Sidon Eyalet
The Eyalet of Sidon (Ottoman Turkish: ایالت صیدا, romanized: Eyālet-i Ṣaydā; Arabic: إيالة صيدا) was an eyalet (also known as a beylerbeylik) 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.
Background[edit]
Ottoman rulers considered creating the province as early as 1585. The districts of Beirut-Sidon and Safed (encompassing much of the Galilee) were united under the rule of Ma'nid emir Fakhr al-Din Ma'n.[3]
History[edit]
Creation[edit]
The province was briefly created during Fakhr al-Din's exile in 1614–1615, and recreated in 1660.[3][4] The province continued to be subordinated in some ways, both in fiscal and political matters, to the Damascus province out of which it was created.[3]
Despite conflicts in the 1660s, the Ma'n family "played the leading role in the management of the internal affairs of this eyalet until the closing years of the 17th century, perhaps because it was not possible to manage the province-certainly not in the sanjak of Sidon-Beirut-without them."[5]
Late 17th to 18th century[edit]
The Ma'ns were succeeded by the Shihab family in ruling the mountainous interior of Sidon-Beirut from the final years of the 17th century through the 19th century.[5] The governor of Sidon's rule also remained nominal in the Safed sanjak as well, where in the 18th century different local chiefs, mainly the sheikhs of the Zaydan family in the Galilee and the sheikhs of the Shia clans of Ali al-Saghir, Munkar, and Sa'b families in Jabal Amil.[6] Even the coastal towns of Sidon, Beirut, and Acre were farmed out to the Sidon-based Hammud family. By the late 1720s, Beirut and its tax farm also went over to the Shihabs under Emir Haydar, while Acre and its tax farm came under the rule of the Zaydani sheikh Zahir al-Umar in the mid-1740s.[7]
In 1775, when Jezzar Ahmed Pasha received the governorship of Sidon, he moved the capital to Acre. In 1799, Acre resisted a siege by Napoleon Bonaparte.[8]
Early and mid-19th century[edit]
As part of the Egyptian–Ottoman War of 1831–33, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt took Acre after a severe siege on May 27, 1832. The Egyptian occupation intensified rivalries between Druzes and Maronites, as Ibrahim Pasha openly favoured Christians in his administration and his army.[9] In 1840, the governor of Sidon moved his residence to Beirut, effectively making it the new capital of the eyalet.[10] After the return to Ottoman rule in 1841, the Druzes dislodged Bashir III al-Shihab, to whom the sultan had granted the title of emir.[9]
In 1842 the Ottoman government introduced the Double Kaymakamate, whereby Mount Lebanon would be governed by a Maronite appointee and the more southerly regions of Kisrawan and Shuf would be governed by a Druze. Both would remain under the indirect rule of the governor of Sidon. This partition of Lebanon proved to be a mistake. Animosities between the religious sects increased, and by 1860 they escalated into a full-blown sectarian violence. In the 1860 Lebanon conflict that followed, thousands of Christians were killed in massacres that culminated with the Damascus Riots of July 1860.[9]
Dissolution[edit]
Following the international outcry caused by the massacres, the French landed troops in Beirut and the Ottomans abolished the unworkable system of the Kaymakamate and instituted in its place the Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon, a Maronite-majority district to be governed by non-Lebanese Christian mutasarrıf, which was the direct predecessor of the political system that continued to exist in Lebanon's early post-independence years. The new arrangement ended the turmoil, and the region prospered in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire.[9]