page_title: Zahir al-Umar
hierarchical_section_title: Zahir al-Umar
caption_attribution_description: English: Daher el-Omar portrait painted by Ziad Zaydany in 1990 עברית: פרוטרט של דאהר אל-עומר צוייר על יד זיאד זידאני בשנת 1990
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: Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, alternatively spelled Daher al-Omar or Dahir al-Umar (Arabic: ظاهر آل عمر الزيداني‎, romanized: Ẓāhir āl-ʿUmar az-Zaydānī, 1689/90 – 21 or 22 August 1775) 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. By then, however, Ali Bey had been killed, the Ottomans entered into a truce with the Russians, and the Sublime Porte felt secure enough to check Zahir's power. The Ottoman Navy attacked his Acre stronghold in the summer of 1775 and he was killed outside of its walls shortly after.
  The wealth Zahir accumulated through monopolizing Palestine's cotton and olive oil trade to Europe financed his sheikhdom. For much of his rule, he oversaw a relatively efficient administration and maintained domestic security, although he faced and suppressed several rebellions by his sons. The aforementioned factors, along with Zahir's flexible taxation policies and his battlefield reputation made him popular among the local peasantry. Zahir's tolerance of religious minorities encouraged Christian and Jewish immigration to his domain. The influx of immigrants from other parts of the empire stimulated the local economy and led to the significant growth of the Christian communities in Acre and Nazareth and the Jewish community in Tiberias. He and his family, the Zaydani clan, also patronized the construction of commercial buildings, houses of worship and fortifications throughout Galilee. Zahir's founding of a virtually autonomous state in Palestine has made him a national hero among Palestinians today.
caption: Artistic representation of Zahir al-Umar by Ziad Daher Zedani, 1990
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