| Arabic:إيالة صيدا Ottoman Turkish:ایالت صیدا | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire | |||||||||||
| 1660–1864 | |||||||||||
.png) The Sidon Eyalet in 1795 | |||||||||||
| Capital | Safed (1660) Sidon (1660–1775) Acre (1775–1841)[1] Beirut (1841–1864) | ||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||
• Established | 1660 | ||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1864 | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
| Today part of | Lebanon Israel | ||||||||||
TheEyalet of Sidon (Ottoman Turkish:ایالت صیدا,romanized: Eyālet-i Ṣaydā;Arabic:إيالة صيدا) was aneyalet (also known as abeylerbeylik) of theOttoman Empire. In the 19th century, the eyalet extended from the border withEgypt to the Bay ofKisrawan, including parts of modernIsrael andLebanon.
Depending on the location of its capital, it was also known as the Eyalet ofSafad,Beirut orAcre.[2]
Ottoman rulers considered creating the province as early as 1585. The districts of Beirut-Sidon and Safed (encompassing much of theGalilee) were united under the rule ofMa'nid emirFakhr al-Din Ma'n.[3]
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 theDamascus province out of which it was created.[3]
Despiteconflicts 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]
The Ma'ns were succeeded by theShihab 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 theZaydan family in theGalilee and the sheikhs of the Shia clans of Ali al-Saghir, Munkar, and Sa'b families inJabal Amil.[6] Even the coastal towns of Sidon,Beirut, andAcre 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 sheikhZahir al-Umar in the mid-1740s.[7]
In 1775, whenJezzar Ahmed Pasha received the governorship of Sidon, he moved the capital to Acre. In 1799, Acre resisted asiege by Napoleon Bonaparte.[8]
As part of theEgyptian–Ottoman War of 1831–33,Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt took Acre after a severe siege on May 27, 1832. The Egyptian occupation intensified rivalries betweenDruzes andMaronites, 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 dislodgedBashir III al-Shihab, to whom the sultan had granted the title of emir.[9]
In 1842 the Ottoman government introduced the DoubleKaymakamate, wherebyMount Lebanon would be governed by a Maronite appointee and the more southerly regions ofKisrawan andShuf 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-blownsectarian violence. In the1860 Lebanon conflict that followed, thousands of Christians were killed in massacres that culminated with the Damascus Riots of July 1860.[9]
Following the international outcry caused by the massacres, theFrench landed troops in Beirut and the Ottomans abolished the unworkable system of the Kaymakamate and instituted in its place theMutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon, aMaronite-majority district to be governed by non-Lebanese Christianmutasarrıf, which was the direct predecessor of thepolitical 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]
Sidon Eyalet consisted of twosanjaks in the 17th century:
By the start of the 18th century, Sidon Eyalet was not divided into sanjaks and third-levelkazas (judicial districts) as most other eyalets, including neighboring Damascus, were administratively divided at the time. Instead, Sidon comprised several smaller, fiscal districts, most commonly calledmuqata'as in the contemporary government documents, and less commonly referred to asnahiyes.[11] There were several, mostly insignificant changes to the territorial jurisdictions of themuqata'as throughout the century but for the most part, the province comprised the followingmuqata'as:
Subdvisions of Sidon Eyalet in 1700-1740:[17]
Sidon Eyalet consisted of sevensanjaks (districts) in the early 19th century:[18]
Governors of the eyalet:[19][20][21]
