Muhammad Sa'id Pasha Shamdin (died 1900), also known as Muhammad Sa'id Agha Shamdin, was an Ottoman military official of the Syria Vilayet, best known for being the amir al-hajj (commander of the Hajj pilgrim caravan to Mecca) for 20 years.
Muhammad Sa'id was a son of Shamdin Agha (d. 1860), a Kurdish irregular cavalry commander in Damascus under the provincial government. They belonged to the Shamdin-Yusuf, the strongest Kurdish clan of 19th-century Damascus. [1]
In March 1844, the Damascus Provincial Council appointed Muhammad Sa'id to command an expedition to Jabal Ajlun, a mountainous region in the province's hinterland where government authority was weak. The purpose of the expedition was to assert government rule and secure the administrative center of Irbid against the Bedouin tribes, which wielded more influence in the district and historically imposed their own taxes on the inhabitants. The mission evidently failed. [2]
In 1859, after the irregular garrisons of Damascus were disbanded by government order, Muhammad Sa'id was appointed to a newly-formed Kurdish auxiliary corps. During the 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus, Muhammad Sa'id failed to prevent his Kurdish irregulars from joining in a wide-scale massacre of Christians in the city's Bab Tuma quarter. As punishment, the imperial government exiled him to Mosul. There, he helped bring order to the city and was rewarded by a pardon from the sultan, who allowed him to return to Damascus. He was appointed the sanjakbey of Hauran, taking over from another Kurdish officer, Ahmad Yusuf Pasha. He soon after replaced Ahmad's brother Muhammad Yusuf Pasha as amir al-hajj (commander of the annual Hajj pilgrim caravan to Mecca), beginning in the late 1860s. He would hold that post for twenty years. [3]
Muhammad accumulated significant wealth in his capacity as amir al-hajj and invested considerable sums acquiring numerous villages and farms in the Ghouta oasis of Damascus, which became part of a Shamdin family endowment, and several tracts in the Hauran plains and the Golan Heights area. [3] Among the villages he acquired were Tell al-Jukhadar and Saham al-Jawlan, the latter of which he purchased cheap and sold at a significant profit to a Jewish colonization group. [4] His wealth was such that by the 1890s he was known to own more property in the Damascus Vilayet than any other individual. [3]
Muhammad's wealth was inherited by the son of his only daughter (and only child), Abd al-Rahman Yusuf, who married into the Yusuf family. Abd al-Rahman became the amir al-hajj in 1892 and after his grandfather's death inherited his lands and fortune. [3] [5] [6]
The Hauran is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, eastwards by the al-Safa field, to the south by Jordan's desert steppe and to the west by the Golan Heights. Traditionally, the Hauran consists of three subregions: the Nuqrah and Jaydur plains, the Jabal al-Druze massif, and the Lajat volcanic field. The population of the Hauran is largely Arab, but religiously heterogeneous; most inhabitants of the plains are Sunni Muslims belonging to large agrarian clans, while Druze form the majority in the eponymous Jabal al-Druze and a significant Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic minority inhabit the western foothills of Jabal al-Druze. The region's largest towns are Daraa, al-Ramtha and al-Suwayda.
Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, alternatively spelled Dhaher el-Omar or Dahir al-Umar, was an Arab ruler of northern Palestine in the mid-18th century, while the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. For much of his reign, starting in the 1730s, his domain mainly consisted of the Galilee, with successive headquarters in Tiberias, Deir Hanna and finally Acre, in 1750. He fortified Acre, and the city became the center of the cotton trade between Palestine and Europe. In the mid-1760s, he reestablished the port town of Haifa nearby.
Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar was the Acre-based Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet from 1776 until his death in 1804 and the simultaneous governor of Damascus Eyalet in 1785–1786, 1790–1795, 1798–1799, and 1803–1804. Having left his native Bosnia as a youth, he began a military career in Egypt in the service of mamluk officials, eventually becoming a chief enforcer for Ali Bey al-Kabir, Egypt's practical ruler. Al-Jazzar fell out with Ali Bey in 1768 after refusing to take part in the assassination of another of his former masters. He ultimately fled to Syria, where he was tasked by the Ottomans with defending Beirut from a joint assault by the Russian Navy and Zahir al-Umar, the Acre-based ruler of northern Palestine. He eventually surrendered and entered Zahir's service before defecting from him.
The 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus, also known as the 1860 Christian–Druze war, was a civil conflict in Mount Lebanon during Ottoman rule in 1860–1861 fought mainly between the local Druze and Christians.
As'ad Pasha al-Azm was the governor of Damascus under Ottoman rule from 1743 to his deposition in 1757. He was responsible for the construction of several architectural works in the city and other places in Syria.
The Tuqan clan is a prominent Palestinian and Jordanian political and business family. During the Ottoman era, they dominated the political and socio-economic spheres in Nablus and extended their influence to al-Salt. During that era, they were the only household that came close to establishing centralized rule over Jabal Nablus. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries the Tuqan family held the title of mutasallim of Nablus longer than any other local family.
Aqil Agha al-Hasi was the strongman of northern Palestine in the mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule. He was originally a commander of Arab irregular soldiers, known as the Hawwara tribe, in the service of the Ottoman governors of Acre. His influence in the Galilee grew as he strengthened his alliances with the powerful Beni Sakhr and Anizzah tribes of Transjordan, and recruited unemployed Bedouin irregulars from Egypt into his own band of irregulars, who thenceforth became known as the Hanadi tribe. He was known by his men and Western travelers to be courageous, cunning and charismatic, all qualities that contributed to his rise as the de facto ruler of the Galilee.
Muzayrib is a town in southern Syria, administratively part of the Daraa Governorate, located northwest of Daraa on the Jordan–Syria border. Nearby localities include al-Shaykh Saad and Nawa to the north, Da'el, Tafas and al-Shaykh Maskin to the northeast, and al-Yadudah to the southeast. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, Muzayrib had a population of 12,640 in the 2004 census. The town is also the administrative center of the Muzayrib nahiyah (subdistrict) consisting of nine villages with a combined population of 72,625. Muzayrib also has a community of Palestinian refugees.
Abdullah Pasha al-Azm was an Ottoman statesman who served as the governor of the Damascus Eyalet, Aleppo Eyalet (1794), Egypt Eyalet (1798), Adana Eyalet, and Rakka Eyalet (1809), before retiring to Hama in the 1810s. He was a member of the prominent political family, Al-Azm.
Amir al-hajj was the position and title given to the commander of the annual Hajj pilgrim caravan by successive Muslim empires, from the 7th century until the 20th century. Since the Abbasid period, there were two main caravans, one departing from Damascus and the other from Cairo. Each of the two annual caravans was assigned an amir al-hajj whose main duties were securing funds and provisions for the caravan, and protecting it along the desert route to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Hejaz.
Sulayman Pasha al-Adil was the Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet between 1805 and 1819, ruling from his Acre headquarters. He also simultaneously served as governor of Damascus Eyalet between 1810 and 1812. He was a mamluk of his predecessor, Jazzar Pasha. His rule was associated with decentralization, a reduction of Acre's military, and limits to his predecessors' cotton monopoly. Moreover, he oversaw a policy of non-interference with his deputy governors, such as Muhammad Abu-Nabbut and Mustafa Agha Barbar, and diplomacy with the autonomous sheikhs of the various Levantine regions where he held authority, including Emir Bashir Shihab II and Musa Bey Tuqan. He exercised control over his domain largely through depending on the loyalty of his deputies, who also had been mamluks of Jazzar. In effect, Sulayman Pasha presided over the world's last functioning mamluk system.
Kunj Yusuf Pasha was an Ottoman Kurd who served as the governor of Damascus Eyalet between 1807 and 1810. As governor, Kunj Yusuf enacted discriminatory policies against religious minority groups in Damascus and was unable to secure the annual Hajj pilgrim caravan to Mecca. After his inability to defeat Wahhabi invaders in 1809, he was ousted by Sulayman Pasha al-Adil with the blessing of the Ottoman imperial authorities.
Shamdin Agha was an Ottoman Kurdish commander of irregulars in the service of the Ottoman governors of Damascus and Sidon Eyalet. In effect, he was powerful paramilitary chieftain in Damascus. His descendants became a prominent family with his namesake, Shamdin, in Ottoman Syria.
The 1757 Hajj caravan raid was the plunder and massacre of the Hajj caravan of 1757 on its return to Damascus from Mecca by Bedouin tribesmen. The caravan was under the protection of an Ottoman force led by the Wali of Damascus, Husayn Pasha, and his deputy Musa Pasha, while the Bedouin were led by Qa'dan al-Fayez of the Bani Sakher tribe. An estimated 20,000 pilgrims were either killed or died of hunger or thirst as a result of the raid.
Naqib al-ashraf was a governmental post in various Muslim empires denoting the head or supervisor of the descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The descendants of Muhammad were known as ashraf and throughout Islamic history, the ashraf organized themselves into large groups, akin to corporations, throughout the various Muslim territories. This was done to ensure their special place in Muslim society and thus maintain their socio-political privileges.
Ismail Pasha al-Azm was an Ottoman statesman who served as the governor of Damascus and amir al-hajj in 1725–1730. Prior to this post he served as the agha of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man and steadily moved up the ranks to become the governor of the districts of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man, Hama and Homs in 1719 and then governor of Tripoli in 1721 before being assigned to the Damascus governorship.
Ibrahim Pasha Qatarağasi was an Ottoman statesman who served as wali (governor) of the Aleppo, Damascus, Diyarbekir and Tripoli eyalets (provinces) in the early 19th century.
Silahdar Süleyman Pasha was the Ottoman governor of Damascus Eyalet from February 1812 to May 1816.
Mehmed Rashid Pasha was an Ottoman statesman who served as the vali (governor) of Syria Vilayet in 1866–1871 and as minister of foreign affairs of the Ottoman government in 1873–1874 and 1875 until his death. Rashid Pasha was raised in Egypt where his father was an aide of the governor Muhammad Ali and was educated in Paris before joining government service in Istanbul in 1851. There he became a protege of the grand vizier Ali Pasha, a key figure in the empire-wide Tanzimat reforms. After the latter was reappointed grand vizier in 1866, Rashid Pasha was appointed governor of the Damascus-centered Syria Vilayet which extended from Tripoli and Hama in the north to Palestine and Transjordan in the south.
Shukri al-Asali was a prominent Syrian politician, nationalist leader, and senior inspector in the Ottoman government, in addition to being a ranking member of the Council of Notables. He served in the Ottoman parliament from 1911 until April 1912. He was executed with other Syrian nationalists by the Ottoman governor Jamal Pasha.