page_title: Yusuf Sayfa
section_title: Early conflict with Fakhr al-Din II
hierarchical_section_title: Yusuf Sayfa / Governorship of Tripoli / Second term / Early conflict with Fakhr al-Din II
caption_attribution_description: English: The earliest known portrait of emir. It was published by Eugene Roger, A French Franciscan in Nazareth, who was one of Fakhr al-Din's physicians in the last year of his reign (1632-33).
context_page_description: 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.
  Yusuf or his family may have been Kurdish or Turkmen levends from Marash and were established in Tripoli's vicinity by at least the 1510s–1520s. He became a multazim subordinate to the Assaf chieftains of the Keserwan for most of his career until his promotion to the rank of pasha and appointment as Tripoli's first beylerbey in 1579. Hostilities consequently ensued with the Assafs, ending with Yusuf's assassination of their last chieftain in 1591 and his confiscation of their tax farms. His takeover of the Keserwan and Beirut prompted his first confrontation with Fakhr al-Din II, the Druze chieftain and sanjakbey of Sidon-Beirut in 1598. He was given command by the Sublime Porte over the armies of Syria to suppress the rebel Ali Janbulad of Aleppo in 1606. After a series of defeats at Hama, Tripoli and Damascus, he submitted to Janbulad at Krak des Chevaliers, though the rebellion was suppressed in 1607.
context_section_description: In 1593 Yusuf married Muhammad's widow and took control of the Keserwan and Beirut iltizam. His new wife was escorted to Tripoli by his Shia Muslim allies, the Hamade clan. Yusuf's takeover of Beirut and Keserwan, both of which were part of Damascus Eyalet, gained him the ire of the Damascus provincial government. His increasing proximity to Ma'nid domains in the southern Lebanon range provoked Fakhr al-Din II, the sanjak-bey of Sidon-Beirut Sanjak from 1592 and the son and successor of Qurqumaz ibn Yunis, who had died in the 1585 expedition. In 1598 the Damascus beylerbey Seyyed Mehmed Pasha ordered Fakhr al-Din and Musa al-Harfush of Baalbek to force Yusuf out of the Keserwan and Beirut. Fakhr al-Din and Musa engaged Yusuf's forces in a battle near the Dog River in the Keserwan, slaying his brother or nephew Ali Sayfa, and conquering Beirut and Keserwan. Fakhr al-Din held the two territories for one year, before agreeing to withdraw his forces and return both territories to Yusuf after reaching unspecified accommodations with him. The battle at the Dog River inaugurated a rivalry between Yusuf and Fakhr al-Din which lasted for the remainder of Yusuf's life. The rivalry became a conspicuous aspect of the local culture, as exemplified in a verse from the wine ode of a contemporary poet addressed to his companion: 
  Let us not speak of Ibn Sayfa and Ibn Ma'n 
   enemies seek one another out 
   What have we to do with wars? 
   — Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Akrami al-Salihi of Damascus (d. 1637).
  Yusuf engaged the Hamades in 1600 to assault and drive out the muqaddams (local chieftains) of the village of Jaj in the Byblos subdistrict in retaliation for their alleged support for Fakhr al-Din. Yusuf furthered his ties with the Damascene Janissaries, allying with one of their two main leaders, Kurd Hamza. In 1601 Yusuf sent 1,000 soldiers to back the Damascene Janissaries when they were blocked from entering Aleppo by an imperial guard. Kurd Hamza repaid Yusuf the following year by participating in his fifty-day siege of Musa in Baalbek. After they captured its citadel, they pillaged several villages in its countryside, including Hadath. In that village, Yusuf executed several captive partisans of Musa because of their alleged culpability in the slaying of Ali Sayfa at the Dog River.
caption: A sketch of Fakhr al-Din II, who became Yusuf's most prominent local adversary from 1598 until Yusuf's death in 1625
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