Summary
Galilee native who rose from minor tax collector to the most powerful leader in Palestine over 1730-1775 as ruler of Acre, building his power on a partial monopoly of the cotton, grain and olive-oil export trade to Europe and the military force its profits bought (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 527-576).
Details
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In 1735 Zahir defeated the Jarrar clan over control of Marj Ibn Amir and Nazareth; their leader Shaykh Ibrahim was killed and Nazareth, which had paid taxes to the Jarrars, became part of Zahir’s domains (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 534-576).
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He forged temporary alliances with the Russian government and cooperated with the Mamluks of Egypt, who with his help invaded Greater Syria in 1771 and 1773; in those years he twice besieged Nablus, episodes in Acre’s century-long campaign (1730-1830) to contain and partially reduce Jabal Nablus’s social space, ending in stalemate and intended as reminders that Acre, not the Ottoman government, was the source of political authority (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 534-576).
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Zahir attempted to impose a monopoly on the trade generated by Palestine’s integration into the world economy, while the Jarrars opposed the Tuqan family’s urban-domination process that his sieges inadvertently boosted (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 534-576).
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In Chapter 3, Zahir (1690-1775) is the leader more than any other Palestinian leader during the Ottoman period closely associated with the growing trade in cotton; his imposition of a monopoly on the export of cotton changed the politics of trade in northern Palestine and put him on a collision course with the leaders of Jabal Nablus (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1900-2166).
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Near the end of 1771 Zahir laid siege to Nablus after taking Jaffa and expelling its governor Ahmad Beik Tuqan and forcing Mustafa Beik Tuqan, chief of Bani Sa’b, to retreat to Nablus; after nine days of skirmishes and one heavy battle he acknowledged the stalemate and withdrew, then plundered the first post-siege trade caravan at Uyun al-Tujjar and cut off the road to Damascus (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1900-2166).
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Zahir made Acre the seat of his rule in the mid-1740s and, with the help of Ibrahim Sabbagh, his long-time financial manager and political advisor, implanted himself as the middleman between French merchants and the cotton-growing villages under his domain (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1900-2166).
Related pages
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, Acre, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, Jabal Nablus, Politics of monopoly, Ibrahim Danafi al-Samiri