 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(January 2022) |
Khan al-Franj is an Ottoman caravanserai in Sidon, Lebanon.
| | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(January 2022) |
Khan al-Franj is an Ottoman caravanserai in Sidon, Lebanon.
The construction of Khan al-Franj is commonly, though erroneously attributed to the Druze emir and governor of Sidon Eyalet, Fakhr al-Din II. The complex's actual founder was Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (d. 1579). It received its modern name, which translates as "Caravansary of the Franks", from its French mercantile occupants in the 17th century. It housed the French consul around 1616 until the consul relocated to a neighboring property, formerly owned by Fakhr al-Din's Ma'n family, the Dar al-Musilmani, in the 1630s. [1]
Fakhr al-Din Ma'n, commonly known as Fakhr al-Din II or Fakhreddine II, was the paramount Druze emir of Mount Lebanon from the Ma'n dynasty, an Ottoman governor of Sidon-Beirut and Safed, and the strongman over much of the Levant from the 1620s to 1633. For uniting modern Lebanon's constituent parts and communities, especially the Druze and the Maronites, under a single authority for the first time in history, he is generally regarded as the country's founder. Although he ruled in the name of the Ottomans, he acted with considerable autonomy and developed close ties with European powers in defiance of the Ottoman imperial government.
The Eyalet of Sidon was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, the eyalet extended from the border with Egypt to the Bay of Kisrawan, including parts of modern Israel and Lebanon.
The Shihab dynasty is an Arab family whose members served as the paramount tax farmers and local chiefs of Mount Lebanon from the early 18th to mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule. Their reign began in 1697 after the death of the last Ma'nid chief. The family centralized control over Mount Lebanon, destroying the feudal power of the mostly Druze lords and cultivating the Maronite clergy as an alternative power base of the emirate. The Shihab family allied with Muhammad Ali of Egypt during his occupation of Syria, but was deposed in 1840 when the Egyptians were driven out by an Ottoman-European alliance, leading soon after to the dissolution of the Shihab emirate. Despite losing territorial control, the family remains influential in modern Lebanon, with some members having reached high political office.
The Ma'n dynasty, also known as the Ma'nids;, were a family of Druze chiefs of Arab stock based in the rugged Chouf area of southern Mount Lebanon who were politically prominent in the 15th–17th centuries. Traditional Lebanese histories date the family's arrival in the Chouf to the 12th century, when they were held to have struggled against the Crusader lords of Beirut and of Sidon alongside their Druze allies, the Tanukh Buhturids. They may have been part of a wider movement by the Muslim rulers of Damascus to settle militarized Arab tribesmen in Mount Lebanon as a buffer against the Crusader strongholds along the Levantine coast. Fakhr al-Din I, the first member of the family whose historicity is certain, was the "emir of the Chouf", according to contemporary sources and, despite the non-use of mosques by the Druze, founded the Fakhreddine Mosque in the family's stronghold of Deir al-Qamar.
The Ottoman Empire nominally ruled Mount Lebanon from its conquest in 1516 until the end of World War I in 1918.
Mulhim ibn Yunus Ma'n was the paramount Druze emir of Mount Lebanon and head of the Ma'n dynasty after succeeding his uncle Fakhr al-Din II in 1633. The Ottomans executed Fakhr al-Din, Mulhim's father Yunus, and his brothers and cousins during and after a massive expedition to end their control over large parts of the Levant. After Mulhim defeated his principal Druze rival, Ali Alam al-Din, in 1641, the Ottomans granted him tax farms previously held by his uncle and father Yunus in southern Mount Lebanon, namely for the subdistricts of the Chouf, Gharb, Matn and Jurd. In 1657 he was appointed governor and tax farmer of Safed. He held onto the tax farms of southern Mount Lebanon until his death in 1658, after falling ill attempting to collect taxes in Safed.
The Emirate of Mount Lebanon was a part of Mount Lebanon that enjoyed variable degrees of partial autonomy under the stable suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire between the mid-16th and the early-19th century.
The Druze power struggle of 1658–1667 was one of the most violent episodes of tribal disputes during Ottoman rule in the Levant. The conflict erupted between rebel and pro-Ottoman Druze factions over succession of the Maani rule.
The Harfush dynasty was a dynasty that descended from the Khuza'a tribe, which helped, during the reign of Muhammad, in the conquest of Syria. The Harfush dynasty controlled the Baalbek District and several parts of the Bekaa Valley. Their being Shiaa was a major factor in the rivalry between the Harfushes and the Lebanese Druze Maan family.
Safed Sanjak was a sanjak (district) of Damascus Eyalet in 1517–1660, after which it became part of the Sidon Eyalet. The sanjak was centered in Safed and spanned the Galilee, Jabal Amil and the coastal cities of Acre and Tyre. The city of Safed was made up of Muslim and Jewish townspeople, while the rest of the sanjak was populated by Sunni Muslims, Jewish peasants, Bedouin tribesmen, Shia Muslims/Mitwali, and Druze peasants.
Fakhr al-Din Uthman ibn al-Hajj Yunis Ibn Ma'n, also known as Fakhr al-Din I, was the Druze emir of the Chouf district in southern Mount Lebanon from at least the early 1490s until his death in 1506, during Mamluk rule. He was the head of the Ma'n family, whose emirs controlled the Chouf since 1120. He is credited by an inscription for building a mosque in Deir al-Qamar in 1493. Fakhr al-Din was briefly imprisoned by the Mamluk authorities in 1505 in relation to his alliance with the Bedouin Bani al-Hansh clan against the Mamluk-appointed, Druze governor of Beirut.
Yusuf Sayfa Pasha was a chieftain and multazim in the Tripoli region who frequently served as the Ottoman beylerbey of Tripoli Eyalet between 1579 and his death.
The Buhturids, also known as the Banu Buhtur or the Tanukh, were a dynasty whose chiefs were the emirs of the Gharb area southeast of Beirut in Mount Lebanon in the 12th–15th centuries. A family of the Tanukhid tribal confederation, they were established in the Gharb by the Muslim atabegs of Damascus after the capture of Beirut by the Crusaders in 1110. They were tasked with guarding the mountainous frontier between the Crusader coastlands and the Islamic interior of the Levant. They were granted iqtas over villages in the Gharb and command over its peasant warriors, who subscribed to the Druze religion, which the Buhturids followed. Their iqtas were successively confirmed, decreased or increased by the Burid, Zengid, Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers of Damascus in return for military service and intelligence gathering in the war with the Crusader lordships of Beirut and Sidon. In times of peace the Buhturids maintained working relations with the Crusaders.
The 1585 Ottoman expedition against the Druze, also called the 1585 Ottoman invasion of the Shuf, was an Ottoman military campaign led by Ibrahim Pasha against the Druze and other chieftains of Mount Lebanon and its environs, then a part of the Sidon-Beirut Sanjak of the province of Damascus Eyalet. It had been traditionally considered the direct consequence of a raid by bandits in Akkar against the tribute caravan of Ibrahim Pasha, then Egypt's outgoing governor, who was on his way to Constantinople. Modern research indicates that the tribute caravan arrived intact and that the expedition was instead the culmination of Ottoman attempts to subjugate the Druze and other tribal groups in Mount Lebanon dating from 1518.
Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Khālidī al-Safadī was an Ottoman historian and the Hanafi mufti of Safed c. 1600–1625. He was best known for being the adviser of the powerful Druze chief and tax farmer Fakhr al-Din II after the latter was appointed governor of Safad Sanjak in 1602 and for chronicling Fakhr al-Din's career. His book is an important contemporary source of Fakhr al-Din's life and for the history of Lebanon and Palestine under Ottoman rule during his lifetime.
The Alam al-Dins, also spelled Alamuddin or Alameddine, were a Druze family that intermittently held or contested the paramount chieftainship of the Druze districts of Mount Lebanon in opposition to the Ma'n and Shihab families in the late 17th–early 18th centuries during Ottoman rule. Their origins were obscure with different accounts claiming or proposing Tanukhid or Ma'nid ancestry. From at least the early 17th century they were the traditional leaders of the Yaman faction among the Druzes, which stood in opposition to the Qays, led by the Tanukhid Buhturs, traditional chiefs of the Gharb area south of Beirut, and the Ma'ns. A likely chief of the family, Muzaffar al-Andari, led the Druze opposition to the powerful Ma'nid leader Fakhr al-Din II until reconciling with him in 1623.
The Turabay dynasty was a family of Bedouin emirs in northern Palestine who served as the multazims and sanjak-beys of Lajjun Sanjak during Ottoman rule in the 16th–17th centuries. The sanjak (district) spanned the towns of Lajjun, Jenin and Haifa and the surrounding countryside. The progenitors of the family had served as chiefs of Marj Bani Amir under the Egypt-based Mamluks in the late 15th century.
Küçük Ahmed Pasha was an Ottoman military commander who twice served as beylerbey (governor-general) of Damascus, one term as beylerbey of Anatolia and died commanding troops against Safavid Iran. By eliminating the rebel Ilyas Pasha in Anatolia and the powerful Druze chief Fakhr al-Din in Mount Lebanon and his command role against the Safavids, Ahmed Pasha played an important part in the Ottoman imperial revival under Sultan Murad IV.
Aḥmad ibn Mulḥim ibn Yunus Maʾn was the paramount emir of the Druze in Mount Lebanon and the tax farmer of the subdistricts of the Chouf, Matn, Gharb and Jurd from 1667 until his death in 1697. He was the last member of the Ma'n dynasty, after which paramount leadership passed to his marital relatives from the Shihab dynasty.
Sidon is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and has a rich and diverse history that spans over 6,000 years. The city's name has changed over time and has been known by various names, including Sidun, Saida, and Saïd. The earliest evidence of human settlement in the area dates back to the Neolithic period, around 4000 BCE. Sidon rose to prominence during the Bronze Age and became one of the most important city-states in the region. It was a major center for trade and commerce and played a significant role in the Mediterranean trade network. The city's strategic coastal location made it a hub for maritime activities.