Acre: The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian City, 1730

In terms of space, the new Acre was built on well-preserved urban ruins. This was not accidental, since the ruins functioned as an ideal source for building material: hewn stones in abundance were already on the construction site. The preexisting structures and street plan also prescribed to a large degree the shape and form of the new structures and their location. This had occurred in other cities in Syria, too, but it had been a gradual process over centuries, and ancient structures were much less easily recognized than in Acre. The first building activity by Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had been the construction of a city wall, more or less along the medieval outline of the city. With that the space for urban development was defined and it remained intra muros at a time when other cities in Syria had gone beyond their original circumference and expanded extra muros.

In terms of functions, Acre was, like other cities, the residency of a local ruler or governor and was of strategic military importance. But we find no other city oriented so exclusively toward export trade and with only one major cash crop—which, in addition, was made a government monopoly.

What was the impact of these features on the development of urban society? Did this society differ from other more slowly developed and traditional urban societies? In what ways was integration into the European-dominated world economy felt?

The attempt to answer such questions is best begun by looking at the physical layout and development of Acre itself. There exists to our knowledge no map of the city drawn during the time we are concerned with, between 1740 and 1831. The French army produced several detailed maps of the immediate geographic surroundings of Acre, indicating artillery positions, trajectories, and outer fortifications. But the area circumscribed by the walls remained a white spot. The French had neither access to nor interest in the layout of the city. We are therefore dependent on contemporary city maps with superimposed indications of building substance left by the Crusaders. The most helpful here is the Kesten report of 1962, an architectural survey of the city and its archaeological remains.³ From the maps of this report we can recognize the phenomenon, described by Wirth for other cities,⁴ of the way in which the uses and functions of the more recent city slowly changed the underlying yet still recognizable patterns and physical layout of the earlier one. In our case, however, this process was not the result of slowly changing political ideas, social structures, etc.; there was a radical rupture, and the degree to which ancient patterns are still recognizable frequently depends on the height of the rubble heap upon which, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the new city was constructed. Thus the northeastern part of the city lies some seven to eight meters above the level of the Crusader city. Although some major buildings can still be seen that are built on the fundaments of Crusader structures, the layout of thoroughfares and blind alleys has changed radically. A major thoroughfare, for instance, which led from a gate in the northern wall southward during Crusader times, cannot be traced anymore. The new Acre of the eighteenth century had only one gate, at the seashore on the eastern side. A main road forked from there to the commercial parts and to the seat of government. In the southern and western part of the city, more or less on the level of the Crusader city, the new structures frequently incorporated older building substance and followed much more closely the layout of the older city. The Rectangular Quarter and the Pisan and Genoese Quarters of Crusader times are clearly recognizable, with main streets separating the quarters, with entrance gates, and some walls. The Pisan and the Venetian khans, huge structures, are still visible today. They were repaired and partially rebuilt during the eighteenth century and used for the export trade.

The combination of a few large thoroughfares, connecting major public and commercial areas and the city gate, with a multitude of little branching-off blind alleys, leading to semipublic space and eventually to entrances of dwellings, dominates the street pattern of Acre as it does in many other premodern Middle Eastern cities.⁵

A striking feature of the layout of Acre is the strict functional division between different parts of the city. The northern part is dedicated to the government-military complex. The centerpiece was the citadel, fortress-cum-residence of the ruler, built upon the foundations and walls of the Hospitallers’ fortress and integrated into the fortification structures of the northern wall. As in most other cities of the period, such as Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, the citadel was meant as a defense for the city but also against the city, in case of urban rebellion. Southeast of it was the Posta or Būstā, a Crusader structure used as government building or seraglio. The complex was completed under Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār, who added to it the most beautiful mosque in Palestine from the Ottoman period. Open space to the east of this complex probably served for military exercises; some of it consisted of the gardens of the residence.

Along the eastern water edge, facing the bay, spreads the commercial area. It is dominated by four khans. The Khān al-Faranj, also called the French khan, in use by the beginning of the eighteenth century, coincided with the former Venetian khan. Northeast of it Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had the Khān al-Shawarda added. To the south he had Khān al-Shūnā built into the former Pisan khan. Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār would later build the Khān al-‘Umdān on the site of the Genoese khan, southwest of the French khan. North of the Khān al-Shawarda and close to the city gate Ẓāhir had a bazaar erected. A large thoroughfare, passing by the bazaar, connected all three khans with the city gate. In the typical Middle Eastern city economic activities were centered around the bazaar. Artisan production and sales of merchandise were concentrated here. The bazaar was a major thoroughfare with many small adjacent khans, where artisans worked, merchandise was stored, and merchants might stay over. In Acre the sheer size of the khans is striking. The four khans were much larger than the whole bazaar and were not linked to it. The bazaar, so close to the city gate, probably functioned as the major exchange for produce from the rural hinterland, artisan production by the townspeople, and imported merchandise. The khans had very little to do with all that. They were used principally for the storage of cotton, later grain, and its preparation for export; from the neighboring quay, cargo was loaded onto the ships. The dominant position of the khans and their location symbolized clearly the major business of this city: cotton export. The fact that the Khān al-Faranj was also the permanent living quarters of the French merchants indicated the direction of this commerce.

The center, western, and southern parts of the city were residential areas, typically with single-family houses, one or two stories high, turned toward an inner court. Two-story houses with several separate apartments were common too. The typical maze of branching-off blind alleys, accessed by a few larger streets, can be found here. By 1806, Acre also boasted of seven coffeehouses.⁶

The most important fact about society in Acre is that it consisted almost completely of immigrants. Among the population of about 25,000 in the early 1770s there could have been hardly a grown-up person who had actually been born in the city. Several devastating outbreaks of the bubonic plague took a high toll. In 1760 one-third of the population perished and in 1785/86 an estimated one-half.⁷ A third severe outbreak of the epidemic in 1812/13 wiped out half of the Muslim population.⁸ If we add to this several famines and the total exodus of the population in 1775, when Abū ‘l-Dhahab was about to conquer the city, and a dwindling of the population by attrition in the last years of al-Jazzār’s regime, the turnover of population and total immigration must have been even heavier than the actual population estimates suggest. Immigrants came from the immediate surroundings of Acre such as Shfā ‘Amr, for instance, but also from the villages and towns of the Galilee and Mount Lebanon, and from as far away as Damascus and Aleppo. Immigrants came from cities as well as from rural backgrounds. In many ways it was a frontier society, at the periphery of the old provincial centers and drawn into a whole new world of European raw-material markets. But it was a frontier society with a twist: the political elite was often itself at the frontiers of transformation and at the fringes of legitimacy. Frequently it would challenge the authority of the central government and go its own way. The rulers were more often than not self-made usurpers. Nevertheless the power of the ruling elite was from the very beginning considerable and its control over the immigrant society formidable: a strong government vis-à-vis a weak society.

In 1783 the French consul in Acre, Renaudot, commented about society in Acre and its realm as follows:

As we have seen, al-Jazzār served the contemporary French political discussion as a paradigm for tyranny and its evil consequences. At the eve of the French Revolution, these observations by Renaudot read like the textbook answer to the question “What are the consequences of despotism for society?” Yet, though very much in the style of a theoretical treatise, Renaudot’s conclusions were based on his own experience in Acre. And the French reports recount many incidents, small and large, without couching them in theoretical terms. Indeed, too many of the early Arab historians describe instances of al-Jazzār’s cruelty toward the population for one to be able to dismiss them. There can be no doubt that he was in many ways a particularly unpleasant ruler, often terrorizing his subjects. Without knowing the context it is often difficult to guess the motives for such behavior. Not only did he have a violent temper, but he also seems to have gone through drinking bouts, lengthy mood swings, and perhaps some hallucinations. He was violent, and drank heavily in his youth.¹⁰ The Mamluk rebellion in 1789 seems to have shaken him to the depths. At that time he imagined the whole world to be against him. He went on a murderous rampage that did not stop before the muftī and the qāḍī,¹¹ craftsmen, servants, and other subjects were liquidated for no particular reason.

But when al-Jazzār returned from the 1791 pilgrimage, his mood had changed. He was cheerful and happy: “He foreswore drink and pederasty and applied himself to praying five times a day.”¹² He had good reason to be content. His major enemy in Istanbul, Ḥasan Kapūdān Pasha, had died. The governorship of Damascus had been granted to him in addition to that of Acre, and he had just successfully brought the pilgrimage caravan back from Mecca.

His mood, though, soon deteriorated. He had his recently appointed muftī and the director of the port executed. He then had more than two hundred workers, scribes, and chiefs (nawwāb) as well as carpenters and other artisans arrested. In a somewhat bizarre procedure he had each brought before him, ordered each to uncover his forehead and then regarded him attentively. Those upon whom he claimed to see a “sign” were imprisoned. On the next day he ordered Maghrebi troops to kill them all outside the city. In the evening the relatives were ordered to bury their dead but were forbidden under penalty of death to wail. Terrorized, the population did as ordered.¹³ What were the reasons for such a massacre? Apparently there were not even economic motives, since al-Jazzār did not try as he did so often to extort a ransom from his prisoners. Were these signs of hallucinations? Al-Jabartī reports that al-Jazzār claimed to have esoteric knowledge. According to Shihāb the arrests and the massacre were initiated with the smashing of all gates in the city, presumably meaning the gates which led to and closed off blind alleys and quarters and behind which people could easily barricade themselves.¹⁴ Perhaps we have here a hint of resistance, or suspected resistance, by the population.¹⁵ It was the only such massacre, and if al-Jazzār continued to have individuals tortured or killed it was usually, at least to his thinking, for good political or financial reasons.

Ẓāhir al-‘Umar and Sulaymān Pasha were comparatively mild-mannered, but they left no doubt about their authority and power. If government monopolies on olive oil, grain, and cotton created hardship and outright famine, it did not sway the rulers to change their policies. Internal political opponents, whether sons or Mamluks, were forced into submission. ‘Abdallah Pasha reverted to outright assassination and banishment to enforce his political control.

We don’t know enough about the circumstances that induced al-Jazzār to massacre two hundred townspeople to be able to explain or justify his behavior. But perhaps this question is more important: What sort of society is it that buries its dead in silence, not able or willing to rebel? It is precisely the sort of society Renaudot described in his report: “patient, soumis, humble, craintif.” For the whole period, from the 1740s to the 1830s, we practically never hear of any rebellion or protest from the townspeople of Acre. The one noteworthy exception occurred in 1816, when famine spread because of a bad harvest and Sulaymān Pasha continued to export grain abroad for greater profits. Women staged a demonstration in Acre, demanding flour. Sulaymān Pasha threatened to chase everyone out of Acre,¹⁶ offering only to sell them biscuits from army supplies that dated from the time of al-Jazzār!

About the structure of society at the time of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar—or at any other time for that matter—we know very little. Its most outstanding feature was, as we have seen, its immigrant character. Practically everyone in Acre—commoners and gentlemen, subjects and ruling elite, Christians and Muslims—was an immigrant. Was the population separated in quarters by religion or ethnicity, as it was elsewhere? The distribution of churches and mosques leads to the conclusion that the Christian population was concentrated in the western, the Muslim population in the eastern part of the city. Whether there existed clear-cut border lines distinguishing the quarters and whether the areas were exclusively settled by Muslims and Christians respectively cannot be ascertained. Complete separation of population groups into quarters did not exist in other cities. There seems to have been some structuring along community lines as far as residential distribution patterns were concerned. Probably we can go even further and assume that each Christian community settled close to its church.

Most illuminating in this context are the measures the Christians took in 1812/13 to protect themselves against the plague. In contrast to the Muslims,¹⁷ the Christians quarantined themselves against the epidemic, with the result that only a few of them died. Those who did were from among the poor who did not have the means either to leave the city or to go into seclusion. At least half the Muslim population perished. The Christians did not lock up the whole Christian quarter, evidently because there was no clear-cut separation of populations. Instead, several families would join in one house and store as much food as they could afford and had space for. The more fortunate groups of families also had a priest with them who would read mass for them. Others would lay planks across roofs to be able to approach the church and listen to mass from a distance, while still maintaining the quarantine.

All this seems to confirm the pattern of each community gravitating around its church without, however, establishing complete separation from other urban dwellers. After all, the city was small—eight hundred meters wide at its longest extent, and interaction of all the city dwellers with each other was a daily—and well-documented—occurrence in work and business. Indeed, the ruler could not avoid having daily contact with the townspeople. Ẓāhir al-‘Umar once happened to see, from his residence, a woman in her apartment. Noticing him, she apparently opened her window wide and exhibited herself deliberately. He had the woman and her husband sent packing at once and returned to Damascus from where they had immigrated.¹⁸ Encountering naked dervishes in the streets, Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had them beaten and ordered such behavior to be officially interdicted and announced throughout the city by the town crier. He even had the funeral procession of a shaykh stopped. The dubious claim to fame of the shaykh was that he would fly to heaven and the people in the procession were chanting “fly, fly.”¹⁹

Throughout the eighteenth century Christians seem to have been a majority. The largest Christian group were the Greek Catholics, who flourished under the protective hand of Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh, the powerful vezier of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar. Their first church was that of St. John, initially built in 1737 by the Franciscans and later transferred to the community and enlarged in 1765. The second church, St. Andrews, the largest in Acre, was built in 1764 and financed by al-Ṣabbāgh. Both churches are located in the southwestern corner of the city. From 1752 on, the community had a bishop. From 1765 to 1768 the Greek Catholic patriarch made Acre his residence.²⁰ For the Greek Orthodox, a church, St. George, existed in the 1730s and was considerably enlarged during Ẓāhir’s rule. A church for the Maronites, St. Mary, was built after 1750.²¹ The rapid expansion of church structures during this time and the fact that no churches were added later are indicators of the growth of the Christian communities and their prosperity during the time of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar.

An Ottoman mosque—the Sinān Pasha Mosque, al-Sinniyya—had been built around 1600. Later it was torn down by Sulaymān Pasha and replaced with the al-Baḥr Mosque. Before Ẓāhir made Acre his permanent residence he had an old synagogue converted into a mosque, al-Mu‘allaq Mosque. A few years later al-Zaytūna mosque was added. The most famous mosque, al-Jazzār’s, was built early in his rule. Its grandeur and location indicate not so much the growing needs of the community of believers as the government’s need for legitimization. The city and the realm were, without doubt, under Muslim sovereignty. In all probability the majority of the urban dwellers were Christians, but this was not perceived by anyone as a challenge to Muslim rule. When the Greek Catholic community wanted to repair its church in 1810, it obtained written permission to do so from the muftī of Acre after he had inspected the building; both sides adhered to the practices applying traditionally to the dhimmī communities.²² Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had appointed a qāḍī and a muftī. For the latter post he brought from Damascus the son of an ‘ālim and friend of the family, ‘Abd al-Ḥalīm al-Shuwaykī. His father had previously visited the family in Tiberias and been Ẓāhir’s host when he was on business in Damascus. In Acre, ‘Abd al-Ḥalīm was not only made muftī of the city and the realm but also appointed teacher of the children of Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, at least one of whom, ‘Uthmān, developed some poetic skills.²³

‘Abd al-Ḥalīm also taught Arab grammar and syntax to Mikhā’īl al-Ṣabbāgh, the son of Ẓāhir’s vezier.²⁴ Among the upper government functionaries in Acre frequent interaction between members of different communities could be observed, whether it was a question of common education, or collaboration in administration, or business. Some evidence also points toward social intercourse. For a later period we know, at least, of one case in which a Christian shoemaker took on a Muslim apprentice.²⁵ It was perhaps more unusual that Ẓāhir al-‘Umar was prepared to arm Christian as well as Muslim inhabitants of Acre for a common defense. This step reflected not only Ẓāhir’s personal tolerance and broadmindedness but also the localist character of his rule. For the whole period we find no evidence of intercommunal tensions, though identity with one’s religious community certainly existed and was a part of the general social order. When Abū ‘l-Dhahab conquered Acre, however, there seem to have been some who whispered in his ears that the Christians had become too uppity.²⁶

We would like to know more about the social structure of the population, but evidence is meager and our information remains maddeningly sporadic and anecdotal. The French reports cover in great detail aspects of trade and politics insofar as they are relevant for trade, but have very little to say about the internal structure of society. Neither do the accounts of European travelers. Major Arabic sources such as ‘Abbūd and Mikhā’īl al-Ṣabbāgh and Ḥaydar Aḥmad Shihāb report only incidentally about such aspects. Al-‘Awra, following his own interest and experience, reports in detail about the administration and its organization, but aspects of social organization appear only incidentally in his chronicle.

Guilds, for instance, play a major role in all comparable cities. Organizing production in particular, they frequently overlapped with Sufi organizations. As they included in many ways the families of their members—through training, providing for widows, guaranteeing price levels, etc.—the guilds were a major institution in the structuring of society. As for Acre, we read, of course, about a variety of artisans and people in service trades: tassel makers and tailors, tobacco sellers and gunpowder merchants, shopkeepers and mule drivers, washers of corpses and prostitutes.²⁷ Perhaps there were too few of each living in Acre to form guilds. In any case there is no evidence that guilds existed. A French report mentions one group with its head, “les emballeurs,” who packed raw cotton into bales for shipping. Unfortunately this report refers to Sidon and not to Acre,²⁸ though such workers must have existed in Acre as well. Whether they were organized in a guild we cannot say. Throughout the whole period under investigation Acre experienced intensive construction activities: private houses, churches, and mosques were built, markets and khans, aqueducts and roads—by far the largest projects again and again concerned the fortifications of Acre and their improvements. Almost half the surface of Acre is taken up by fortifications and the citadel-cum-residence of the rulers. Great numbers of masons and carpenters were needed—surely enough to form guilds. Again, there is no hint that such existed.

We read, though, of a very different sort of organization for construction work. In connection with the many building activities initiated by Sulaymān Pasha, especially between 1810 and 1815, we learn of two wirash (pl. of warsha)—workshops, or artisan ateliers. One consisted of masons, the other of carpenters. Their heads were called alfā (alpha). The head of the carpenter workshop was Boghus al-Armanī, the head of the masons was Yūsuf al-Ḥakīma. They were in government employ and had scribes attached to them (most likely to keep the accounts of the workshops).²⁹ These workshops were charged with major public construction projects inside Acre but also in the realm of Acre. We have no information as to the number of carpenters, masons, etc. working in these ateliers. But that these were very substantial operations is evidenced by the number of beasts of burden kept in the workshops. At the time of Sulaymān Pasha’s death the workshops had 400 mules, 400 donkeys, and 300 camels.³⁰ Just for handling these animals hundreds of drivers would be necessary. If we add to that the actual masons and carpenters, it must have included the major part of the working population of Acre. The important point for our investigation here is that these were outfits, paid and managed by the government, fulfilling tasks that in other cities more independent-minded guilds would fulfill. In other words, the Acre government was not only dominant in the export trade but also extended its economic role by being the largest building contractor and employer of labor, and keeping labor under its own management. Apparently these workshops already existed at the time of al-Jazzār. When in 1789 he was besieged by his rebellious Mamluks, he “mobilized the workers and the masons in the warsha and furnished them with arms.”³¹

For even greater projects different populations were mobilized. In 1779, before moving to Acre as his new residence, al-Jazzār had the old fortifications and many of its buildings repaired and reconstructed. For this purpose he used forced labor from the surrounding villages on a three-day-rotation basis.³² On occasion, for instance when building the second wall around Acre, he also would use the city people, including the Christians, as labor. For earth movements in particular he used Metualis as forced labor,³³ although some people came voluntarily, in search of work.³⁴ Sulaymān Pasha used the same methods. When he decided to remove all the earth entrenchments the French had thrown up facing the fortifications of Acre, he ordered the workers of the warshas, all his scribes and administrators (including Ḥaim Farḥī), and practically every inhabitant of Acre to come out and help level these structures. When the Greek Catholic community refused to return on the second day, Sulaymān had them locked out of their churches.³⁵ A few years later, preparing for an imminent assault by the governor of Damascus, ‘Abdallāh Pasha took similar measures when he decided to cut a second moat around Acre and have it filled with seawater. The whole population, rich and poor, old and young, had to come out of the city and with the help of wicker baskets remove earth from the ditch. Rations of bread and water were distributed at noontime; only in the evening were people allowed to return to the city, the well-to-do returning before the poor.³⁶

To complete the picture, some other government enterprises should be mentioned here: there was a government slaughterhouse³⁷ and a salt works, managed by a government administrator.³⁸ Private business and government enterprise were inseparably entangled when Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh founded a soap factory in Acre.³⁹ Later ‘Abdallāh Pasha made the production of soap an outright government monopoly.⁴⁰

Families that combined government service with entrepreneurial wealth, such as the Sakrūj, Abū Qalūsh, and al-Ṣabbāgh, were kept under relentless pressure and control. Although obviously there were retail merchants in the new market built by Ẓāhir al-‘Umar, many aspects of commerce, in particular cotton but also olive oil and wheat, were government business. An urban elite consisting of established families from which came international merchants as well as the top ‘ulamā, so typical for other cities of the time, was absent in Acre and was, because of the economic monopolies, systematically prevented from developing.

The overwhelming dominance of the government establishment in terms not only of political power but also of economic control found no precedent in comparable Syrian cities. This situation had its origin in the monopolistic arrangement Ẓāhir al-‘Umar established with the French for the export of cotton and the integration of the local economy into the world market. But these patterns of government control of the economy could only develop so successfully because of the peculiar characteristics of the society of Acre. We have observed a certain coherence and continuity of dhimmī families working for the administration in Acre. But what was glaringly absent was an elite of strong, well-established Muslim families filling a variety of functions and defending their interests against governors and military elites—as they did, for instance, in Damascus. They had come from elsewhere and nobody in Acre would take up their case. If the population was frightened, submissive, and patient, this was not caused, as Renaudot suggested, because of despotism or, one might add, economic monopoly policy, rather, these characteristics could thrive thanks to a considerable weakness of social structure and the lack of urban elites—circumstances that in the last analysis could be traced back to the fact that this was a society consisting completely of immigrants. These were not immigrants who had migrated into a city and been absorbed into an already existing society, nor were they constituting a “frontier society” with its characteristic remoteness from political authority. These were immigrants who had come to an empty place, managed from the first day by a strong if not despotic government.

Only during the very last phase of the period discussed here can we find some hints of the formation and expression of local interests. This did not happen among the military, which almost by definition was not local; neither were such interests articulated by a merchant class, which, as we have seen, was systematically oppressed and stunted in its growth by monopolistic government policies. Rather, it is among men of religion that we find the first local civilian attempt to participate in power. The beginning of this development lay probably in the circumstance that ‘Alī Pasha liked to surround himself with ‘ulamā’. Shaykh Muḥammad Efendī Abū ‘l-Hudā, muftī and qāḍī of Acre during Sulaymān Pasha’s regime and ‘Abdallāh’s, belonged to this circle. The Abū ‘l-Hudā family were a Palestinian family of learned men who over several generations held different religious positions in Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramle, etc.⁴¹ Another ‘ālim belonging to this circle was ‘Abd al-Ḥalīm al-‘Aḍwī from the lower Galilee. He was appointed to the administration of Sulaymān Pasha. ‘Alī Pasha’s son ‘Abdallāh was the first ruler of Acre who actually grew up there. His father appointed ‘Abd al-Ḥalīm as his tutor.⁴² Another member of this circle, though not an ‘ālim but a local, was Mas‘ūd al-Māḍī. He was of peasant origins, belonging to a family of village shaykhs in Ṭanṭūra, south of Haifa. We have encountered him already as a protégé of ‘Alī Pasha and enemy of Ḥaim Farḥī. As his waqf deed shows, he had considerable agricultural holdings and real estate in Acre itself.⁴³

Those three men constituted the nucleus of a group that supported and was protected by ‘Alī Pasha and later would wield decisive influence on his son ‘Abdallāh. It was they who succeeded, through ‘Abdallāh, in having the powerful Ḥaim Farḥī liquidated. And it was from this circle that a new political discourse emanated. Promoting their own interests, they couched them in religious terms. During the devastating plague of 1812/13, which the Christians in Acre survived so well thanks to their quarantine measures, ‘Abd al-Ḥalīm al-‘Aḍwī, together with the superintendent of the al-Jazzār Mosque, instituted anti-Christian measures. The Christians’ patron, ‘Alī Pasha, had fled Acre during the plague, but upon his return he rescinded the measures and rebuked their initiators.

The religious discourse, though, was to have its effect on ‘Alī Pasha’s son ‘Abdallāh. From his childhood on ‘Abdallāh Pasha received regular religious instruction. As one European traveler reported: “Here I found the young lord, sitting between two venerable shaykhs who were expounding to him the Koran or commenting on some abstruse points of faith.” He also learned calligraphy.⁴⁴ Later he was not only to heed the counsel of these ‘ulamā but would begin to surround himself with Sufi dervishes. Mishāqa refers to the rabble and the vulgar with whom ‘Abdallāh Pasha was inclined to consort, apparently during Sufi dhikrs. According to him, Ḥaim opposed this association with the dervishes: “If he must attend dhikrs, then it should be done with suitable people, like the qāḍī and the muftī, the dean of the sharīfs and the ‘ulamā.”⁴⁵ We know that Sufism was then spreading in Acre and that ‘Abdallāh Pasha was intimately involved with the Sufis. Shaykh Khālid, founder of the Khālidī branch of the Naqshbandiyya Order, was a spiritual adviser to ‘Abdallāh Pasha and corresponded with him from Damascus in the 1820s.⁴⁶ In 1819 ‘Abdallāh “gave up coffee and joined a community of dervishes.”⁴⁷ He had regular sessions with the dervishes, going through ritual exercises, dancing, and reciting the name of God.⁴⁸ Being an impressionable and somewhat unstable young man, exposed for years to religious learning, ‘Abdallāh must have appreciated the argument of religious impropriety for a Jew to lord it over the Muslims. Interestingly, in the short period between his official appointment as governor of Sidon and the assassination of Ḥaim Farḥī, ‘Abdallāh reintroduced the traditional—but in Acre never applied—laws of special dress codes for the dhimmīs. It was obviously a strategy to undermine the position of Ḥaim Farḥī and also of most of the government administrators, who were Christians.

Probably all this was inspired by the clique of ‘ulamā surrounding ‘Abdallāh Pasha. When they could not find any serious improprieties in Ḥaim Farḥī’s conduct, they accused him, after his death, of having brought great numbers of Jews to Syria. Twenty thousand immigrants in Safed and “thousands” in Tiberias are mentioned.⁴⁹ These numbers, bearing no relation to reality, provided the pretext for harassing the Jewish communities there for higher tax payments. The Christian dhimmīs, too, understood the whole affair as a heightening of intersectarian tensions, and some of them began to leave Acre.⁵⁰ This process was accelerated a year later. After the Greek nationalists had started their uprising in the Morea in March 1821, the sultan sent orders to all provinces to fortify the coastal towns and to disarm the Christians. ‘Abdallāh Pasha not only obeyed this order but evicted most Christians from Acre.⁵¹ Christians also were paid to convert to Islam. Young ones were trained to become Mamluks.⁵² These measures were not applied very vigorously, but the mood had changed. Where once the Christians had constituted at least half the population if not the majority, by 1829 they made up perhaps no more than 20 percent.⁵³

The deterioration of intercommunal relations was accompanied not only by the decline in economic conditions—or perhaps was a result of the decline—but also by a curious countercurrent. Even as the dhimmīs lost their position of power and influence, the European impact became more visible. The European economy had, of course, been at the basis of Acre’s recent development. But European influence had been indirect and not apparent in the local life-style. During Ẓāhir al-‘Umar’s rule, all women—“even the catholic and European women”—had to be totally veiled in public.⁵⁴ As late as 1797 al-Jazzār could tell the vice-consul to order the wife of one French merchant to cease wearing dresses “à la Constantinopolitaine” because this was the exclusive privilege of al-Jazzār’s harem.⁵⁵ In 1806 “Turcs,” i.e., local Muslims, assaulted people wearing European dress. The French exacted a promise from Sulaymān Pasha that they could wear the cocarde with his protection.⁵⁶ ‘Abdallāh Pasha, religious-minded as he was, nevertheless was preoccupied with imitating the Europeans: “He sits only on chairs, drinks nothing but wine and champagne and uses a European saddle and stirrups.”⁵⁷ His nephew was mutasallim in Sidon and dressed totally in European style—only his mustache was oriental.⁵⁸ Catafago gave dinners à la Franc, where ‘Abdallāh would get totally drunk.⁵⁹

The European presence also found expression in the internal political structure. Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh and Ḥaim Farḥī had been local dhimmīs whose own power was totally derived from the protection their masters granted them. Catafago played in some ways a comparable role under ‘Abdallāh Pasha. It was never quite clear, though, whether he was a dhimmī or an Italian. He tried to buttress his position in Acre by becoming vice-consul of as many European nations as possible.

Just as profound was another change which suggests a shifting world view: Ẓāhir al-‘Umar had relied totally on local physicians, trained in traditional concepts, such as Sīwān and later Ibrāhīm al-Ṣabbāgh. The chief physician of Sulaymān Pasha was an Italian from Naples, Francesco. He quickly sent off the traditional physicians still at the court of Sulaymān when their incompetence became evident.⁶⁰ ‘Abdallāh also had an Italian physician, Bosio, from Piedmont, though he maintained a profound distrust of him and always, when Bosio prescribed any medicine, made him swallow the same amount.⁶¹

There may have existed a correlation between the new religious-mindedness of the Muslims of Acre, the economic decline, and the greater visibility of the European presence. Abdel Nour observes a regroupement confessionel and a crystallisation religieux in all the cities of Syria during the nineteenth century. He implicitly addresses the deterioration of intercommunal relations; he points out the trend in various cities, but does not provide a common explanation.⁶² In the first decades of the nineteenth century the reasons seemed to differ greatly. Barely a few years before such tendencies appeared in Acre, Kanj Yūsuf Pasha had established in Damascus stringent rules for Christians and Jews.⁶³ In his case it was an attempt to legitimize his own position in view of his failure to defeat the Wahhabi forces.⁶⁴ What ties the situation in Damascus to that of Acre is obviously not the visibility of the European impact but the general weakness of the Ottoman Empire, no longer able to defend itself against unbelievers and heretics. In both cases the challenge went to the core of Sunni orthodoxy and the legitimacy of the Ottoman sultan. In the Greek case the question arose whether dhimmīs could be prevented from rebellion and in the Wahhabi case Islamic sectarianism could seriously question the orthodoxy of faith of the Ottoman ruling elites.

The weakness of the empire’s center had also given space for different expressions of localism and the assertion of peripheral vis-à-vis central power. Acre was the perfect example of this trend. Rulers and minorities had used a variety of means to assert their autonomy. But the religious discourse was first used, as we have seen, by some local elements of Muslim Arabs trying to articulate and assert their own political interests. This group of ‘ulamā and landholders, like Mas‘ūd al-Māḍī, from established Palestinian families appeared, however, too late and remained too weak to influence the fate of Acre and its realm in any decisive way.

In the final analysis all the population of Acre were immigrants of the first or, at most, the second generation. Hence family ties and social structures were not as firmly developed as they were in Damascus or Nablus, for instance. The fluid social situation in Acre carried the promise of great upward social mobility, but it also exposed individual traders to the whims of political strongmen. The fact, that all the merchants mentioned here and also all the censaux were minority members emphasizes the weakness of this commercial group and its vulnerability. In the final analysis, trade, especially export trade, remained a government affair; and the government demonstrated overwhelming power. Once Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār decided not to pursue export trade through the French link any longer, there existed no local group strong enough to carry it out on its own. Thus we cannot observe in Acre the adaptability to new conditions, changing products and trade connections, etc., which made the Muslim merchant class of Nablus during the same period and after so remarkable⁶⁵ and were later to characterize the development of Beirut. More generally speaking—once trade was abandoned in Acre and political power was lost—immigrants became emigrants again.