The map shown has no source given, cannot be authenticated. The region was called Ottoman Syria 1516-1918 and was not called Palestine until 1918.
Safed Sanjak (Arabic : سنجق صفد; Turkish : Safed Sancağı) was a sanjak (district) of Damascus Eyalet (Ottoman province of Damascus) in 1517–1660, after which it became part of the Sidon Eyalet (Ottoman province of Sidon). 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. At the same time the rest of the sanjak was populated by Sunni Muslims, Jewish peasants, Bedouin tribesmen, Shia Muslims/Mitwali, and Druze peasants.
The territory of Safed Sanjak consisted of the area between the Zahrani River in the north to Mount Carmel (near Haifa) in the south, and the area between the Sea of Galilee in the east and the Mediterranean Sea in the west. Besides Safed, it included the port cities of Acre and Tyre and the entire Galilee and Jabal Amil area. The district had a mixed population of peasants and Bedouin. The inhabitants of the Jabal Amil region were predominantly Shia Muslim, specifically and historically called Mitwali, while the Galilee had a Sunni Muslim majority, including peasants and Bedouin, and a large Druze minority. [1] The district also contained Jewish communities. [2]
In the 16th century, the Safed Sanjak was divided into the following five nawahi (singular: nahiya; third-level administrative subdivisions) and a'mal (singular: amal; fourth-level administrative subdivisions): [3] [4]
There is no available information about the administrative divisions of Safed Sanjak during the 17th century. By the 18th century, Safed Sanjak was divided into ten nawahi. [10]
Before Ottoman rule, Safed was the capital of its own mamlaka (province) of the Cairo-based Mamluk Sultanate. [11] Administrative information about Mamlakat Safad derives mainly from two sources: the qadi (Islamic head judge) of Safed in the 1370s, Shams al-Din al-Uthmani, and the Mamluk historian al-Qalqashandi, who based much of his material about Mamlakat Safad on al-Uthmani's work. [11] Most of the information about the mamlaka covers the period between 1260 and 1418, while little is known for the last century of Mamluk rule before the Ottoman conquest following the Battle of Marj Dabiq in 1516. [12] Travelers' accounts from the 15th century describe a general decline of the region around Safed precipitated by famine, plagues, natural disasters and political chaos, and the flight of peasants from their villages to the main towns or their adoption of nomadism. [12]
The Ottomans entered the territory of the mamlaka through the Daughters of Jacob Bridge and did not meet any resistance in or around Safed. [13] They bypassed the city, setting up camps at the Daughters of Jacob's Bridge, Khan Jubb Yusuf, Khan al-Minya and Khan al-Tujjar, all located in the mamlaka, before proceeding to conquer Mamluk Egypt. [13] While Selim I was in Egypt, rumors spread in Safed that he had been killed, spurring the townspeople to revolt against the Ottomans before being suppressed by the new authorities. [14]
After its incorporation into the Ottoman Empire, Safed was reorganized into a sanjak administratively part of the Damascus Eyalet. [1] Its jurisdiction roughly corresponded with the territory of Mamlakat Safad. [12] Safed Sanjak prospered at least during the first sixty years of Ottoman rule, with displaced peasants returning to their villages and the town of Safed becoming a haven for Jews from Europe, who turned the town into a wool production center. [15] The first known Ottoman land and tax survey in the sanjak was in 1525/26, followed by a second survey in 1538/39. The second survey shows substantial increases in the population and tax revenues, possibly a result of peasants returning to their villages and the stability brought by the early Ottoman rulers. [16] In 1547-48, Safad Sanjak contained a total of 287 villages. [3]
In the 16th century, the Sudun clan of Qana, who were Shia Muslims of purported Circassian origins, and the Al Shukr of Aynatha, a family of Shia seyyeds (religious leaders), dominated the Bilad Bishara nahiya of the sanjak. [17]
The initial prosperity of the sanjak waned toward the end of the 16th century and remained in general decline, more or less extending until the 19th century. [18] The native chronicler and Hanafi mufti of Safed, al-Khalidi al-Safadi (d. 1625), indicated in his writings that the closing years of the 16th century in the sanjak were marked by devastation and desolation, which is generally reflected in Ottoman government records. [19]
In 1602 the Druze chieftain of the Chouf-based Ma'n dynasty and governor of Sidon-Beirut, Fakhr al-Din II, was appointed governor of Safed. Fakhr al-Din had become an increasingly powerful figure in the region and at the time enjoyed support from the Ottoman government. He was tasked in Safed with controlling the Shia Muslim clans, who were generally viewed more negatively by the Sunni Ottomans than the Druze, and like the Druze and Bedouin of the region in general, were in a frequent state of rebellion through their stockpiling of muskets and refusal to pay taxes. [20] Three years after Fakhr al-Din's appointment, the Ottomans commended him for "guarding the country, keeping the Bedouins in check, ensuring the welfare and tranquility of the population, promoting agriculture and increasing prosperity". [21] Khalidi, who became Fakhr al-Din's adviser and practical court historian, also testified that Bedouin brigandage along the highways of the sanjak ceased under Fakhr al-Din, resulting in peace and security, and that agriculture was thriving anew. [21]
In 1614, a new eyalet (province) was created based in Sidon, and Safed was annexed to it. The province was disbanded later that year and Safed Sanjak reverted to Damascus Eyalet. [1] During Fakhr al-Din's exile between 1613 and 1619, the Shia Muslim Harfush dynasty tried and failed to gain control of it. [22] Around the same time, in 1617, the Shia Muslim clan of Munkar and the house of El Assaad Family of Ali Al-Saghir emerged, along with Al Shukr, as opponents of the Ma'ns in Bilad Bishara. [17] After a five-year exile in Tuscany, Fakhr al-Din reestablished his position in the region, his power reaching its apex in the 1630s until he was killed by imperial Ottoman troops in 1635. [23] Ali al-Saghir and his brother Husayn, who traced their origins to an old, influential Shia Muslim tribe, eliminated the rival clans of Sudun in 1639 and Al Shukr in 1649, thereafter establishing their family as the sole leaders of the Shia Muslim clans across Jabal Amil, including the areas of Tibnin, Hunin, Qana and Ma'araka. [17]
The settlements of the Galilee, particularly Safed and Tiberias, deteriorated during the struggle to capture the region by the nephew of Fakhr al-Din, Mulhim ibn Yunus Ma'n, who ultimately gained control of Safed Sanjak in 1653. [24] The following year, the Ali al-Saghir clan irked the authorities for not forwarding revenues from Tyre earmarked for a waqf (religious trust) in Damascus. [17] It may have precipitated their decline, which was advanced with the deaths of Husayn and his son Hasan in 1655 and 1656. [17] In 1660, the Sidon Eyalet was reestablished and Safed was once again annexed to it. [1] The Ottoman governor of the new province launched a campaign against the Shia feudal lords, resulting in the deaths of Ali and many of his sons. [17] Less powerful Shia clans, such as the Zayn of Bint Jbeil, filled the local leadership void in the aftermath, though the Ali al-Saghir regrouped toward the end of the century and may have maintained tacit support from the Ma'n. [25]
Ahmad Ma'n died in 1697 without male progeny and the Ma'n tax farms in Sidon-Beirut Sanjak were transferred to Haydar Shihab by the Ottoman government. [26] With the demise of the Ma'ns in the late 17th century, the Safad Sanjak also largely came under the control of the Shihab dynasty. [22] The Shihabi emir, Bashir I, Haydar's uncle and the effective leader of the Shihab dynasty, launched a punitive campaign against the Ali al-Saghirs in Bilad Bishara in 1698, capturing Mushrif and his son Muhammad and transferring them to the custody of Sidon's governor Kaplan Pasha, brother of Tripoli Eyalet's governor and Shihab ally Arslan Mehmed Pasha. [25] Bashir was afterward appointed the governor of the Safad Sanjak. [25] He routed a coalition of the Ali al-Saghir, Sa'b and Munkar Shia clans in Nabatieh in 1707. [27] Taking control of Bilad Bishara, he granted it to his Druze deputy Mahmud Abu Harmush. [27]
By the late 17th century, the Bedouin Banu Saqr tribe practically dominated the area west of Tiberias between Safed and Nablus. [28] The Saqr extended their protection to the Banu Zaydan clan under its chief, whose name is not defined in the sources. [28] The chief's son Umar al-Zaydani was appointed the mutasallim (tax farmer) of Safed by Bashir I who also appointed his own son Mansur governor of Safad Sanjak. [29] Mansur died in 1702 and was succeeded as governor by Umar, who held the post until he died in 1706, the same year Bashir I died in Safed. [29]
The governor of Sidon Eyalet, backed by local forces from Nablus, resolved to subjugate the Saqr, who had developed a reputation for raiding villages, endangering travelers and commerce, and evading taxes. [30] In an effort to improve their position with the authorities, the Saqr invested in Umar al-Zaydani's son Zahir al-Umar to serve as their representative. [30] With their backing, Zahir gained control of Tiberias and persuaded Sidon to appoint him its tax farmer. [30] By 1738 he gained the surrender of Safed by its local strongman and tax farmer Muhammad Naf'i. [30] In 1746 he added the tax farm of Acre to his domains, while he and other Zaydanis had consolidated their control over the rest of the Galilee. [31] After twenty-five years of clashes and cooperation, Zahir and the Shia Muslim clans of Jabal Amil led by Nassif al-Nassar of the Ali al-Saghir clan agreed a formal alliance making Zahir their official representative with the authorities in Sidon, overseeing their tax payments and agreeing to defend them against the Druze led by Mulhim Shihab in exchange for their military backing. [32]
Zahir fortified Acre and made it the capital of his expanding sheikhdom and the center of his monopoly on the cotton trade from Palestine. Acre's practical dominance of the sanjak under Zahir, who ruled until his death in 1775, and his Ottoman-appointed successors Jazzar Pasha (1775–1804), Sulayman Pasha al-Adil (1805–1819) and Abdullah Pasha (1820–1831) contributed to the political decline of Safed, which became a nahiya center with limited local influence, belonging to the Acre Sanjak. [33]
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.
Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, alternatively spelled Daher al-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.
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 Battle of Ain Dara occurred in the village of Ain Dara, in Mount Lebanon in 1711, between the Qaysi and Yamani, two rival tribo-political factions.
The Shihab dynasty is an Arab family whose members served as the paramount tax farmers and emirs of Mount Lebanon from the early 18th to mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule (1517–1918). Before then, the family had been in control of the Wadi al-Taym region, purportedly as early as the 12th century. During early Ottoman rule, they maintained an alliance and marital ties with the Ma'n dynasty, the Chouf-based, paramount Druze emirs and tax farmers of Mount Lebanon. When the last Ma'nid emir died without male progeny in 1697, the chiefs of the Druze in Mount Lebanon appointed the Shihab emir, Bashir, whose mother belonged to the Ma'n, as his successor. Bashir was succeeded by another Shihab emir with a Ma'nid mother, Haydar, after his death.
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 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.
Nasif ibn al-Nassar al-Wa'ili was the most powerful sheikh of the rural Shia Muslim (Matawilah) tribes of Jabal Amil in the mid-18th century. He was based in the town of Tebnine and was head of the Ali al-Saghir clan. Under his leadership, the Jabal Amil prospered, due largely to the revenues from dyed cotton cloth exports to European merchants.
Mansur Bey ibn Furaykh was Emir of the Biqa'a, Safad and Ajlun districts in the late 16th century during Ottoman rule. The Ottomans granted Mansur this large power base to enable him to check the growing power of rebellious Lebanese clans, namely the Ma'an and Harfush. However, complaints were lodged against him alleging that he oppressed his subjects, and killed and robbed wealthy Muslim pilgrims during his service as amir al-hajj. Mansur also failed to pay the Ottoman authorities the taxes they were due from his sanjaks. Because of these actions, Mansur was arrested and executed.
Sidon-Beirut Sanjak was a sanjak (district) of Sidon Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. Prior to 1660, the Sidon-Beirut Sanjak had been part of Damascus Eyalet, and for brief periods in the 1590s, Tripoli Eyalet.
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 1585 Ottoman expedition against the Druze, also called the 1585 Ottoman invasion of the Chouf, 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.
The Sa'b family is a prominent Shia Muslim family in Lebanon.
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 and 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 ibn Amir under the Egypt-based Mamluks in the late 15th century.
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.
The Chouf region, also spelled Shouf, is a historical and geographical area located in the central part of Lebanon. Like much of Lebanon, the Chouf was inhabited by the Phoenicians, an ancient Semitic civilization known for their seafaring skills and trade. However, Evidence of inhabitance in the mountains dates back to the 5th century B.C.E. and archaeological evidence, consisting of Roman burial sites and pottery has proved a continuous inhabitation since 450 B.C.E.