page_title: Zahir al-Umar
section_title: Consolidation of power in Galilee
hierarchical_section_title: Zahir al-Umar / Rule / Consolidation of power in Galilee
caption_attribution_description: English: Tiberias, Israel - Citadel.
context_page_description: Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, alternatively spelled Daher al-Omar or Dahir al-Umar was the autonomous Arab ruler of northern Palestine in the mid-18th century, while the area was still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire. For much of his reign, starting in the 1730s, his domain mainly consisted of Galilee, with successive headquarters in Tiberias, Arraba, Nazareth, Deir Hanna and finally Acre, in 1746. He fortified Acre, and the city became a center of the cotton trade between Palestine and Europe. In the mid-1760s, he reestablished the port town of Haifa nearby.
  Zahir successfully withstood assaults and sieges by the Ottoman governors of the Sidon and Damascus provinces, who attempted to limit or eliminate his influence. He was often supported in these confrontations by the rural Shia Muslim clans of Jabal Amil. In 1771, in alliance with Ali Bey al-Kabir of the Eyalet of Egypt and with backing from Russia, Zahir captured Sidon, while Ali Bey's forces conquered Damascus, both acts in open defiance of the Ottoman sultan. At the peak of his power in 1774, Zahir's autonomous sheikhdom extended from Beirut to Gaza and included the Jabal Amil and Jabal Ajlun regions.
context_section_description: In the late 1720s, Zahir and his brother Yusuf, backed by the Bani Saqr, captured Tiberias and its multazim. Concurrently, Zahir issued a letter to Köprülü Abdullah Pasha, governor of Sidon Eyalet, accusing the multazim of oppression and of imposing illegal taxes on the population. Zahir insisted that if Abdullah Pasha appointed him multazim of Tiberias and Arraba, he would guarantee the timely payment of taxes and rule justly. Abdullah Pasha consented to Zahir's rule and sent him an honorary robe. This was the first time a Zaydani multazim was directly appointed by the governor of Sidon rather than the semi-autonomous rural chiefs of Mount Lebanon. Zahir made Tiberias his principal base and was joined by his Zaydani kinsmen. He appointed his cousin Muhammad ibn Ali, the multazim of al-Damun, as commander of the family militia.
  Zahir extended his rule southward toward Nazareth and the Marj Ibn Amer plain (Jezreel Valley) between Galilee and Jabal Nablus. Capturing these areas was a drawn-out process, and Zahir's efforts to take Nazareth (a town in Safad Sanjak, but controlled by the Jarrar clan based in Nablus Sanjak) caused the ruling clans of the Nablus hinterland (Jabal Nablus), along with Zahir's erstwhile allies in the Bani Saqr tribe, to challenge him. Zahir, meanwhile, relied on his Zaydani kinsmen, Maghrebi mercenaries whom he commissioned in the mid-1730s under commander Ahmad Agha al-Dinkizli, and Nazareth's residents. In 1735, Zahir's 2,000-strong force routed the Jarrars and the Bani Saqr at al-Rawha in Marj Ibn Amer, killed their leader Sheikh Ibrahim al-Jarrar, and captured Nazareth. According to historian Hanna Samarah, Zahir's forces inflicted 8,000 fatalities among the Jarrar-Saqr coalition during the battle.
  Following his victory at Marj Ibn Amer, 4,000 locals, including many residents of Nazareth, joined Zahir's forces to completely subdue Jabal Nablus. Among Zahir's supporters were Christian women from Nazareth who supplied his troops with food and water. Zahir's forces pursued the Jarrars to their throne village of Sanur, but ultimately withdrew after failing to subdue the fortress. This defeat marked the limit of Zahir's influence south of Marj Ibn Amer and established the Jarrars as the dominant force of Jabal Nablus over their rivals, the Tuqans. While the Jarrars and Zahir eventually concluded a truce, the former continued to mobilize the clans of Jabal Nablus to prevent Zahir's southward expansion.
  In 1738, Zahir's forces captured the fortress at Jiddin and the villages in its political orbit, Abu Snan and Tarshiha. Jiddin had been ruled by Ahmad al-Husayn, whose family historically controlled it. The peasants under his rule complained that he governed oppressively and appealed to Zahir, who was known for treating the peasantry fairly, to relieve them of al-Husayn. Zahir, eager to expand his control toward the Mediterranean, accepted their requests and obtained permission from the governor of Sidon, Ibrahim Pasha al-Azm, to seize the fortress. Likewise, al-Husayn had also approached the governor, who, hoping to see two powerful local leaders weakened, gave al-Husayn his blessing as well. Zahir assembled a 1,500-strong force and defeated al-Husayn's forces near the fortress. He was then appointed multazim of Jiddin's subdistrict.
  Bi'ina, which was also fortified, withstood a siege by Zahir in 1739, but Zahir later married the daughter of Bi'ina's mukhtar (headman), and thus brought Bi'ina into his domain. He also acquired the fortress of Suhmata through diplomatic means, further solidifying his rule over northern and eastern Galilee. In 1740, Zahir made an agreement with the neighboring Bedouin tribes to end their looting raids in the area. By then, Sa'd had taken control of Deir Hanna and Muhammad ibn Ali captured Shefa-'Amr, entrenching the presence of the Zaydani clan in western Galilee. After negotiations, Muhammad al-Naf'i, the multazim of Safad, surrendered the city to Zahir. Safad was the administrative seat of the sanjak and situated on a strategic hill overlooking the Galilee countryside
caption: Remains of the citadel at Tiberias which Zahir built early in his rule
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