinking fountain, the aqueduct, the bath, the bazaar; or for religious purposes—the famous mosque, which also served as a means of political legitimization. He also lavishly spent money in Istanbul for presents and bribes to maintain support for himself in the Ottoman government. Otherwise, as Clarke informs us, “extravagance of any kind, except in cruelty, [was] inconsistent with Djezzar’s character.”¹²³

Olivier, who depicted him as an extremely cruel and bloody tyrant, had nevertheless this to say after seeing him in Acre:

Simple in his manners [Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār] becomes popular and sometimes familiar with the inhabitants of Acre. Charitable and compassionate in appearance, he himself administers to the poor the remedies which he believes to be efficient for their ills. He seats the unhappy next to him and they show complete confidence in him. He consoles them with his talk and nurtures them with his own hand. He has constantly enormous pots of rice in his palace for the destitute and the old. He has money distributed to them every week with the greatest regularity.¹²⁴

This surprising image of generosity and compassion is confirmed by other testimony. When, for instance, he had to surrender, after a bitter siege, the city of Beirut, he demanded as a condition that the population should not be punished by the conqueror.¹²⁵ Perhaps most touching was the scene when Sulaymān, who had been the leader of the rebellion against Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār in 1789, returned humbly to Acre seventeen years later, ready to accept death. Al-Jazzār received him like the prodigal son and restored him to his rank and full honor.¹²⁶

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s European interlocutors were impressed by his intellectual acumen and alertness. He would concentrate in quick sequence on totally different subjects, could change from the most serious topics to the most subtle pleasantries, and could “move from one to the other with alacrity, a precision, a clearness which showed that everything was organized in his head in an admirable order.”¹²⁷ He would often sidetrack the conversations with stories, parables, and anecdotes while at the same time keeping himself busy with paper cutouts. But from behind this apparent frivolity of behavior he observed the effect of his words on the visitors and listened carefully to what they had to say.¹²⁸ European visitors to Acre and to Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār—even those who wrote about him first and foremost as an example of despotism or as an exotic human monstrosity—could not but acknowledge the complexity of his personality: a measure of compassion along with his cruelty, vanity along with his courage, astuteness and even sagacity together with a violent temper. It is only in the works of later authors, such as Lockroy and Mishāqa, that the description of al-Jazzār is reduced entirely to the monstrous and sensational.

A conscious effort is needed to break through the various clichés that have been developed for political or entertainment reasons and to reach a more balanced view of the man. Only then will it be possible to evaluate his role in the development of Acre proper. On the whole, it seems that the two contemporary Arabic reports remain the most useful—they had very limited reasons to praise Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār and none to demonize him. A careful reading of the sources and the reconstruction of the historical context should help us in this task. When we consider in the following pages how he dealt with issues many of which Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had faced before him, we can establish already two important differences which determined at least some of his political behavior: in contrast to his predecessor he was not a local man and had no local clan or family connections. In addition to Serbo-Croat he spoke Ottoman Turkish and Arabic with a thick Egyptian accent, and possibly some Italian. His education had been that of a soldier, a Mamluk. At the time he was appointed governor of Sidon he had had no economic or commercial experience worth mentioning. With this background he fitted, much more than did Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, the mold of the traditional ruling elite in the Ottoman provinces at that time.

Acre’s Relation with Its Neighbors During Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s Rule

THE DRUZE

North of the Galilee and of Jabal al-‘Āmil, the region of the Metualis, we reach the southern parts of Mount Lebanon, which at the time were exclusively settled by the Druze. The Arabic-speaking Druze are variously described as a religious community or as an ethnicity with feudalist structures. An off-branch of Ismā‘īlī Shī‘ism and settled since the eleventh century in the region, they remained very much a territorially circumscribed religious community. How important the religious aspect was for the identity of the Druze remains questionable, as the knowledge of the religion and its contents remained the privilege of the few initiated (the ‘uqalā’), while the majority of the community (the juhalā’) had only marginal knowledge of their religion. As has been pointed out¹²⁹ it was the strict rule of endogamy, imposed by the religion, that was instrumental in creating an identity. The society was one in which patrilineal descent determined the individual’s loyalties to the clan, the social ranking of clans, and the options for alliances. The genealogical aspect is so important that often the term “tribe” is used in describing the Druze. Thanks to the dominant role of the aspect of kinship and family relations, neither the Druze nor their neighbors had any difficulty in knowing who belonged to the Druze community and who did not.

Politically and administratively they were organized along feudalistic lines in the imāra system. It should be noted, however, that it differed in an important aspect of feudalism as generally defined: genealogical coherence was so strong that there was no clear-cut differentiation between estates. In the case of war the feudal lord would mobilize all peasants as warriors.¹³⁰ This meant wars could not be fought for very long without tremendous damage to agricultural production, as wars involved the total population. Each village was organized along clan lines. Several villages, or a region, were ruled by one of the distinguished clans, whose heads carried the title amīr. To those clans belonged the Ma‘n, Shihāb, Arslān, and Abū ‘l-Lam‘a. Slightly lesser but still important clans were those with the rank of shaykh, such as the Junbalāṭ, Abū Nakad, al-Ḥāzin, and others. From the early eighteenth century the Shihāb clan also provided the amīr ḥākim, who ruled over the whole Druze region and represented it to the outside world. His official recognition in the Ottoman context manifested itself in the confirmation of his position by the governor of Sidon, to whose province the region of the Druze was attached. The amīr ḥākim in return committed himself to deliver the annual tax payments to the governor of Sidon.

During the period concerning us a Druze identity was firmly established, and the imāra system was officially recognized, internally by a Druze consensus that the Shihāb clan always provided the amīr ḥākim and externally by the confirmation of his position from Sidon. The question important to us—or, to be more precise, to al-Jazzār—was the extent to which these characteristics of the Druze community were basis enough for common political will and action.

During Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s rule the realm of Acre was isolated from the Druze in the north by an alliance with the Metuali shaykhs and a rather powerless governor in Sidon. Only toward the end of his rule, after linking up with ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr from Egypt, did Ẓāhir al-‘Umar expand his realm to the north by chasing away the governor of Sidon in a joint effort with his Metuali allies. He appointed one of his senior officers, al-Dinkizlī, who was the commander of the Maghrebi troops, as his mutasallim in Sidon. With this step he became a direct neighbor of the Druze, who controlled Beirut. Egyptian support for Ẓāhir al-‘Umar soon crumbled when Abū ‘l-Dhahab carried out his remarkable retreat from Damascus and the governor of Damascus, ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Kurjī, could return to his seat of government. At this point Amīr Yūsuf Shihāb appeared at his court and had the governor appoint him as ruler of Mount Lebanon instead of his uncle, Amīr Manṣūr, who had ruled for twenty-four years. An alliance was forged between the new governor of Damascus, ‘Uthmān Pasha al-Miṣrī, and Amīr Yūsuf in order to push out Ẓāhir al-‘Umar from Sidon and reinstate the governor of Sidon. The attempt was defeated by Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s troops and his Metuali allies in October 1772. The Russian fleet, which had helped to defend Sidon, moved north and threatened Beirut. Amīr Yūsuf asked the governor of Damascus to send him Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār with troops to secure Beirut. Once established in Beirut, al-Jazzār saw the opportunity to build his own power base, always acting in the name of the Ottoman government. When it became apparent that he had no intention of leaving Beirut after the Russian fleet disappeared, Amīr Yūsuf tried to rally the Druze to dislodge him from the city. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār could stave off these attempts because, as the chronicler observed, “In appearance the Druze shaykhs supported Amīr Yūsuf but secretly they opposed him.”¹³¹ With bribes al-Jazzār was able to set them against each other. He learned here a lesson that would serve him well in all his future dealings with the Druze: they were deeply divided amongst themselves and therefore easily manipulated. Another pattern of political relations was also now established: fights in the Druze Mountain were always intertwined with interests from the surrounding seats of Ottoman governors, Tripoli, Damascus, and Sidon, and could be easily turned into proxy wars for the various outsiders.

Only when Ẓahir al-‘Umar joined forces with Amīr Yūsuf and defeated the troops of three pashas sent to break the siege against al-Jazzār was the latter prepared to accept defeat and leave Beirut. After spending some time in Acre he traveled either to Damascus or, more likely, to Istanbul, biding his time.¹³²

Installed as wālī of Sidon after the death of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar in 1776, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār gained a foothold in the politics of the Druze, which Ẓahir al-‘Umar had never possessed. As governor of Sidon he was in a position to grant legitimacy to the ruler of the Mountain. He lost no time laying hands on Beirut, which the admiral of the Ottoman fleet, Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha, had assigned to Amīr Yūsuf Shihāb. In a second move, to establish his authority as wālī of Sidon over Mount Lebanon, al-Jazzār demanded from Amīr Yūsuf the payment of taxes from the Mount Lebanon area, taxes which Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha had just collected in the name of the Ottoman government. A first military encounter between troops of al-Jazzār and Druze elements occurred in August 1776 near Beirut.¹³³ Bent on gaining control over the Mount Lebanon region, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār appealed, perhaps somewhat naively, in 1777 to the new governor of Damascus, Muḥammad Pasha al-‘Aẓm, and his son Yūsuf, who ruled over Tripoli, to join him in an attack on Amīr Yūsuf Shihāb. But these two declined, claiming that Amīr Yūsuf was a loyal, tax-paying servant of the Ottoman sultan. In fact, they saw in Amīr Yūsuf an ally against the new and ambitious governor of Sidon.¹³⁴ Muṣṭafā ibn Qarā Mullā, commander of al-Jazzār’s Maghrebi troops in Sidon, marched via Beirut into the Mountain with the intention of collecting money and the hope of killing Amīr Yūsuf at the same time. But he was forced to retreat to Sidon. Thereupon he tried another route through the Biqā‘a Valley. After he had confiscated the harvest there, and after some bloody but indecisive fighting, here too his assault was stopped.¹³⁵

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s first opportunity to exercise control over the Mountain came when the rifts between various Druze factions could not be contained by Amīr Yūsuf anymore and turned into open defiance against him. The Druze clans of the Junbalāṭ and the Abū Nakad conspired with two brothers of Amīr Yūsuf, Amīr Sayyid Aḥmad and Amīr Afandī, to have him deposed and his two brothers appointed rulers of the Mountain. For this purpose, they offered al-Jazzār 50,000 ghirsh in September 1778. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār accepted the offer and appointed them.¹³⁶ To support their claim he also moved with troops to Beirut and tried from there to march into the Mountain and besiege Jubayl. Amīr Yūsuf, assisted by another brother, Amīr Muḥammad, and supported by the governor of Tripoli, could hold his own, but in the ensuing stalemate he finally offered al-Jazzār 100,000 ghirsh to be reappointed as ruler of Mount Lebanon.

The development of these events during the first two years of al-Jazzār’s rule contains all the elements that would define his relations with the Druze over the next quarter of a century: attempts at military subjugation were costly and mostly futile. The internal rifts of the Druze could be used to destabilize the area and at the same time to obtain considerable payments from the various factions. The factionalism of the Druze frequently attracted outside interference not only from Acre but also from the governors of Tripoli and Damascus, who tended to turn the internal strife of the Druze into proxy wars with Acre.

For the next dozen years Amīr Yūsuf Shihāb remained the dominant figure in Druze politics and the major opponent of al-Jazzār. This, however, is not to say that political stability was achieved. On the contrary, several times Amīr Yūsuf lost his position as amīr ḥākim of the Mountain, only to be reappointed sooner or later. The challenge against him usually came from a coalition of other members of the Shihāb clan in alliance with some other clans. All were aware that to obtain legitimacy for their claim to rulership they needed al-Jazzār’s consent and official investiture by him. To obtain such consent they were willing to pay ever more. When in 1778 two brothers of Amīr Yūsuf offered 50,000 ghirsh to be appointed as co-rulers over the Druze region, Amīr Yūsuf made a counter-offer of 100,000 ghirsh. Six years later Amīr Yūsuf as well as his uncle Amīr Ismā‘īl each offered 300,000 ghirsh for the appointment.¹³⁷ In a final round Amīr Yūsuf, having once more lost the position of amīr ḥākim, in 1790 offered al-Jazzār 600,000 ghirsh for his reappointment. This offer was countered by Amīr Bashīr Shihāb with a promise of the enormous sum of 1,750,000 ghirsh. Subsequent promises for payments would reach over 2 million ghirsh. It is impossible to determine how many of these promissory commitments were actually paid up, but even if only a part was eventually paid it is easy to see how the financial burden on the population of the Mountain increased. This was also the cause for the permanent political instability. Each time al-Jazzār invested another member of the Shihāb clan, the new appointee had to try to raise the promised sums. This promptly antagonized the population. New coalitions against the new ruler quickly found popular support.

At one point, in 1788, Amīr Yūsuf had killed and maimed so many of his own immediate relatives¹³⁸ that he felt secure enough in his position to defy Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār and refuse to pay the regular taxes. Such rebelliousness triggered swift action by al-Jazzār. By August 1779 an expeditionary corps, albeit the third sent from Acre against the Druze for this purpose, was able to effect the disposal of Amīr Yūsuf for the time being.

During his intermittent warfare against the Druze al-Jazzār used a period of relative calm to turn his attention to the Metualis. In a campaign with some 3,000 troops under the command of his Mamluk Salīm Pasha, the Metualis were defeated in a large battle on September 23, 1781. Their most important shaykhs were killed and the others fled into exile. Al-Jazzār’s troops conquered and destroyed all the fortifications of the Metualis and collected rich booty. The port of Tyre became permanently part of al-Jazzār’s realm.¹³⁹ When in 1784 Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s foray into the Mountain was repelled by Amīr Yūsuf and a united Druze front, this perceived weakness encouraged the Metualis to rise against him after having been crushed by him and driven into exile only three years earlier. Once more they were decimated by al-Jazzār’s troops, and their leadership was—this time for good—driven into exile. The Metualis were numerically much inferior to the Druze, and Jabal ‘Āmil was more accessible than the Druze region.

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār repeatedly tried to force his will upon the Druze during these years by dispatching military expeditions into their region. Eventually he had to accept the fact that, although his troops could usually penetrate the region quite quickly, they could never hold their position or establish permanent political control. All Druze peasants could always be also mobilized as warriors. Familiar with the mountainous terrain, they could use it to their advantage and could resist any intruding regular army. In addition, too much military pressure on the Druze would without fail push opposing elements to seek help from Damascus. This led easily either to dangerous, direct confrontations between al-Jazzār’s forces and those of Damascus or to costly, protracted proxy wars between different Druze factions.

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had to learn another lesson about the limitations of his power: even when he was simultaneously governor of Damascus and Sidon¹⁴⁰—and the Druze could therefore not play one governor against the other—he could not impose a military solution on the Druze region. In addition to the disadvantages for regular troops in the difficult terrain of the Mountain, al-Jazzār was also obliged as governor of Damascus to command the annual pilgrimage caravan, which meant that at least for four months he was absent from Bilād al-Shām altogether.

Eventually Amīr Yūsuf was killed in one of al-Jazzār’s prisons in 1791. His death solved none of the issues in the political relations between al-Jazzār and the Druze. It only meant the surfacing of another dominant personality in Druze politics, Amīr Bashīr Shihāb. With his own alliances, especially with Shaykh Bashīr Junbalāṭ, he tried to maintain his position as amīr ḥākim with varying success. The following five years signified another round of war between Druze factions, military campaigns by al-Jazzār’s troops, and a quick sequence of appointments and dismissals for the position of the amīr ḥākim accompanied by demands for extortionary sums of money. Even though al-Jazzār was for most of the time governor of Sidon as well as of Damascus, he was unable to force his will upon the Druze. In 1796, having lost the governorship of Damascus to his archrival ‘Abdallāh Pasha al-‘Aẓm, al-Jazzār realized the advantages of a strong ally (rather than weak enemies) in the Druze Mountain and reappointed Amīr Bashīr Shihāb as amīr ḥakim. After some proxy wars between the latter and some sons of Amīr Yūsuf supported by Damascus, Jubayl and the Biqā‘a Valley came under the control of Amīr Bashīr, i.e., under the governorship of Sidon. Together with Shaykh Bashīr Junbalāṭ, Amīr Bashīr began to liquidate other Druze shaykhs, especially those of the Abū Nakad. Some were able to flee to Damascus. Ironically, all these exiles, including the sons of Amīr Yūsuf, ended up in Acre, where they were welcomed at the court of al-Jazzār, provided with all necessities, and, presumably, kept under surveillance. Apparently al-Jazzār regarded them or some of them as potential alternatives for the leadership in Mount Lebanon—a possibility that did not escape Amīr Bashīr’s wary eye.¹⁴¹

The French invasion of Egypt in 1798 and, in particular, the French march on Acre a year later changed the political scene radically. For the time being al-Jazzār was forced to forgo all attempts to prevent Amīr Bashīr’s consolidation of power in the Mountain. During the French siege of Acre Amīr Bashīr observed strict neutrality, neither collaborating with the French nor coming to the support of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār. He established, however, close contacts with Admiral Smith and won thereby the backing of the British. When the grand vezier Yūsuf came to Syria in 1800 with an Ottoman army on his way to Egypt, Amīr Bashīr provided him unstintingly with cash and supplies for his army. In return the grand vezier appointed him ruler over all of Mount Lebanon, including the Biqā‘a Valley, Ba‘lbak, Wādī Taym, and the Metuali regions. Tax payments were no longer to go to the governor of Sidon, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār, but directly to the Ottoman government.¹⁴²

Al-Jazzār did not hesitate to challenge this new arrangement by once more appointing the sons of Amīr Yūsuf as rulers over the Mountain. He provided them with two expeditionary corps which moved on the Mountain in the familiar pincer movement. With this act al-Jazzār put himself into direct opposition to the Ottoman government. Nevertheless, Amīr Bashīr was forced to flee. With the backing of Smith he went to Egypt to the camp of the grand vezier. The sons of Amīr Yūsuf, however, were not able to pacify the Mountain in spite of the military support of al-Jazzār. The familiar round of civil war, oppression, destruction, and extortion began with the sons of Amīr Yūsuf being themselves under pressure to fulfill their financial commitments to al-Jazzār. The devastation and impoverishment of the region reached new heights. Opposition grew, and when Amīr Bashīr returned to Tripoli in May 1801 the majority of the Druze shaykhs offered to accept his rule over the Mountain for his lifetime.¹⁴³ Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār provided Jirjis Bāz and the sons of Amīr Yūsuf with several thousand additional troops, North Africans and Albanians. But the bitter and destructive fights in the following months made it clear that al-Jazzār could not provide a military solution to the Druze problem. Eventually he was forced to withdraw his troops in order to save them. At that point Jirjis Bāz went over to the camp of Amīr Bashīr, who made him his adviser and gave the sons of Amīr Yūsuf control over Jubayl.¹⁴⁴ Once more, in August and September 1802, al-Jazzār thought he saw an opportunity to interfere in the politics of the Mountain by supporting one Druze faction militarily against another. He sent an expeditionary corps under Sulaymān Pasha to support the claims of the ‘Imād clan. These troops, too, were beaten. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār, “having experienced many times that he could not take possession of the Mountain without the consent of its people,” withdrew his troops.¹⁴⁵ When the ‘Imād clan tried, shortly before al-Jazzār’s death, to draw him back into their intrigues against Amīr Bashīr, he refused.

The Druze had, as we have seen, a strong sense of identity, but were divided among themselves and factionalized to the point that the term “Druze” becomes misleading when analyzing the political events of the time. There was no Druze political entity that behaved as such in any recognizable way. The only political consensus shown by the Druze—which, by the way, al-Jazzār shared—was the general belief that legitimate political leadership had to come from the Shihābī clan and that the leader, agreed upon—or, rather, fought over—among the Druze, needed formal confirmation from political authorities beyond the Mountain, i.e., the governor of Sidon. This consensus, however, did not exclude political divisions leading to fratricide even within the immediate family, nor did it prevent opposing Druze factions from seeking the support of the governors of Damascus or Tripoli. There was no accepted method to select the ruler, nor was it clear who had ultimate authority in making his formal appointment. This is why we can observe the continued destabilization of the region and protracted periods of civil strife, which seem to have increased in intensity: villages were destroyed, their inhabitants killed or expelled, and the fruit trees uprooted.¹⁴⁶

Seemingly the pattern of relations between Acre and Mount Lebanon remained the same during all of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s rule: the Druze were hopelessly divided against themselves, each faction was willing to seek outside support, and more often than not such factional strife was transformed into proxy wars between the governors of Sidon and Damascus, promoting their own strategic interest or, at the very least, trying to extort large sums from the Druze for their support. At the same time, the geography of the Mountain was such that neither of the governors was able to impose permanently his political authority and order. Even when Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was simultaneously governor of Acre and Damascus, he was not able to subdue the Druze completely, his major constraint being that as governor of Damascus he had to leave Syria every year for four months as commander of the pilgrimage. Al-Jazzār demanded, in return for his support, increasingly large sums which, though usually collected only partially, led, together with the continuous civil strife, to increased devastation and pauperization of the region. At the same time, his enormous military efforts to exert direct control over the Mountain came to naught. He repeatedly suffered heavy losses of men and matériel.

Yet, following the French siege of Acre the political structure of Mount Lebanon, and with that its relations with Acre, began to change. For the first time the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean had become part of the “penetrated system.”¹⁴⁷ Political events in Syria became of importance, too, and were influenced by European powers. Amīr Bashīr, until then just one of the many claimants to the rulership, was able to garner British support. He also was able to gain direct legitimization of his rule from Istanbul and establish, albeit not completely successfully, the principle of the region’s autonomy from the governor of Sidon. The fact that in the end most Druze factions rallied behind him and that the shaykhs offered him lifetime rule certainly was a sign of the general exhaustion of society after a generation of incessant war and civil strife. As a result Amīr Bashīr’s position as ruler of the Mountain was considerably elevated, providing him with the base to become a powerful autocratic ruler in the next decade. The successors of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār, Sulaymān Pasha al-‘Ādil and ‘Abdallāh Pasha, ruling in Acre from 1804 to 1831 as governors of Sidon, would never again try to control Mount Lebanon but preferred to forge alliances.

DAMASCUS AND SOUTHERN PALESTINE

While Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār ruled from Acre as governor of Sidon, military actions and political intrigues involving the Druze required incessant attention, energy, and expenditure. But one reason why warfare in the Mountain was so protracted and costly and why politics seemed to be an endless process of shifting alliances was precisely that more was at stake than Druze insubordination and rebelliousness. The Druze might have thought that all that counted were their own internecine quarrels, for which they mobilized support from outside. In fact they were often only the means of determining the larger issue of the balance of power between Damascus and Acre. The latter’s rise as a center of economic and political power coincided with the rise to power in Damascus of a remarkable family, al-‘Aẓm, which for much of the century provided the governors of Damascus and sometimes Tripoli.

Since the 1730s a basic political pattern in Damascus had been changing, reflecting the decreasing hold of the central government over the provincial centers, old and new. Traditionally Ottoman governors were sent by Istanbul, and ruled for a very short time so they would not be able to develop a provincial power base, but the general weakness of the Ottoman Empire permitted the rise of local governors and rulers whose tenure as governors lasted much longer, if not for a lifetime—such as those of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār and Sulaymān Pasha. Though they usually professed loyalty to the sultan, they were fairly free to run their own affairs as long as they paid some taxes and—in Damascus—guaranteed the organization and safety of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

Just when the ‘Aẓm family began to buttress its position of power in Damascus, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar was busy creating a new power base in Acre. As we have seen, much of al-‘Umar’s political and military energy went into this relation with Damascus. The ‘Aẓms saw a clear danger to their own interests in Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s rise to power. The latter’s ambitions, though, were limited. He created an alliance with the Metualis, did not project his power or ambitions into the Druze area, and recognized Nablus as part of the vilayet of Damascus. His interest was focused on the Galilee and its cotton-growing regions, and it would not have occurred to him to press any claims to Damascus. Only during the very last years of his rule, when he had forged an alliance with ‘Alī Bey al-Kabīr from Egypt, did he expand his control—with mixed success—to Jaffa and Sidon, but he failed completely to make Nablus part of his realm. Until the very end he remained the unruly mutasallim of the governor of Sidon, albeit a governor whose authority did not reach beyond the city limits.

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār started from a different position—he was eventually made governor of Sidon—and had different ambitions. If until the death of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar Damascus felt challenged because its traditional sphere of influence on the coast was taken away from it, the issue now was how far Damascus would belong to Acre’s sphere of influence; hence the bitter wars in Mount Lebanon, where both sides struggled over territory, influence, and possible tax revenues. It is, indeed, remarkable that during the next thirty-five years, from 1785 to 1820, the governor of Sidon was also made governor of Damascus six times, for a total of twelve years. Most often the Ottoman government would make such appointments when a governor with political power and economic resources was needed to insure the safety of the pilgrimage, or defend the region against outside enemies such as the French or the Wahhabis; needless to say, massive payments to the right people at the Sublime Porte were helpful, too. The Ottoman government routinely shifted governors from one appointment to another. What was unique in this situation was that the governor of Sidon appointed to Damascus would keep both positions. Repeatedly, these appointed governors would continue to reside in Acre and send subordinates to manage the affairs of Damascus and the pilgrimage. The center of power had shifted from Damascus to the coast.

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār understood the importance of the governorship of Damascus as soon as he was made governor of Sidon. In September 1775 he had been made muḥāfiz of Acre. But promotion to governor was not quickly forthcoming. His enemy Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha, commander of the imperial fleet, was busy in Istanbul preventing such a step. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s own influence in Istanbul finally resulted in his being granted the third horsetail as pasha in the spring of 1776. But nomination as governor of Sidon still took another year. In May 1777, when he was finally made governor of Sidon,¹⁴⁸ he apparently had been close to open rebellion against an imperial government that did not grant him his wishes. When he moved to Acre a year later and began to fortify it, he was still fearing a possible attempt by the government to eliminate him.¹⁴⁹ When in April 1783 Muḥammad Pasha al-‘Aẓm died, al-Jazzār tried to move things in Istanbul in his favor, but his hopes were dashed and another pasha was appointed governor.¹⁵⁰ Three pashas were appointed governor of Damascus in quick succession. The first died after only twenty-nine days in office. The next two, Darwīsh Pasha and Muḥammad Baṭṭāl Pasha, were disastrously incompetent.¹⁵¹ In March 1785, after spending an immense fortune to build up support for himself in Istanbul, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s appointment finally came through. It required some extra pressure to have the government appoint his katkhudā Salīm Pasha al-Kabīr as governor of Sidon during his absence in Damascus,¹⁵² while Sulaymān Pasha became governor of Tripoli.

Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzār left Acre in the middle of April for Damascus in great pomp and military strength. In June and July he “made the rounds,” al-dawra,¹⁵³ in Palestine. With an army of five thousand he created terror, fought down Nablus, and made its inhabitants for a long time “undesiring to rebel.” He occupied Hebron and Jerusalem, where he appointed one of his Mamluks, Qāsim Bey, his mutasallim, taking away this position of power from the Nimr clan in Nablus.¹⁵⁴ People fled Palestine in fear, though they probably were also trying to flee the rapidly spreading plague and the famine. The expedition was clearly meant not only to collect revenues but to establish al-Jazzār’s authority in the province before his October departure for four months on the pilgrimage. By mid-July, al-Jazzār was “master of all of Syria.”¹⁵⁵ Yet his tenure in office as governor of Damascus was short and perhaps only meant to carry out a successful, i.e., safe, pilgrimage. It may also have been his attempts to monopolize the grain trade from the Ḥawrān to Acre, provoking the protests of the Damascenes, that cost him his job. Deposed in 1786 by an imperial order, he returned without resistance to Acre, accepting fully the authority of the Ottoman government over him.¹⁵⁶ It was to be the only time that he would move his residence to Damascus when appointed governor. On later occasions he would appoint a mutasallim to rule Damascus in his name, though most often he would personally command the pilgrimage caravan. He never again gave up the governorship of Sidon, which he had some difficulty regaining after being dismissed as governor of Damascus in 1786.¹⁵⁷ Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was again appointed governor of Damascus in October 1790 and stayed in this position for five years. The extraordinary length of stay in office has been explained by the fact that his archenemy, Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha, had died and that Sultan Selim III was preoccupied with internal reforms.¹⁵⁸ In 1798, after a popular rebellion against Ibrāhīm Pasha, then the governor of Damascus, and with the French danger looming from Egypt, al-Jazzār was made not governor but a sort of caretaker of Syria.¹⁵⁹ A few months later ‘Abdallāh Pasha al-‘Aẓm was again appointed governor of Damascus. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār held the position of governor of Damascus once more, during the last few months before his death in April 1804.

The decisive period of al-Jazzār’s control over Damascus is his second tenure as governor, from 1790 to 1795. Cohen has observed that the rivalry between al-Jazzār and the ‘Aẓm family was an underlying theme of all political relations between Acre and Damascus¹⁶⁰—as indeed it had already been during the time of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar. Schatkowski Schilcher provides a convincing analysis of the internal city politics of the time, whereby the ‘Aẓm clan was allied with the aghas of the northern part of the city against the aghas of the southern part, the Maydān, who controlled the grain trade from the Ḥawrān.¹⁶¹ It would seem only logical to assume, as Schatkowski Schilcher does, that given these circumstances al-Jazzār sided with the Maydānīs against the northern aghas and the ‘Aẓm clan. In addition, she sees a common commercial interest between the Maydānī merchants and al-Jazzār in diverting the grain trade to Acre. Jewish financial interests in Acre supposedly provided the link with the Maydānī merchants and it is, indeed, during this time that Ḥaim Farḥī, scion of a powerful Jewish family in Damascus, was brought to Acre by al-Jazzār as his top financial adviser—though most likely that was done for other reasons.

The relations with the Maydānīs remained very complex but scarcely cooperative. Al-Jazzār’s attempt in 1785 to monopolize the grain trade of the Ḥawrān had caused sufficient protest to have him deposed. The protest must have come from the Maydānī merchants who were immediately affected by this step. It was not in the character of al-Jazzār to have accommodated a fairly autonomous merchant class. His aim was to take over the grain trade, control it, fix prices, and exclude all middlemen. That the Ottoman government sent, in response to the protests, the order of al-Jazzār’s dismissal to the qāḍī of the city, who belonged to the northern faction, insured the unrelenting hostility of al-Jazzār against the latter, but does not disprove the opposition of the Maydānī merchants.¹⁶²

When Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār was appointed governor of Damascus the second time, he only sent a mutasallim to rule in his stead: a certain Muḥammad Arfā Amīnī, or, more likely, Muḥammad Agha, his trustee,¹⁶³ who seems to have been unusually oppressive. Through his mutasallim he had certain economic monopolies reestablished. He also lashed out against the al-‘Aẓm faction by having one of them, ‘Alī ibn Muḥammad Pasha al-‘Aẓm, killed and his holdings confiscated.

Another important member of the northern faction executed was Aḥmad Agha Za‘faranjī. He had been head of the imperial qabīqūl (ḳapi ḳul) troops and commander of the citadel. When in 1786 a particularly incompetent pasha was appointed governor, public rioting against him was supported by Za‘faranjī. After being forced out of the city, the pasha gathered new military support from the government. He besieged Damascus successfully and turned his wrath particularly against Za‘faranjī, who had to leave town.¹⁶⁴ The latter eventually linked up with al-Jazzār. He returned to the city when al-Jazzār was appointed its governor. Apparently al-Jazzār later saw in Za‘faranjī a danger as one of the northern aghas or as a popular commander linked to the Maydānīs. He had him executed before he left for the pilgrimage in 1791. In addition, al-Jazzār, or rather his mutasallim Muḥammad Agha, had Damascenes executed by the tens and hundreds.¹⁶⁵

Clearly, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār did not rely on coopting certain factions of the city in order to control it, and he established no common commercial interests with the Maydānīs. He relied on force and terror. In 1794 Aḥmad Agha, the trustee of al-Sināniyya, one of the major Maydānī mosques, offered al-Jazzār sufficient money for the job of mutasallim. Muḥammad Agha was deposed¹⁶⁶ and the new mutasallim used his time, while al-Jazzār was on pilgrimage, for an all-out attack on the Jewish financial interests in Damascus. This action certainly does not point to shared interests of Jewish finances and Maydānī commerce via Acre. Aḥmad Agha seems to have been aware that he did not act in the interest of al-Jazzār, because he fled Damascus shortly before al-Jazzār returned from the pilgrimage.

During his last appointment as governor of Damascus, al-Jazzār’s relations to the Maydān remained as unstable as ever. During the interregnum, while al-Jazzār was busy fighting the French, a certain Abū Ḥamza, together with the scrap-metal dealer Muḥammad ‘Aqīl from the Maydān, had more or less run things in Damascus. When ‘Abdallāh Pasha al-‘Aẓm was made governor of Damascus for the second time in 1799, he had Abū Ḥamza killed, but apparently did not dare to touch Muḥammad ‘Aqīl. Caught up in his rivalry with the al-‘Aẓms, al-Jazzār soon prepared the next round, having ‘Abdallāh Pasha al-‘Aẓm dismissed. Among other things he corresponded with Muḥammad ‘Aqīl, sent 2,000 troops, and had him take steps in Damascus before al-Jazzār was officially declared governor. He asked him to arrest the qāḍī ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Afandī Murādī and kill him. How delicate such a matter was is evident from the fact that al-Jazzār did not sign the order, and Muḥammad ‘Aqīl only pretended to execute the order and in fact hid the qāḍī in the dungeons of the citadel. It was his bad luck that ‘Abd al-Raḥmān died nevertheless. When the Ottoman government reprimanded al-Jazzār for having killed a religious dignitary, al-Jazzār pretended to be outraged and hauled Muḥammad ‘Aqīl to Acre. He had him executed, though not before having found out from Muḥammad ‘Aqīl, under torture, where he hid his money.¹⁶⁷ This certainly was not an act to endear him to the Maydānīs.

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had no power base in Damascus. He was hostile to the aghas of the north and their allies the ‘Aẓm, but he had never struck an alliance with the Maydānīs either, basically because his economic interests contradicted those of the Maydānī merchants. In the end he ruled through oppression, sheer force, and occasional short-lived alliances of convenience. During his last appointment as governor, which lasted only a few months until his death, he entrusted the control of Damascus to units commanded by Ṭahā al-Kurdī, whose position would today be called chief of internal security. The latter, together with other fellow Kurds, had distinguished himself in Acre as chief jailer and overseer of tortures. The moment the news reached Damascus that al-Jazzār had died, the populace went after the Kurd troops with a vengeance and lynched them.¹⁶⁸ Ṭahā himself was killed in Acre.

What benefits accrued to al-Jazzār from being governor of a city whose populace was rebellious and whose elites were not inclined to collaborate, and where the fiscal burdens, especially the expenditures for the pilgrimage, were considerable—all making a net profit for him unlikely?¹⁶⁹ We know that al-Jazzār spent great sums in Istanbul to obtain this appointment, just as he had to finance a permanent lobby in Istanbul to have his annual appointment as governor of Sidon renewed. The governorship of Damascus was one of the most prestigious because it included the command of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The pilgrimage was politically a double-edged sword. To carry it out successfully promised prestige and influence in Istanbul. After all, the Ottoman government itself drew its legitimacy partially from its ability to provide for the believers the conditions to fulfill their religious duties, among them the pilgrimage to Mecca. At the end of the eighteenth century this ability to safeguard and carry out the annual pilgrimage was put very much into question. In the eastern parts of the Arab peninsula a new puritanic Islamic sect had developed, commonly called, after the name of its founder, the Wahhabiyya. It combined its Islamic puritanism with political ambitions. Preventing the pilgrimage caravan from access to the holy places in Mecca and Medina meant hitting the Ottoman Empire where it hurt most. Having the financial and military capability to command the pilgrimage caravan several times and bring it back safely made al-Jazzār, under the circumstances of the period, almost irreplaceable in the eyes of Istanbul. This was precisely his aim. But the annual absence of the governor for four months on the pilgrimage was also the time when all the forces of political opposition could plot to have him removed, as al-Jazzār found out at the end of his first year as governor of Damascus. Many of the executions he had carried out in Damascus during his second term were related to his attempt to prevent any possible opposition during his absence on the pilgrimage.

Another advantage of his governorship of Damascus was that he could deal with his archrivals, the ‘Aẓm clan. But since they also enjoyed the backing of Istanbul, precisely as a counterweight to al-Jazzār’s power, he never was able to eliminate them completely.

The governorship of Damascus also included legitimate control over the southern parts of Palestine, a right al-Jazzār certainly tried to exercise. Here too his success was more than questionable. In 1785, when making “the rounds” in southern Palestine for the collection of taxes, he reduced all resistance by military force and appointed his own Mamluk mutasallim in Jerusalem. But then and later his hold over the region remained tentative. In particular, al-Jazzār’s attitude toward Jaffa was curious. Jaffa had been occupied by the forces of Ḥasan Ḳapūdān Pasha during his campaign against Ẓāhir al-‘Umar. Presumably afterwards a mutasallim, answerable directly to the Ottoman government, was installed, though traditionally Jaffa had been under the control of Nablus, which belonged to Damascus. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār seems never to have challenged this arrangement. This is curious because al-Jazzār himself had experienced in recent warfare the importance of fortifications and he had witnessed the strategic value of Jaffa as the rampart against invasions from Egypt. When he was appointed governor of Damascus for the second time, in the fall of 1790, it so happened that the crisis with the French merchants also came to a head. He expelled them from Acre, and they found refuge in Jaffa and Ramla, which apparently were beyond his reach. Even shortly before the French invasion of Palestine a report in Arabic and French asserts that the government (ḥukūma) of al-Jazzār begins in Caesarea and that the coast from there to the Carmel Mountain was only during al-Jazzār’s rule attached to the province of Sidon, having belonged before that to Damascus.¹⁷⁰ The importance of Jaffa had apparently dawned upon al-Jazzār only on the eve of the French invasion, when he hurriedly had its fortifications repaired and its garrison reinforced. After the defeat of the French and the return of the Ottoman land army from Egypt, the Ottoman grand vezier and commander of the army, Yūsuf Ẓiyā Pasha, installed Abū Maraq¹⁷¹ in Jaffa as governor of the southern Palestinian districts, in an obvious attempt to limit al-Jazzār’s power. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār immediately besieged Jaffa¹⁷² in order to dislodge Abū Maraq from there. He was quite prepared to provoke the extreme displeasure of the Ottoman government, which at one point declared him a rebel against the sultan. Jaffa’s strategic importance for the realm of Acre had been driven home to al-Jazzār, and he was not going to lose control over it again. In addition, Abū Maraq, a local from the Hebron region, had allied himself with the Jarrārs in Nablus, thus recreating the traditional Nablus-Jaffa axis, possibly with the backing of Damascus and indirectly with that of Istanbul.

Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’s heroic defense of Acre against the French made him most famous. As we have seen, he was praised as the defender of Islam. His personal courage, his skills as a military commander, and his stamina are testified to by many, including French officers.¹⁷³ Al-Jazzār’s status rose in the eyes of the Ottoman government. But that was a dubious distinction, because any local governor gaining too much power was a potential danger to Istanbul. Very soon he was declared a rebel, only to be reinstated and even made once more governor of Damascus. The results of the French siege of Acre were actually minimal: al-Jazzār’s power and relationship with Istanbul remained unchanged; the financial pressure on the population and their economic misery became, if possible, even greater; over the next thirty years the governors would spend enormous sums on the fortification of Acre; and Jaffa would be permanently attached to the governorship of Sidon.

For the five years of his second term as governor of Damascus al-Jazzār had fought a continuous war against Nablus; more precisely, he was able to establish an alliance with the Ṭūqān clan and even appoint in 1794 Aḥmad Bey Ṭūqān as mutasallim in Nablus. But the al-Jarrār clan, in alliance with the al-Nimr clan, offered resistance. Fortified in Ṣānūr at the northern access to Nablus, the al-Jarrārs withstood lengthy sieges by al-Jazzār’s troops. The losses before Ṣānūr were heavy, and al-Jazzār repeatedly had to face up to the limits of his military capacities, since troops tied down before Ṣānūr were desperately needed elsewhere. In the end he was unable, though governor of Sidon and of Damascus, to subdue Nablus.

In late 1803, after being appointed governor of Damascus for the last time, he immediately turned against Ṣānūr and besieged it again. But while he had been able to conquer Jaffa, after several months’ siege in early 1803, he could never dislodge the Jarrārs from Ṣānūr.¹⁷⁴

What remains remarkable is that Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār, regardless of his volatile temper, hunger for power, and political ambitions, always played within the rules of the “Ottoman game.” Though unruly, he ultimately accepted the authority of Istanbul and derived his own legitimacy from the Ottoman state and its sultan. Each time he was dismissed from his position as governor of Damascus he left in good order and without any resistance. In June 1789 a Russian emissary came to Acre in order to “sonder si l’on pouvait se flatter de détacher ce Pacha du joug de la Porte pour causer une diversion. Dgézzar ne voulut ni le voir ni l’entendre.”¹⁷⁵* Even when his own aims were diametrically opposed to the interests of the government in Istanbul he would, at least in appearance, comply with orders, though he may well have been promoting his own interests subversively. He was familiar with the rules of the game, and rather than initiate an open rebellion he preferred to lobby in Istanbul, distribute his money astutely, and bide his time until the next opportunity. His obedience, though, had its limits. When the grand vezier Yūsuf Pasha, on his way back from Egypt, installed Abū Maraq in Jaffa in an open attempt to limit his power, al-Jazzār did not hesitate to go to war against the governor installed by the Ottoman government. A firmān by the government declaring him an enemy of the sultan and God and making him an outlaw did not impress him.¹⁷⁶ The government lacked the means to enforce its decisions, and al-Jazzār certainly had no thought of giving up Acre and his position as governor of Sidon. Rather, he continued his war against Abū Maraq until he had ousted him from Jaffa. At the same time he activated his lobby in Istanbul, provided large sums of money, and, after having created facts on the ground, swayed the government in his favor. He was so successful with this two-pronged policy that once more he was made governor of Sidon and Damascus.

To this evidence of his ultimate political goals—holding on to Acre at any price and maintaining good relations with Istanbul as much as possible—other examples could be added: during the whole period of the French invasion of Egypt and Palestine he did not once leave Acre to fight the French in Egypt as the grand vezier had requested. In 1780, when the government in Istanbul equipped a large fleet while the governor of Damascus was simultaneously raising an army, al-Jazzār suspected that he was the real target. Quite willing to offer open resistance against the Ottoman government, he began intense preparations to withstand a possible siege of Acre.¹⁷⁷ According to the French consul, al-Jazzār was prepared to hold on to Acre in open rebellion even before he was appointed governor of Sidon for the first time.¹⁷⁸ Likewise, al-Jazzār rejected all attempts to lure him out of his lair. When he was asked by the Ottoman government in 1784 to send troops to Egypt, he, according to his own statement, stimulated dissent among the Druze to demonstrate the necessity of keeping his troops in Acre. He used the same stratagem in May 1789.¹⁷⁹

Throughout his political career Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār considered Acre his power base, the center of his activities. It was his permanent goal to strengthen and secure this base. From here he tried to subdue neighboring areas, whether for economic or strategic reasons or both. This brought him into almost permanent conflict with the Druze region, protracted warfare with Nablus, and—linked to Nablus and the French invasion—efforts to assert control over Jaffa. As attractive as the governorship of Damascus was, it remained a means to these goals. Giving it up was feasible, surrendering Acre was unthinkable. It is this difference that describes fairly precisely the extent of al-Jazzār’s loyalty to the Ottoman government.¹⁸⁰

SULAYMĀN PASHA AND HIS SUCCESSOR: BRIEF RESURGENCE AND COMPLETE DECLINE, 1805–1831

At the decisive moment Sulaymān Pasha was absent from Acre. In place of the sick al-Jazzār, he had been leading the pilgrimage caravan to Mecca. He was on the way back when al-Jazzār died. The Ottoman government had tried to preempt any power struggle by appointing, secretly, the governor of Aleppo also governor of Sidon and Damascus a month before al-Jazzār actually died. But a certain Ismā‘īl Pasha, having only recently joined al-Jazzār’s army as a commander but already sacked and jailed in Acre, was the man on the spot. Released from jail by some troops he assumed command in Acre¹⁸¹ and tried to assert his authority. People such as Amīr Bashīr were far too cautious to recognize such authority. Hearing of the appointment of the governor of Aleppo and that an Ottoman fleet was sailing for Acre, Ismā‘īl began to prepare the defense of the city. In response, the Ottoman government in June 1804 declared him a rebel to be fought.¹⁸² In the meantime Sulaymān Pasha had returned to Damascus from the pilgrimage, and, jointly with the governor of Aleppo (and now also Damascus and Sidon), he marched on Acre. A siege of four months yielded no results, and the new governor of Damascus came under time pressure to prepare for the next pilgrimage caravan, which was to leave Damascus in January 1805 and had to be preceded by the governor’s round through the districts, asserting his authority and collecting the taxes that paid for the pilgrimage. Sulaymān Pasha continued the siege of Acre, while the government rewarded him with the governorship of Sidon—reason enough to defeat Ismā‘īl Pasha. The decisive battle was fought near Shfā ‘Amr when Ismā‘īl’s troops attempted a sortie from Acre.

Sulaymān Pasha was probably in his late fifties when he took power in Acre.¹⁸³ Originally from the Caucasus, probably Georgia, he had traveled far and experienced more than his share of crises and turns of fate. He had already spent some twenty to twenty-five years in Acre and its realm as military commander, as mutasallim of Sidon, and as commander of the pilgrimage. Though not a local himself, he had acquired an intimate knowledge of local politics. His early policy statements revealed a sense of moderation and deliberation which contrasted strongly with al-Jazzār’s policies. Perhaps the new policy reflected only a realistic awareness of the state of the realm. The reduction of export trade at the time of increased building activities by al-Jazzār, the devastating period of the French siege of Acre, endless wars with the Druze, and the permanent squeezing of the population for taxes had left an exhausted and depopulated realm. For the establishment of firm political relations with his neighbors Sulaymān Pasha would rely much more on diplomacy than on military strength. His army was usually only half the size of that of al-Jazzār, if that much. It was this spirit, which contrasted so sharply with al-Jazzār’s, that provided Sulaymān Pasha with the sobriquet al-‘Ādil, “the Just.”

But before he could pursue policies of diplomacy and moderation one further battle had to be won: the battle for Jaffa. After al-Jazzār had fought bitterly and against the explicit order of the Ottoman government to dislodge Muḥammad Abū Maraq, the latter had used the upheavals after the death of al-Jazzār to return and to ingratiate himself with Ismā‘īl Pasha, who promptly made him commander of Jaffa again. This time, however, the Ottoman government did not back him. The French sources assert that he was financed by the British.¹⁸⁴ When Abū Maraq openly defied Ottoman orders to march against the Wahhabis, Sulaymān Pasha was ordered to do battle with him. It must have suited Sulaymān Pasha’s own interests to extend the influence of the realm of Acre to Jaffa: recent history had demonstrated Jaffa’s strategic importance. Though the siege was long, its successful conclusion in the first half of 1806 raised Sulaymān Pasha’s standing in Istanbul as somebody who could get things done in Syria. Subsequently the government invested him with the control over the sancaḳs of Gaza, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, a special waqf of the sultan.¹⁸⁵ This extended the realm of Acre legally to all of southwest Palestine. Nablus, though denied access to Jaffa, was noticeably missing from this realm. The chance to assert his influence over Jerusalem came soon, when local unrest could not be handled by the mutasallim appointed by Damascus. Troops sent by Sulaymān Pasha established order, and their commander, Muḥammad Agha Abū Dharī‘a, was appointed temporary mutasallim. Sulaymān Pasha was not yet willing to challenge the authority of the governor of Damascus for that appointment.¹⁸⁶

Sulaymān Pasha’s policies toward his northern neighbors were diametrically opposed to those of his predecessor. Where Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had chosen confrontation and military strength to pulverize any Metuali resistance and to assert his direct control over them, Sulaymān Pasha relied on negotiations and agreements, and was willing to concede internal autonomy. Where al-Jazzār had used any intrigue to play one Druze faction against the other—an easy game since there were willing players—Sulaymān Pasha relied from the beginning on a firm alliance with Amīr Bashīr.¹⁸⁷

Seeing the destruction and the depopulation of the Jabal ‘Āmil region, Sulaymān Pasha sought to reassure the Metuali population and to attract and pacify the shaykhs who had fled. He offered them villages and tax-exempted lands in the region of Shūmar on condition that they would settle there and cultivate the land. He offered guarantees of security and internal autonomy, naming Fāris Naṣīf as the head of all the shaykhs. In return the legal land tax—and only that—was to be paid, and tribal levies were to be supplied whenever the government needed them. The shaykhs also pledged not to interfere in any form or way in the affairs of the rest of the Metuali region, Bilād Bishāra. Sulaymān Pasha hoped to co-opt the antagonistic exiled shaykhs of the Metualis by settling them and giving them secure incomes. He was aware that the government in Acre had too often double-crossed the Metualis, and that they would not trust his offer. He therefore asked Amīr Bashīr to mediate and convince the shaykhs of the seriousness of the offer. Amīr Bashīr gladly obliged, seeing for himself a chance to ingratiate himself even more with Sulaymān Pasha. Finally, a general meeting was called in Acre at which Fāris Naṣīf, other Metuali shaykhs, Sulaymān Pasha, Raghīb Efendi (sent by the Ottoman government to make a record of the estate of al-Jazzār), Ḥaim Farḥī, ‘Alī Agha Khazindār, and Ḥanā’ al-‘Awra, as well as the muftī of Acre, the qāḍī, and a representative of Amīr Bashīr, took part. In sessions over several days an agreement was worked out and eventually confirmed by the Ottoman government.¹⁸⁸ After some initial difficulties this agreement lasted for the length of Sulaymān Pasha’s rule.

It seems that from the outset Sulaymān Pasha had a good working relationship with Amīr Bashīr. Immediately upon becoming governor of Sidon he confirmed Bashīr as amir of Mount Lebanon. Bashīr cooperated willingly, trying to enhance his standing with Sulaymān Pasha and to make himself the only conduit for all dealings with the Druze and Mount Lebanon. Sulaymān Pasha rewarded Bashīr’s loyalty by in 1810 appointing him amir of Mount Lebanon for life.¹⁸⁹

By far the most important regional relations of Acre were still those with Damascus. Since the time of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar these had been hostile more often than not. Acre’s power challenged Damascus control over southern Palestine, in particular over Nablus, Jerusalem, and the port of Jaffa. In the north influence with the Druze and control over the Biqā‘a were the flash-points of conflict. Control over the export of grain from the Ḥawrān and cotton from the Galilee and the Nablus region was another bone of contention. In the last two generations the balance of power had definitely shifted in favor of Acre and its rulers. The first official recognition of this change was when al-Jazzār was appointed governor of Damascus while maintaining his governorship of Acre. But the struggle for regional predominance had by no means been decided, and Sulaymān Pasha was almost destined to enter into conflict with Damascus, once he had secured his southern and northern flanks. Though the structural conditions for further conflict existed, it was apparently the struggle between two powerful families of administrators and bankers, the Greek Catholic Baḥrīs and the Jewish Farḥīs, that ignited the fight.

The Baḥrīs were originally from Homs. The poet Mikhā’īl al-Baḥrī had been educated in Acre under Ẓāhir al-‘Umar and was employed by the latter’s vezier, the Greek Catholic Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh. Later he worked for Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār but fled to Beirut after having been jailed and mutilated. His sons Jirmānūs, ‘Abbūd, and Ḥanā’ excelled as administrators and secretaries. Jirmānūs was initially employed by Sulaymān Pasha, while his two brothers began to make their careers in Damascus under ‘Abdallāh Pasha al-‘Aẓm, governor from 1805 to 1807. During his rule ‘Abbūd became the close confidant of Kanj Yūsuf Pasha, who succeeded ‘Abdallāh in 1807. Under Kanj Yūsuf Pasha the Baḥrī brothers rose to the highest positions. Ḥaim Farḥī, in the meantime, had succeeded in expelling Jirmānūs from Acre. But the Farḥīs in Damascus were seriously worried that the intimate relationship between the Baḥrī brothers and Kanj Yūsuf Pasha would cost them their own positions as chief bankers and men of finance. Attempts to discredit ‘Abbūd al-Baḥrī with Kanj Yūsuf Pasha backfired. The Farḥīs and the Baḥrīs began now to draw their respective masters into their fight. The opportunity to raise the mutual animosity of the two governors to the level of open hostility offered itself over the eternal question of the borders between the two provinces of Damascus and Sidon; in this case ownership of a few villages situated between Nablus (Damascus) and Nazareth (Sidon) was at stake. An arbiter was sent from Istanbul to gather evidence from both sides. The Farḥīs had insured through bribes that the testimony of the muftī and the qāḍī of Damascus would be in favor of Sulaymān Pasha’s claim. The result of this arbitration, combined with a timely dispatch from Acre of two shiploads of grain to a starving Istanbul—most likely the idea of Ḥaim—strengthened Sulaymān Pasha’s position in Istanbul considerably. In the meantime, Kanj Yūsuf Pasha was as unable to deal with the Wahhabi threat as the preceding governors of Damascus. He tried to compensate for his failure to defeat the Wahhabis by directing Muslim sentiments in Damascus against the Christians and the Jews. The pilgrimage had been suspended for several years, and in 1809 the Wahhabis actually approached Damascus itself. Thereupon the Ottoman government had Kanj Yūsuf Pasha removed from the governorship and made Sulaymān Pasha governor of Damascus in addition to his position in Sidon.¹⁹⁰ In close collaboration with Amīr Bashīr, Sulaymān Pasha took Damascus after Kanj Yūsuf Pasha had fled to Egypt with his Baḥrī secretaries. Sulaymān Pasha proceeded to appoint and confirm local mutasallims.

The list expresses well the extent of Sulaymān Pasha’s power.¹⁹¹ He made appointments from Homs to Jerusalem and Tripoli.¹⁹² The importance of Tripoli had recently declined, and for some time it had not been governed by a governor but only by a mutasallim. The question, however, of whether the governor of Sidon or the governor of Damascus could make that appointment remained open. With both governorships in his hands, Sulaymān Pasha ruled virtually all of Bilād al-Shām with the exception of Aleppo in the north. Some of the appointments reflected an acknowledgment of local powers such as the amirship of Bashīr, or the appointment of a member of the all-important Ṭūqān clan as mutasallim in Nablus and probably also the appointment of Muṣṭafā Barbar, who was a local man from the lower classes of Tripoli. But a great number of positions were also filled by Mamluks, most of whom had already served under Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār.

Sulaymān Pasha’s governorship of Damascus lasted exactly two years.¹⁹³ But he held on to the region of Tripoli and Latakia, which was officially attached to the province of Sidon.¹⁹⁴ Twice more the province of Damascus came under his control, though only in the form of a trusteeship for the appointed governor, who was kept from reaching Damascus for other reasons. In early 1816 Sulaymān Pasha was called upon to act as governor when the last one had died suddenly and the newly appointed one, ‘Alī Pasha, had not yet arrived. This temporary appointment lasted not even a year, and the position was given in late 1816 to Ṣāliḥ Pasha. Once again, the newly appointed governor could not come immediately, and Sulaymān Pasha was made his representative.¹⁹⁵ Each time it was the critical phase before the pilgrimage began during which the tax moneys had to be collected from the sancaḳs, especially Nablus, to pay for the expenditures of the pilgrimage caravan. On other occasions the governor of Damascus asked him explicitly for armed support. In each case this helped Sulaymān Pasha to strengthen his control or influence over the southern regions of Palestine.

Mount Nablus remained an especially thorny problem. The factionalization of politics in Nablus pitted clans against each other in continuously changing alliances. The most important clans throughout the period were the Ṭūqāns, al-Jarrārs, and al-Nimrs. This situation was encouraged and stimulated by outside powers, such as the governors of Damascus and Sidon, and it also gave occasion for outside interference. But even when Sidon and Damascus were united in the hands of one governor, he could only interfere and meddle in the affairs of Nablus. He could create a balance of power within Nablus by supporting one clan or the other, and thus prevent Nablus from becoming a united powerful political entity. But he could never—even militarily—subdue Nablus and exercise direct control. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had tried this and spent many months besieging Ṣānūr, the fortress of the al-Jarrār clan. But he had been no more successful with this than with his attempt to impose his will forcibly on all of Mount Lebanon. As in most instances, Sulaymān Pasha took a somewhat different approach to relations with his neighbors. He never attempted to use military force to impose his will on Nablus—even when he was governor of both provinces. But he continued al-Jazzār’s policy of support for the Ṭūqān clan. The alliance between Sulaymān Pasha and the Ṭūqāns was confirmed in 1807, when the British began to threaten Sulaymān Pasha. The British expeditionary corps in Egypt had already lost its ally Abū Maraq, and was about to be completely defeated by Muḥammad ‘Alī, yet the British threatened to devastate the coast of Syria “if Sulaymān Pasha did not grant free access to English traders.”¹⁹⁶ The threat never materialized, but the Ottoman government had perceived the Ṭūqāns as the natural allies of Sulaymān Pasha.

The rise of the Ṭūqāns in Nablus led to an alliance between the al-Nimr and the al-Jarrār clans. In 1811 wheat prices had risen so high that peasants could not afford their own product and fled to Nablus and/or attacked the granaries of the Ṭūqāns in their villages. The Ṭūqāns were convinced the unrest was the result of incitement by the al-Nimr clan. They asked Sulaymān Pasha, who at that time was also governor of Damascus, for support. He backed the Ṭūqāns fully and ordered the removal of all peasants from Nablus. What is not mentioned in the documents of the time or in al-‘Abbāsī’s study is the underlying reason for the high prices of wheat which caused the peasant rebellion. It was the very monopoly policy of Sulaymān Pasha and his highly profitable exports to England during the time of the Continental System that emptied the whole region of affordable grain. If the peasants attacked the full granaries of the Ṭūqāns and merchant caravans it is because the Ṭūqāns were business partners of Sulaymān Pasha and profited, if indirectly, from the export business in Acre.¹⁹⁷

Eventually the Ṭūqāns felt strong enough to attempt the physical removal of the al-Nimr clan from Nablus. With this step, however, they had crossed a threshold of tolerance, and all the clans in Nablus united to fight the Ṭūqāns. The event is referred to as the Great Rebellion, al-thawra al-kubra, which began in 1817. In fact it was a nasty civil war, each clan having its own fortified residences—comparable to the family towers in Florence—within and without the city of Nablus, controlling different quarters and city gates and stretches of the hinterland. A chaotic stalemate ensued. Al-‘Abbāsī would have us believe that the alliance with the Ṭūqāns remained the dominant strategy of Sulaymān Pasha.¹⁹⁸ The contemporary observer Ibrāhīm al-‘Awra points out that Sulaymān Pasha actually began to lean toward the ‘Abd al-Hādī and the al-Jarrār clans, while his katkhudā ‘Alī Pasha leaned more toward the Ṭūqān clan.¹⁹⁹ This was most likely a deliberate policy in Acre, since only a balance of power or, more correctly, a balance of impotence in Nablus assured Acre’s influence there.

The outbreak of civil war did not move Sulaymān Pasha to interfere militarily or exclusively on the side of the Ṭūqān; rather, he did what best suited his temperament: he began negotiations. For this purpose he invited representatives of all clans to Acre for a conference. They were received with great hospitality and all signs of respect. They were provided with all creature comforts possible. But it also was made clear to them that they were not going to leave Acre before they had come to an agreement and a conclusion of their strife. After a speech of rebuke and a sumptuous dinner the participants retired to their quarters. For the following ten days they met with each other, with Sulaymān Pasha alone, or in groups. He addressed them repeatedly, carefully reducing tension among them and establishing himself as the honest broker. It nevertheless took two weeks of cajoling and discreet threats before all were willing to compromise and accept Sulaymān Pasha’s arrangement. The Ṭūqāns were forced to pay a considerable amount as blood money to several clans who had lost members in the fights. But Mūsā Ṭūqān remained mutasallim of Nablus. The agreement’s major shortcoming was that the al-Nimr clan had no part in it. Sulaymān Pasha addressed this problem by asking the muftī of Nablus in July 1818 to negotiate between the al-Nimr and the Ṭūqān clan.²⁰⁰ For the time being peace was being restored.

It reflects Sulaymān Pasha’s authority in the region that, though he was not governor of Damascus at that time, almost all the parties responded to his invitation²⁰¹ and he was able to impose terms on them. Ibrāhīm al-‘Awra, a contemporary, himself commented on this phenomenon and indicated some important reasons for this situation: the geographic proximity of Acre to the region; the preoccupation of the governor of Damascus with the preparation of the pilgrimage and his four-month absence from the city while accompanying it; and the frequent replacement of the governor of Damascus, often every year, which made a thorough knowledge of the area and its politics as impossible as any long-term planning. At the same time, Sulaymān Pasha ruled Sidon as a permanent malikāna granted to him for his lifetime, something even al-Jazzār had never obtained; Acre was an impregnable fortress and could not be defeated.²⁰² Al-‘Awra leaves out the fact that Sulaymān Pasha’s defeat of Abū Maraq had brought the sancaḳs of Jaffa and Gaza under his control and with that the trade of Nablus.²⁰³ In fact, he does not mention at all—and that is quite typical for his whole work—the economic policy of Sulaymān Pasha that made Acre the only export port along the whole Syrian coast and provided him with considerable income for several years when grain exports to England paid huge profits, not to mention the monopoly policy concerning less important items, such as cotton, olive oil, and tobacco from the north.

As we shall see, the most powerful man in Acre would become—with the death of ‘Alī Pasha in 1814, the expulsion of Abū Nabūt from Jaffa, and the death of Sulaymān Pasha in August 1819—Ḥaim Farḥī. Brought to Acre initially by al-Jazzār as his counselor for financial and administrative affairs, Ḥaim rose, under Sulaymān Pasha, to control the administration, enjoy influential contacts in Istanbul, and dispose of considerable personal wealth to back up his power. But being a dhimmī, a non-Muslim minority member, he was also extremely vulnerable in his position in spite of—or, more correctly, just because of—his wealth and power. His power derived from the fact of his being employed by Sulaymān Pasha, but even so it made him enemies. It was quite inconceivable in the tradition of Islamic societies that he should exercise power in his own name. For this reason, he applied all his energies and considerable wealth in Istanbul to have his protégé ‘Abdallāh Pasha appointed as governor of Sidon after the death of Sulaymān Pasha. He was convinced that this youth of eighteen years, who already owed him a lot, would be malleable in his hands and provide the legitimacy for Ḥaim’s own power.

‘Abdallāh Pasha was the son of ‘Alī Pasha, the katkhudā of Sulaymān Pasha. ‘Alī Pasha died in 1814 of overexertion soon after he had purchased two Georgian beauties.²⁰⁴ On his deathbed he had begged Ḥaim to take care of his son ‘Abdallāh. Ḥaim was delighted to promote the boy against people with a more serious claim to power. Apparently Sulaymān Pasha had the same idea. Tired of having a powerful rival with his own claim to power, he quickly appointed the thirteen-year-old ‘Abdallāh Pasha as his katkhudā. The appointment came as a surprise to all except the mother of ‘Abdallāh, who had lobbied heavily with Sulaymān Pasha and Ḥaim for her son. Lest anybody, including ‘Abdallāh himself, should be unaware of the change in the balance of power, Sulaymān laid down the rules: in contrast to his father ‘Abdallah was not to have his own ottoman in the Būstā, the government building, but was to sit with all the other employees and administrators. He was not to drink his coffee together with Sulaymān Pasha, and nobody was to kiss his hand.²⁰⁵ Ḥaim Farḥī never perceived ‘Abdallāh as a threat to his own plans. Rather, he was willing to help him to remove more serious contenders to the successorship of Sulaymān Pasha, such as Abū Nabūt, the mutasallim of Jaffa, or Muṣṭafā, the nephew of Sulaymān Pasha. The contemporary observer Ibrāhīm al-‘Awra considered Ḥaim Farḥī as second only to Sulaymān Pasha in actual power, if not formal ranking. He called him sharīk al-ḥukm, partner in power,²⁰⁶ suggesting that Ḥaim Farḥī was actually more powerful than ‘Alī Pasha Khazindār, and describing how Ḥaim would speak in the name of Sulaymān Pasha without the latter even knowing about it: “Ḥaim Farḥī held all the reins of government and did as he pleased. Whoever claims that the rule of a Jew over Muslims and Christians, old and young, close and far, in complete liberty is an easy matter and does not weigh heavily on nature—has lost touch with reason.”²⁰⁷

A few words of explanation are needed here concerning Ibrāhīm al-‘Awra’s own position in the matter. That he was a close and good observer of the affairs of government in Acre is beyond doubt. His father, though clearly subordinate to Ḥaim Farḥī in fact, held formally a comparable position as chief Arabic secretary, and a certain amount of competitiveness can be sensed in Ibrāhīm’s narrative. Ibrāhīm’s family was Greek Catholic and keenly aware of the fight the Jews in Damascus—and especially the Farḥī family—were carrying on with the most important Greek Catholic family there, the Baḥrīs, with the Jews apparently winning the fight.²⁰⁸

Ibrāhīm al-‘Awra’s father, Ḥanā’, had been Arabic secretary during this time, and the sectarian loyalties were understood by all. However, apparently Ḥaim and Ḥanā’ never had a serious open clash, and on the whole Ḥaim preferred as employees Greek Catholics to Greek Orthodox, never trusting the latter after his encounter with the Sakrūj brothers.²⁰⁹ Ibrāhīm al-‘Awra was aware of all these ambivalent relations and appears particularly critical of Ḥaim. In addition it is worth considering that he wrote his biography of Sulaymān Pasha between 1848 and 1853, some years after the famous blood-libel case of Damascus²¹⁰ and the arrival of European anti-Semitism in the Middle East. Occasionally one can discover a whiff of it in Ibrāhīm’s comments about Ḥaim.²¹¹ Though Ibrāhīm al-‘Awra may have been biased, his opinion that Ḥaim was the most powerful man in Acre is again and again confirmed by the French consular sources: “Soleiman Pacha ou pour mieux dire, le Juif qui gouverne en son nom.… Son Kiaia et ce Juif qui ne pensent qu’à amasser auront un jour le sort qu’ils méritent et le faible Soleiman sera la victime de leur avidité.”* According to the French a dervish coming from Istanbul publicly blamed the pasha for being governor in name only and letting the Jew manage him.²¹² Another consular report, this one from Tripoli, put it as follows: “Un Juif qui sous le titre de sarraf du miri est le véritable commandant de toute la côte de Syrie.”²¹³* The reason for the French dislike for Ḥaim is quite obvious; their commercial interests ran counter to “l’intérêt du Juif du Pacha qui ne veut pas la liberté du commerce; il a des compagnons qui savent se joindre à lui pour dépouiller l’Européen.”²¹⁴* Sulaymān Pasha was said to hold the cow of Syria by its horns while the Jew was milking it. In fact the accusations of the French against Ḥaim and his despotism sound very much like those they had issued fifty years earlier against Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh. For the French, despotism meant the economic monopoly policy concerning exports.

There is no denying that the Farḥīs in Syria and in particular Ḥaim in Acre were powerful and wealthy. The wealth of the Farḥīs was reflected in the luxurious furnishing of their residence in Damascus. Yet its external appearance betrayed at the same time the precariousness of this wealth and power.²¹⁵ In Acre Ḥaim lived more modestly, residing in an apartment in the Khān al-Faranj. But his power was enormous, and Sulaymān Pasha’s trust in him was apparently boundless. Ḥaim felt so secure in his position that he did not hesitate to deal harshly with Muslim officials. When the multazim of ‘Atlit, Mas‘ūd al-Māḍī, tried to meddle in the financial affairs of the province, Ḥaim vilified him publicly:

Every single one of you remains a donkey, who does not know anything about this world. When God, the Highest, bestowed his grace upon you, and removed the horseshoes from your feet, you believed you had become something important. You sat in the meetings of veziers and rulers and interfered in affairs that were none of your business. You opened your big mouth [bajūq] without discerning what came out of it.… Lest it would be said that Ḥaim put his intelligence on the same level as the limited intelligence of so and so I would show you how I would deal with you, impudent blabbermouth and intriguer.… Get up, bother your peasants with your insights and join their company.²¹⁶

Though the patron of Mas‘ūd al-Māḍī was none other than ‘Alī Pasha Khazindār, al-Māḍī found it advisable to retire to ‘Atlit and keep a low profile. In another incident, Ḥaim insulted a powerful Mamluk in front of Sulaymān Pasha’s dīwān by reminding him of a large debt he owed the government.²¹⁷ Ḥaim also was instrumental in removing Abū Nabūt from Jaffa. Abū Nabūt had become the center of the Mamluk party, which hoped to reestablish its rule after the death of Sulaymān Pasha and stood in the way of the ambitions of the young ‘Abdallāh Pasha and those of Ḥaim Farḥī.²¹⁸ But even after the removal of Abū Nabūt, Ḥaim could not be sure that he had contained the Mamluk party, especially since Abū Nabūt had gone to Istanbul, where he could intrigue further against Ḥaim.

While Sulaymān Pasha was on his deathbed in the summer of 1819, Ḥaim began to make every effort to have his protégé ‘Abdallāh Pasha, now eighteen, appointed as governor. With the help of Hesekiel al-Baghdādī, who was a bursar at the Sublime Porte, and with the payment of some 11 million piasters to the influential people in Istanbul,²¹⁹ Ḥaim had his protégé appointed. It had taken Ḥaim Farḥī five months of intense negotiation before the Ottoman government conceded the position of governor of Sidon to ‘Abdallāh Pasha. On January 27, 1820, the long-expected firmān finally came. It was probably the peak of Ḥaim’s power. But this success contained the seeds of his destruction. Barely half a year later ‘Abdallāh Pasha had Ḥaim strangled and his corpse flung into the water: “They tied a heavy stone around his neck and dumped him. The fish ate him.”²²⁰ How was such an ignominious end to such an illustrious career possible? European accounts usually speak of the fickleness and the ingratitude of the young ‘Abdallāh Pasha. They are correct, in that whatever power Ḥaim enjoyed depended upon the protection of his master. Once this protection was withdrawn Ḥaim was not even left with the means to insure his own survival. The Arab chroniclers provide us with more specific reasons for the change of heart of ‘Abdallāh. During his long stay in power Ḥaim had created some mortal enemies with his high-handed manner, such as, for instance, Mas‘ūd al-Māḍī or Abū Nabūt. Most of the Mamluks had considered the latter their leader and had therefore become the enemies and challengers of ‘Abdallāh Pasha and, of course, of his patron Ḥaim. But it was not they who brought about the murder of Ḥaim. Rather, it was a new group that slowly had taken shape during Sulaymān Pasha’s rule and which was able to gain access to ‘Abdallāh Pasha. Mas‘ūd al-Māḍī in particular succeeded in influencing the young governor. He appealed to his ego, describing Sulaymān Pasha as a simpleton who had been duped by Ḥaim—something ‘Abdallāh Pasha should avoid. More compelling was the argument that, since Ḥaim had been able to obtain ‘Abdallāh Pasha’s appointment from Istanbul, he could also, as long as he was alive, obtain his dismissal. Much of the argument was couched in religious terms; that it was against the Islamic law to have a Jew manage the treasury of the Muslims; that God had already pointed out the wickedness of the Jews in the revelation, and so on.²²¹

Shortly after the death of Ḥaim Farḥī, the French consul in Acre, Ruffin, wrote a lengthy report on the affair. He pointed to the enormous increase in Ḥaim’s power as the basic cause for the assassination. He provided, as almost all later reports do in one version or the other, the anecdote of tensions between Ḥaim and ‘Abdallāh Pasha which always culminates in the same question: who was the pasha, Ḥaim Farḥī or ‘Abdallāh Pasha? No doubt, after the appointment of ‘Abdallāh Pasha as governor the struggle for actual authority in Acre began. In this struggle, as Ruffin points out, ‘Abdallāh Pasha was backed especially by three men: the newly appointed qāḍī of Acre, Muḥammad Efendi Abū ‘l-Hudā;²²² the personal imām of ‘Abdallāh Pasha, Shaykh Muṣṭafā; and Shaykh Mas‘ūd al-Māḍī.²²³ They seem to have worked rather dexterously on the religious feelings that ‘Abdallāh Pasha himself harbored. Ruffin labeled them as Musulmans fanatiques who expressed their disgust at the fact that a Jew ruled Syria, that Ḥaim was in fact the pasha of Acre, and that “Les voeux et les prières des derviches et des faqhirs, n’avaientils donc contribué qu’à une autorité sans bornes accordée à un juif que le commun des musulmans respectaient plus que le gouverneur lui-même?”* A first expression of these sentiments was that the Christians, and soon after the Jews, were ordered to wear specific clothes, in modest and dull colors. Ḥaim was offered an exemption from this ruling but insisted on wearing the same outfit as his coreligionists. Then his functions and his authority were progressively reduced. Recognizing the writing on the wall, he requested to be relieved from his functions in order to retire to Damascus. This must have appeared too dangerous to ‘Abdallāh Pasha, who insisted that Ḥaim stay in Acre. It came down to a final acerbic argument between the two, according to the information of Ruffin, in which Ḥaim pointed out that ‘Abdallāh Pasha owed him the governorship of the province. This was the final straw. On the same night of August 8, 1820, ‘Abdallāh Pasha gave orders to have Ḥaim strangled.²²⁴ The contest between the two men over the actual power in Acre and its realm, rather than the issue of religious propriety, must have been the dominant theme of the whole affair. Surprisingly enough, a few days after the death of Ḥaim ‘Abdallāh Pasha offered the position to his brother, Mūsā. Later another dhimmī, Yūsuf Qardāḥī, scribe of long standing in the administration, was appointed to the position,²²⁵ which only confirms that a struggle for power, not a sense of religious impropriety, brought about Ḥaim Farḥī’s assassination.

‘Abdallāh Pasha had been appointed governor of Sidon in all the ways that Sulaymān Pasha had been, including jurisdiction over the provinces of Sidon and Tripoli, Arab Latakia, and the liwās Gaza, Ramla, and Jaffa. He also received the rank of wazīr. ‘Abdallāh Pasha was a young man, rash and inexperienced. He reverted to policies vis-à-vis Amīr Bashīr which Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār had applied and with which he believed he could extort much larger sums than had his predecessor. When Amīr Bashīr proved unwilling or unable to pay these sums, ‘Abdallāh Pasha deposed him and appointed somebody else as amīr. But the new appointees were even less able to raise money in Mount Lebanon and eventually ‘Abdallāh Pasha reconciled with Amīr Bashīr and reappointed him as amir. The relations remained correct enough throughout the period but less reliable than those between Amīr Bashīr and Sulaymān Pasha had been. At decisive moments, for instance when ‘Abdallāh Pasha was besieged in Acre, Amīr Bashīr excused himself and did not come to his support.

In a move that was meant to win the support of the Metualis, ‘Abdallāh Pasha returned control of Jabal ‘Āmil to them. With the same move he freed himself of the Mamluks of Sulaymān Pasha who had been lording over the region.

Relations with Damascus were tense from the beginning. But the first serious, one might say existential, crisis for Acre was precipitated by ‘Abdallāh Pasha’s murder of Ḥaim Farḥī in 1820. It triggered intensive activities within the influential Farḥī family in Damascus as well as in Istanbul seeking revenge for this murder. Clashes over territorial claims in the Biqā‘a Valley and the Golan became frequent in early 1822. The appointment of the mutasallim of Nablus became another issue. As we have seen, these quarrels were part of the old pattern of hostilities between the two provinces, and they were now instrumentalized by the Farḥī brothers for their own purposes. There is no doubt that they actively interfered in politics.²²⁶

At the end of May 1822 the forces of Damascus suffered a major defeat on the Golan Heights thanks to an alliance between ‘Abdallāh Pasha and Amīr Bashīr. At the same time the Farḥīs had mobilized support in Istanbul for Darwīsh Pasha, the governor of Damascus. In June orders were issued to Musṭafā Pasha, governor of Aleppo, to support Darwīsh Pasha militarily. A firmāṇ announced the deposal of ‘Abdallāh Pasha, declaring him a rebel and appointing Darwīsh Pasha to the former’s position, in addition to the governorship of Damascus.²²⁷ Amīr Bashīr, faced with a choice of either being disloyal to his immediate superior ‘Abdallāh Pasha or defying the Ottoman government, decided to remove himself from the scene and travel to Egypt. Without Druze opposition the united armies of the two governors could march on Acre. By the end of July 1822 the siege of Acre began. It lasted six months, but with no results to show for it. Salumūn Farḥī participated financially and personally in the campaign of Darwīsh Pasha against Acre. But when it appeared that Darwīsh was unable to take Acre, and when Muḥammad ‘Alī of Egypt, at the same time lending his support to the sultan in the war in the Morea, interfered on behalf of ‘Abdallāh Pasha, the Ottoman government shifted its position. Darwīsh was dismissed as governor of Damascus and Sidon.

After a short transition period during which Muṣṭafā Pasha was appointed, ‘Abdallāh Pasha was forgiven and reinstated as governor of Sidon, though without control over the southern Palestinian liwās. They were returned to him only a year later. Muṣṭafā Pasha, like ‘Abdallāh Pasha, put the blame for the whole campaign against Acre squarely on the shoulders of the Farḥīs. Apparently under the impact of these accusations—Muṣṭafā Pasha produced documents proving his point—Salumūn Farḥī fell ill and died in the camp before Acre.²²⁸

The assassination of Ḥaim Farḥī had been motivated by the strictly personal fears and ambitions of ‘Abdallāh Pasha. The military actions against ‘Abdallāh Pasha and the siege of Acre had been instigated by the Farḥīs exerting their influence in Istanbul and trying to take their revenge. Calling off the siege, however, involved a quite different set of political measures. The shift of support from the Farḥīs to ‘Abdallāh Pasha by the Ottoman government reflected a basic shift in policy toward the Jewish financiers, as Okawara has shown.²²⁹ In preparation for the weakening and eventual liquidation of the Janissaries, Sultan Malmūd II eliminated elements that provided them with support.

In Istanbul the contact man of the Farḥis had been the banker Hesekiel al-Baghdādī, possibly a relative of the Farḥīs by marriage. He was a descendant of the famous Jewish banking family Gabbay, the later Sassouns, in Baghdad. In Istanbul he became the banker of Halet Efendi, ‘ālim and conservative politician in Istanbul. In 1810 he had broken the power of the Mamluk rulers in Baghdad and submitted the province to direct Ottoman control. Perhaps at this time the contact between Hesekiel and Halet had been established. Halet became a fierce opponent of all reform attempts in Istanbul and especially a defender of the Janissaries. Through him Hesekiel had close business ties with the Janissaries. He had engineered the appointment of ‘Abdallāh as governor of Sidon on behalf of Ḥaim Farḥī and also the campaign against him after the death of Ḥaim. Eventually, in early 1823, Halet Efendi’s reformist opponents had him dismissed, exiled, and executed.²³⁰ His Jewish banker Hesekiel was killed in May 1823 as was his brother Ezra in Baghdad. During the next year the property of twenty-three Jewish banking families was confiscated, including that of the Farḥīs. It was part of the policy of Maḥmūd II to destroy the conservative opposition and its financial supporters—as the Jews were perceived—before liquidating the Janissaries themselves.²³¹

With the termination of the siege, the position of Acre had apparently been restored and with it the power of its governor. In reality, however, the whole campaign had ushered in a new balance of power in Syria. For the first time in three generations a governor of Damascus seriously, albeit not successfully, challenged the ruler of Acre and its realm. The governor of Damascus was also appointed governor of Sidon. This had happened heretofore only the other way around. The French consul, who had resided in Cyprus during the siege of Acre, returned as consul of Acre, Sidon, and Beirut but chose to reside in Sidon, and was already eyeing Beirut as the optimal place for the French consul’s residence.²³² With the death of Ḥaim and Salumūn the rapid decline not only of the Farḥī family but of the Jewish community in Syria began, while the Christian communities were able to enhance their power and standing. Within the next ten years—culminating in the Damascus blood libel of 1840—the Jews were to lose even the semblance of the power they had held in Syria for almost a century.²³³ The Druze under Amīr Bashīr had become a force in their own right. Finally, the role in Syria of the new Egypt under Muḥammad ‘Alī announced itself. His support of the sultan gave him a say in the affairs of Syria. Thus he could impose the restoration of ‘Abdallāh Pasha to his position—although Muḥammad ‘Alī was soon to annex all of Syria to his own realm.

It was only the extreme instability of politics in Damascus during the next few years—ten different governors between 1820 and 1831—and the preoccupation of the Ottoman government with internal reforms and the Greek war that disguised the weakness of ‘Abdallāh Pasha’s regime in Acre, though economically and militarily Acre had already become only a shadow of its former self. In 1826 the French consul reported that “Abd-Allah Pacha gouverne comme si la politique lui conseillait de s’entourer de Ruines, afin que tout le pays sous sa domination présente l’aspect de la solitude et de la pauvreté.”* As revenues declined, ‘Abdallāh Pasha extended monopolistic control even to imports to Acre. The result was that commerce moved away from Acre even faster. Cotton from Nablus, for instance, was traded via Damascus to Beirut for export.²³⁴ The economic basis of Acre was vanishing and, while Beirut flourished, ‘Abdallāh Pasha was reduced to haggling with his own chief adviser-cum-manager²³⁵ over the jewelry of the latter’s wife and daughters.²³⁶

Yet once more ‘Abdallāh Pasha was called upon by the Ottoman government to exercise authority when he was appointed in October 1830 over the sancaḳs of Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, to collect the taxes for the pilgrimage—the Damascene governor being unable to do so.²³⁷ A second consideration of the government was that an Egyptian invasion was imminent and Acre the only formidable obstacle to it in Syria. The appointment led ‘Abdallāh Pasha into a direct confrontation with the al-Jarrār clan, who were unwilling to recognize his authority. Yet another siege of Ṣānūr was organized, which lasted for three months. ‘Abdallāh Pasha was convinced that by conquering Ṣānūr his name would be placed “à côté de ceux des plus grands capitaines du monde.”²³⁸* Eventually he succeeded where everybody else had failed: in early March 1831 the defenders of Ṣānūr surrendered and the fortress was leveled to the ground.²³⁹

The irony of this victory is obvious: within the year ‘Abdallāh Pasha was to change roles and become the defender of Acre in the last great siege of that city. For half a year, from November 1831 to May 1832, the Egyptian troops besieged the by now formidable fortifications of Acre and eventually destroyed the city completely with their artillery. During the last months ‘Abdallāh Pasha lived underground with his family. When he finally emerged and surrendered, the history of Acre and its realm as a semi-autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire had come to an end.