CHAPTER 2
A barber comes to know everything that happens in his town. His day is taken up in conversations with people from all walks of life. Judging by the record of his diary, Ahmad al-Budayri “al-Hallaq” (“the Barber”) was a great conversationalist who was well informed on the politics and society of Damascus in the mid-eighteenth century. The issues covered in his diary are familiar subjects of barbershop conversations everywhere: local politics, the high cost of living, the weather, and general complaints about how things were no longer as they were in the good old days.
Apart from what he wrote in his diary, we know very little about the life of Budayri, the barber of Damascus. He was too modest a man to feature in contemporary biographical dictionaries, the “who’s who” of Ottoman times. His diary is all the more remarkable for that. It was unusual for tradesmen to be literate in the eighteenth century, let alone to leave a written record of their thoughts. He told us little about himself, preferring to write about others. We do not know when he was born or died, though it is clear that the diary, spanning the years 1741–1762, was written when he was a mature man. A pious Muslim, Budayri belonged to a mystical Sufi order. He was married, with children, but had little to say of his family life. He was proud of his profession, spoke with admiration of the teacher who inducted him into the trade, and recalled the prominent men whose heads he had shaved.
The barber of Damascus was a loyal Ottoman subject. In 1754 he noted the shock felt by the people of Damascus when they heard of the death of Sultan Mahmud I (r. 1730–1754). He recorded the public celebrations marking the ascension of the sultan’s successor, Osman III (r. 1754–1757), when Damascus “was decorated more beautifully than ever in public memory. May God preserve this Ottoman State,” he prayed, “until the end of time. Amen.”1
The barber had good reason to pray for the preservation of the Ottoman state. According to Ottoman notions of statecraft, good government was a delicate balance of four interreliant elements conceived as a “circle of equity.” First, the state needed a large army to exercise its authority. It took great wealth to maintain a large army, and taxes were the state’s only regular source of wealth. To collect taxes, the state had to promote the prosperity of its subjects. For the people to be prosperous the state must uphold just laws, which brings us full circle—back to the responsibilities of the state. Most Ottoman political analysts of the day would have explained political disorder in terms of the neglect of one of these four elements. From all he saw going on in Damascus in the mid-eighteenth century, Budayri was convinced that the Ottoman Empire was in serious trouble. The governors were corrupt, the soldiers were unruly, prices were high, and public morality was undermined by the decline in the government’s authority.
Arguably, the root of the problem lay with the governors of Damascus. In Budayri’s time, Damascus was ruled by a dynasty of local notables rather than by Ottoman Turks dispatched from Istanbul to govern on the sultan’s behalf, as was standard practice in the empire. The ruling Azm family had built their fortune in the seventeenth century by accumulating extensive agricultural lands around the Central Syrian town of Hama. They later settled in Damascus, where they established themselves among the rich and powerful of the city. Between 1724 and 1783, five members of the Azm family ruled Damascus—for a total of forty-five years. Several Azm family members were concurrently appointed to govern the provinces of Sidon, Tripoli, and Aleppo. Taken together, the Azm family’s rule over the Syrian provinces represents one of the more significant local leaderships to emerge in the Arab provinces in the eighteenth century.
We might think today that Arabs would have preferred being governed by fellow Arabs rather than by Ottoman bureaucrats. However, Ottoman bureaucrats in the eighteenth century were still servants of the sultan who, at least in theory, owed their full loyalty to the state and ruled without self-interest. The Azms, in contrast, had clear personal and family interests at stake and used their time in high office to enrich themselves and to build their dynasty at the Ottoman state’s expense. The circle of equity was broken, and things were beginning to fall apart.
Budayri discussed at length the strengths and weaknesses of Azm rule in Damascus. As‘ad Pasha al-Azm ruled for most of the period covered by Budayri’s diary. His fourteen-year reign (1743–1757) was to prove the longest of any governor in Ottoman Damascus. The barber could be quite lavish in his praise of As’ad Pasha, but he found a lot to criticize. He condemned the Azm governors for their plunder of the city’s wealth and held them responsible for disorders among the military and the breakdown in public morality.
Under Azm rule, the army had degenerated from a disciplined force upholding law and order to a disorderly rabble. The Janissaries in Damascus were split into two groups—the imperial troops dispatched from Istanbul (the kapikullari), and the local Janissaries of Damascus (the yerliyye). There were also a number of irregular forces of Kurds, Turcomans, and North Africans. The different corps were in constant conflict and posed a real challenge to peace in the city. In 1756 the residents of the ‘Amara quarter paid dearly for siding with the imperial Janissaries in their fight with the local Damascene Janissaries. The latter retaliated by putting the whole of the ’Amara quarter—homes and shops—to the torch.2 Budayri recounts numerous instances of soldiers attacking and even killing residents of Damascus with complete impunity. In times of high anxiety, the townspeople responded by closing their shops and shutting themselves in their homes, bringing the economic life of the city to a standstill. The barber’s diary captures a real sense of the menace posed by the “security forces” to the average Damascene’s person and property.
Budayri also held the Azms responsible for the chronic high food prices in Damascus. Not only did they fail to regulate the markets and ensure fair prices, but as large landholders, Budayri alleged, the Azm governors actually abused their position to hoard and create artificial grain shortages to maximize their personal profits. Once, when the price of bread had fallen, As’ad Pasha sent his retainers to pressure the bakers to raise their prices in order to protect the wheat market, which was the source of his family’s wealth.3
In his diary, Budayri railed against this accumulation of wealth by the Azm governors while the common folk of Damascus went hungry. As‘ad Pasha’s abuses of power were epitomized by the palace he built in central Damascus, which still stands in the city today. The project consumed all of the building materials and all of the trained masons and artisans of the city, driving up the cost of construction for common Damascenes. As’ad Pasha ordered his builders to strip precious building materials from older houses and buildings in the city, without regard for their owners or their historic value. The project was a testament to As‘ad Pasha’s greed. According to Budayri, As’ad Pasha constructed the palace with countless hiding places for his vast personal wealth “under the floors, in the walls, the ceilings, the water reservoirs and even the toilets.”4
The collapse in military discipline, combined with the cupidity of the Azm governors, Budayri believed, had led to a grievous deterioration in public morals. The legitimacy of the Ottoman state rested in large part on its ability to promote Islamic values and to maintain the institutions necessary for its subjects to live within the precepts of Sunni Islam. A breakdown in public morality was thus a clear sign of a breakdown in the state’s authority.
In Budayri’s view, there was no greater proof of the decline of public morality than the brazen comportment of the prostitutes in his city. Damascus was a conservative town where respectable women covered their hair, dressed modestly, and had few opportunities to mix with men outside their own families. The prostitutes of Damascus observed none of these niceties. The barber frequently complained about drunken prostitutes, carousing with equally drunken soldiers, who strode through the streets and markets of Damascus with their faces unveiled and their hair uncovered. The governors of Damascus tried several times to ban prostitution in the city, with no effect. Emboldened by the support of the city’s soldiers, the prostitutes refused to comply.
It would seem that the common people of Damascus came to accept, even admire, the city’s prostitutes. One beautiful young woman named Salmun completely captivated the people of Damascus in the 1740s, her name becoming a byword in the local slang for all that was trendy and beautiful. A particularly smart dress would be called a “Salmuni dress,” or a novel piece of jewelry a “Salmuni bauble.”
Salmun was a reckless young woman defiant of authority. In a scene reminiscent of Bizet’s Carmen, Salmun crossed paths with a qadi (judge) in downtown Damascus one afternoon in 1744. She was drunk and carrying a knife. The judge’s retainers shouted at her to clear the path. Salmun only laughed at them and launched herself at the qadi with her knife. The judge’s men barely managed to restrain her. The qadi had her arrested by the authorities, who executed Salmun for the outrage. A town crier was then sent through the streets of Damascus ordering all prostitutes to be killed. Many women fled, and others went into hiding.5
The prohibition proved short-lived, and the prostitutes of Damascus were soon back on the streets, unveiled and uninhibited. “In those days,” the barber wrote in 1748, “corruption increased, the servants of God were oppressed, and prostitutes proliferated in the markets, day and night.” He described a parade of the prostitutes held in honor of a local saint with outrage at both the profanation of religious values and at the fact that the Damascene public seemed to accept it. A prostitute had fallen in love with a young Turkish soldier who had fallen ill. She vowed to hold a prayer session in homage to the saint if her lover regained his health. When the soldier recovered, she fulfilled her vow:
She walked in a kind of procession with the other sinful girls of her kind. They went through the bazaars carrying candles and incense burners. The group was singing and beating on tambourines with their faces unveiled and their hair over their shoulders. The people looked on without objecting. Only the righteous raised their voices, shouting “allahu akbar” [“God is great”].6
Soon after the parade, city authorities tried once again to ban prostitution. The heads of the town quarters were told to report anyone suspicious, and town criers were sent round to urge women to wear their veils properly. Yet within days of these new orders, the barber claimed, “we saw the very same girls walking the alleys and markets as was their custom.” At that point, the governor, As’ad Pasha al-Azm, abandoned all efforts to expel the bold prostitutes and chose to tax them instead.
The Azm governors abused their powers of office to enrich themselves at the people’s expense, yet they could not curb vice or control the soldiers nominally under their command. The barber of Damascus was deeply dismayed. Could a state governed by such men long survive?
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Ottomans and the Arabs had come to a crossroads.
On the face of it, the Ottomans had succeeded in absorbing the Arab world into their empire. Over the course of two centuries the Ottomans had extended their rule from the southernmost tip of the Arabian peninsula to the frontiers of Morocco in northwestern Africa. The Ottoman sultan was universally accepted by the Arabs as their legitimate sovereign. They prayed in the sultan’s name each Friday, they contributed soldiers for the sultan’s wars, and they paid their taxes to the sultan’s agents. The great majority of Arab subjects, those who farmed the land in the countryside and the city-dwellers who worked as craftsmen and merchants, had accepted the Ottoman social contract. All they expected in return was safety for themselves, security for their property, and the preservation of Islamic values.
Yet, an important change was taking place in the Arab lands. Whereas in the early Ottoman centuries the Arabs, as free-born Muslims, were excluded from high offices reserved to the servile elites recruited through the devshirme, or “boy levy,” by the mid-eighteenth century local notables were rising to the highest ranks of provincial administration and awarded the title “pasha.” The Azms of Damascus were but one example of a broader phenomenon that extended from Egypt through Palestine and Mount Lebanon to Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula. The rise of local leaders came at the expense of Istanbul’s influence in the Arab lands, as more tax money was spent locally on the armed forces and the building projects of local governors. The phenomenon spread across a number of Arab provinces, with the cumulative effect being a growing threat to the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. For, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the proliferation of local leaders led many Arab provinces to rebel against Istanbul’s rule.
Local leaders in the Arab provinces came from diverse backgrounds, ranging from heads of Mamluk households to tribal shaykhs and urban notables. They were driven by ambition more than any specific grievance with the Ottoman way of doing things. They did have wealth in common: they were, without exception, large landholders who had taken advantage of changes in Ottoman land practices to build up huge estates, which they held for life and in some cases passed on to their children. They diverted the revenues of their estates away from the government’s treasury to meet their own needs. They built lavish palaces and maintained their own armies to reinforce their power. Istanbul’s loss was a real gain to the local economy in the Arab provinces, and the authority to extend patronage to artisans and militiamen only enhanced the power of local lords.
Though such local notables were not unique to the Arab provinces—similar leaders emerged in the Balkans and Turkish Anatolia—the Arab lands were less central to Istanbul, in every sense of the word. The Ottomans relied less on revenues and troops from the Arab provinces than they did from the Balkans and Anatolia. Moreover, the Arab lands were much farther from Istanbul, and the central government was unwilling to spare the troops and resources to put down minor rebellions. Istanbul was more concerned with challenges from Vienna and Moscow than troubles posed by local leaders in Damascus and Cairo.
By the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was facing far greater threats from its European neighbors than anything the Arab provinces might produce. The Habsburgs in Austria were rolling back the Ottoman conquests in Europe. Until 1683 the Ottomans were pressing at the gates of Vienna. By 1699 the Austrians had defeated the Ottomans and were awarded Hungary, Transylvania, and parts of Poland in the Treaty of Karlowitz—the first territorial losses the Ottomans had ever suffered. Peter the Great of Russia was pressing the Ottomans in the Black Sea region and in the Caucasus. Local notables in Baghdad or Damascus were of no consideration compared to threats of this order of magnitude.
Ottoman defeats by European armies emboldened local challengers inside Ottoman domains. As local leaders grew more powerful, the Ottoman officials that were sent to the Arab provinces gradually lost the respect and obedience of their Arab subjects. Government officials also lost authority over the sultan’s soldiers, who grew lawless and engaged in scuffles with local soldiers and the militias of local leaders. Insubordination in military ranks in turn undermined the authority of the Islamic judges and scholars, who traditionally served as the guardians of public order. Where the Ottomans were seen to be ineffectual, the people turned increasingly to local leaders to provide for their security instead. In Basra, a local Christian merchant wrote, “Respect and fear were given to the chiefs of the Arabs, and as for the Ottoman, nobody goes in awe of him.”7
A state that loses the respect of its subjects is in trouble. The chronicler ’Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, analyzing the breakdown of Ottoman authority over the Mamluks in eighteenth-century Egypt, reflected: “If this age should urinate in a bottle, time’s physician would know its ailment.”8 The emergence of local leaders lay at the heart of the Ottoman illness and could only be redressed by a strong reassertion of the state’s authority. The Porte’s dilemma was to secure enough stability on its European frontiers to free the necessary resources to address the challenges within its Arab provinces.
The nature of local rule differed from one region to the next and posed a variable threat to Istanbul’s authority. Roughly speaking, those provinces closest to the Ottoman center were the most benign, with prominent families like the Shihabs in Mount Lebanon, the Azms in Damascus, and the Jalilis in Mosul establishing dynasties loyal to Ottoman rule but pressing for the greatest possible autonomy within those limits.9 Further to the south, in Baghdad, Palestine, and Egypt, Mamluk leaders emerged who sought to expand the territory under their control in direct challenge to the Ottoman state. The emergence of the Sa’udi-Wahabi confederation in Central Arabia posed the gravest threat to the Ottoman government when it seized control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and prevented the annual Ottoman pilgrimage caravans from reaching the holy cities. In contrast, more remote provinces, such as Algiers, Tunis, and Yemen, were happy to remain vassals of the Ottoman sultan, paying an annual tribute in return for extensive autonomy.
These local leaders in no way comprised an Arab movement. Many were not ethnic Arabs, and several did not even speak Arabic. The challengers to Ottoman rule in the second half of the eighteenth century were instead ambitious individuals acting in their own interests with little concern for the Arab people under their rule. In isolation, they posed little threat to the Ottoman center. When they worked together, however—as when the Mamluks in Egypt entered an alliance with a local leader in Northern Palestine—they were capable of conquering whole Ottoman provinces.
Oil put the Middle East on the map in the twentieth century. In the eighteenth century, it was cotton that generated extreme wealth in the Eastern Mediterranean. European demand for cotton dates back to the seventeenth century. Whereas the British Lancashire mills drew primarily on cotton from the West Indies and the American colonies, the French relied on Ottoman markets for the bulk of their cotton imports. As spinning and weaving technology improved in the course of the eighteenth century, leading to the Industrial Revolution, European demand for cotton spiked. French cotton imports from the Eastern Mediterranean increased more than fivefold, rising from 2.1 million kg in 1700 to nearly 11 million kg by 1789.10 The cotton most prized by European markets was produced in the Galilee region in Northern Palestine. The wealth generated by Galilee cotton was sufficient to feed the ambitions of a local dynast who grew powerful enough to challenge Ottoman rule in Syria.
The strongman of the Galilee was Zahir al-’Umar (c.1690–1775). Zahir was a leader of the Zaydanis, a Bedouin tribe that had settled in the Galilee in the seventeenth century and secured control of extensive agricultural lands between the towns of Safad and Tiberias. They enjoyed strong trade connections with Damascus and began to build a respectable family fortune through their control of cotton plantations in the Galilee. Zahir represented the third generation of Zaydani shaykhs in the Galilee. Though not particularly well known in the West, Zahir has been a celebrity in the Arab world for centuries. He is often—anachronistically—described as something of an Arab or Palestinian nationalist due to his history of confrontation with Ottoman governors. By the time of his death he was already the stuff of legend—and the subject of two near-contemporary biographies.
Zahir’s long and remarkable career began in the 1730s when he entered into an alliance with a Bedouin tribe to seize the town of Tiberias, which was hardly more than a village at the time. He consolidated his gains by securing a formal appointment as tax collector for the Galilee region from the governor of Sidon. Zahir then set about fortifying Tiberias and built up a small militia of some 200 horsemen.
From his base in Tiberias, Zahir and his family began to extend their control across the fertile plains and highlands of northern Palestine, ordering the tenant farmers to plant their lands in cotton. He gave his brothers and cousins territories to run on his behalf. As Zahir began to carve out a small principality for himself, he grew increasingly powerful. The more territory he controlled, the more cotton revenues he accrued, allowing him to expand his army, which in turn made further territorial expansion possible.
By 1740 Zahir had emerged as the most powerful leader in northern Palestine. He had defeated the warlords of Nablus, he had taken control of Nazareth, and now he dominated the trade between Palestine and Damascus, which further contributed to his wealth and resources.
The rapid growth of the Zaydani principality put Zahir al-’Umar on a collision course with the governor of Damascus. One of the governor’s primary duties was to provide for the needs and expenses of the annual pilgrimage caravan to Mecca. Zahir now controlled lands whose tax revenues traditionally were earmarked to pay the expenses of the pilgrimage caravan. By beating the governor of Damascus to the taxes of northern Transjordan and Palestine, Zahir was putting the finances of the pilgrimage caravan in jeopardy. When the government in Istanbul learned of the situation, the sultan sent orders to his governor in Damascus, Sulayman Pasha al-Azm, to capture and execute Zahir and destroy his fortifications around Tiberias.
Budayri, the barber of Damascus, noted in his diary that in 1742 Sulayman Pasha led a large army from Damascus to put down Zahir. The government in Istanbul had sent men and heavy munitions, including artillery and mines, to destroy Zahir and his fortifications. Sulayman Pasha also recruited volunteers from Mount Lebanon, Nablus and Jerusalem, and neighboring Bedouin tribes, all of whom saw Zahir al-’Umar as a rival and welcomed the chance to bring him down.
Sulayman Pasha laid siege to Tiberias for over three months, but Zahir’s forces did not succumb. With help from his brother, who smuggled food and provisions across Ottoman lines, Zahir managed to hold out against far superior forces. The governor of Damascus was not amused, and when he managed to intercept a number of Zaydani retainers smuggling food to Tiberias he sent their heads to Istanbul as trophies. Yet the big trophy eluded Sulayman Pasha, and after three months he was forced to return to Damascus to prepare for the pilgrimage to Mecca. Unwilling to admit defeat, Sulayman Pasha spread the rumor that he had lifted the siege of Tiberias out of compassion for the defenseless civilians of the town. He also claimed to have taken one of Zahir’s sons as hostage against a pledge to pay his back taxes to Damascus. The barber of Damascus duly reported these rumors, adding a disclaimer: “We have heard another version of the story,” he wrote, “and God knows the truth of the matter.”11
Once Sulayman Pasha returned from the pilgrimage in 1743, he resumed his war against Zahir al-‘Umar in Tiberias. Once again, he mobilized a great army with support from Istanbul and all of Zahir’s aggrieved neighbors in Palestine. Again the residents of Tiberias braced themselves for a terrible siege. But the second siege never came to pass. While traveling to Tiberias, Sulayman Pasha al-Azm stopped in the coastal town of Acre, where he succumbed to a fever and died. His body was brought back to Damascus for burial, and the siege army was disbanded. Zahir al-’Umar was left in peace to pursue his own ambitions.12
Between the 1740s and the 1760s, Zahir’s rule went unchallenged and his powers expanded enormously. The governor in Sidon could never match the strength of Zahir’s armed forces, and the new governor in Damascus, As’ad Pasha al-Azm, chose to leave the ruler of Tiberias to his own devices. In Istanbul, Zahir had cultivated influential supporters who protected him from the scrutiny of the Sublime Porte.
Zahir took advantage of his relative independence to extend his rule from Tiberias to the coastal city of Acre, which had emerged as the main port for the Levantine cotton trade. He petitioned the governor of Sidon repeatedly to be awarded the lucrative rights to collect the taxes of Acre, but was always refused. Finally, in 1746, he occupied the city and declared himself its tax-farmer. Over the course of the 1740s, he fortified Acre and established his base in the city. He now enjoyed control over the cotton trade from the field to the market. Letters from French cotton merchants in Damascus reveal their frustration with Zahir al-’Umar, who had grown “too powerful and too rich . . . at our expense.”13 By the 1750s Zahir was setting the price for the cotton he sold. When the French tried to force their terms on Zahir, he simply forbade the cotton farmers of the Galilee to sell to the French to force them back to the negotiating table and agree to his terms.
In spite of his many confrontations with the Ottoman state, Zahir al-’Umar was constantly trying to secure official recognition; he was a rebel who ultimately wanted to be a member of the establishment. He strove to achieve the same standing the Azms had in Damascus: the ministerial rank of Pasha and the governorship of Sidon. To this end, his every act of rebellion was followed by a loyal payment of taxes. Yet throughout his years in power, Zahir never rose above the status of a tax-farmer subordinate to the governor in Sidon. It was a source of constant frustration for the strongman of the Galilee. The Ottomans, tied up in a devastating war with Russia between 1768 and 1774, tried to preserve Zahir’s loyalty and meet him halfway. In 1768 the Porte recognized him as the “shaykh of Acre, amir of Nazareth, Tiberias, Safed, and shaykh of all of Galilee.”14 It was a title, but not enough to satisfy Zahir’s great ambitions.
After nearly two decades of relative peace, Zahir faced renewed threats from the Ottoman provincial government. In 1770 a new governor in Damascus sought to bring Zahir’s rule over northern Palestine to a close. ’Uthman Pasha had managed to get his own sons appointed as governors in Tripoli and Sidon and had entered into an alliance with the Druze community of Mount Lebanon against Zahir. The notables of Nablus were also keen to see the end of their belligerent neighbor to the north. Suddenly, Zahir found himself surrounded by hostile forces.
In a life-or-death struggle with ‘Uthman Pasha, Zahir could only survive by entering into partnership with another local leader. The only regional power strong enough to offset the combined forces of Damascus and Sidon was the ruling Mamluk in Cairo, a remarkable leader named ’Ali Bey. When Zahir and Àli Bey combined forces, they mounted the greatest challenge the Arab provinces had yet posed to Istanbul’s rule.
The Mamluk leader ‘Ali Bey had a number of nicknames. Some of his contemporaries called him Jinn ’Ali, or ‘Ali the Genie, as though he used magic to achieve the seemingly impossible. His Turkish nickname was Bulut Kapan, or “cloud-catcher,” for his repression of the Bedouin, whom the Ottomans believed to be harder to capture than clouds. He is best known as ’Ali Bey al-Kabir, or “the great,” and indeed between 1760 and 1775 he achieved more greatness than any Mamluk in the history of Ottoman Egypt.
‘Ali Bey came to Egypt in 1743 as a fifteen-year-old military slave in the leading Qazdughli Mamluk household. He rose through the ranks and gained his freedom and promotion to the rank of bey on the death of his master in 1755. The beys were the top of the Mamluk hierarchy, whose leader was the shaykh al-Balad, or “commander of the city.” ’Ali Bey first attained primacy in 1760, and he held the office with brief exceptions until his death in 1773.
’Ali Bey was a warlord who engendered respect through fear. His contemporary, the great Egyptian historian al-Jabarti, described him as “a man of great strength, obstinate and ambitious, and satisfied only with supremacy and sovereignty. He showed inclination only for the serious, never for the playful, a joke or fun.”15 He is said to have had a physical effect on those who met him: “He was so awe-inspiring that some people actually died in awe of him, and many men would tremble at his mere presence.”16 He was utterly ruthless in the suppression of his rivals, and he showed loyalty to no one. Nor, as subsequent events would demonstrate, did he engender loyalty in others. He broke the bonds of collegiality and turned against fellow Mamluks of his own household, just as he eliminated rival Mamluk households.
‘Ali Bey was the first person to rule Egypt single-handedly since the fall of the Mamluk Empire. He literally monopolized the wealth of Egypt by seizing the land revenues, controlling all external trade, and demanding extraordinary sums from the European merchant community. He extorted the wealth from the local Christian and Jewish communities and withheld payment of all taxes to Istanbul. ’Ali Bey’s riches allowed him to expand his military power. Having broken the existing Mamluk factions in Egypt, ’Ali Bey set about establishing a new Mamluk household of his own. He bought and trained his own slaves, who were the only people he felt he could trust. His household numbered some 3,000 Mamluks at its height, many of them commanders of vast armies that numbered in the tens of thousands.
Having established paramount control over Egypt, ‘Ali Bey sought his independence from Ottoman rule altogether. Inspired by the Mamluks of old, he tried to re-create their empire in Egypt, Syria, and the Hijaz. According to Jabarti, ’Ali Bey was an avid reader of Islamic history who used to lecture his retainers on how Ottoman rule in Egypt was fundamentally illegitimate. “The kings of Egypt—Sultan Baybars and Sultan Qalawun and their children—were Mamluks like us,” he argued. “As for these Ottomans, they seized the country by force, taking advantage of the duplicity of the local people.”17 The implication was that land taken by force could be redeemed legitimately by force.
‘Ali Bey’s first targets were the governors and troops sent by Istanbul to uphold the law in Egypt. The governors had long since given up trying to rule Egypt—the rival Mamluk households did that. Instead, they sought to uphold Istanbul’s nominal sovereignty by observing ceremonies of power and trying to collect the treasury’s due. Powerless in their own right, the governors tried to play the rival Mamluk households against each other. This was no longer possible under ’Ali Bey, who had eliminated his rivals and ruled unchallenged. Now ’Ali Bey deposed and, it was rumored, even poisoned governors and commanding officers with impunity. The threat to Ottoman interests in their rich but rebellious Egyptian province could not be more acute.
‘Ali Bey next deployed his military power against the Ottoman Empire in an open bid for territorial expansion. “He was not content with what God had granted him,” al-Jabarti wrote, “the rule over Lower and Upper Egypt, the kingdom of which kings and pharaohs had been proud. His greed pushed him to extend the territory of the kingdom.”18 ’Ali Bey first seized the Red Sea province of the Hijaz, formerly part of the Mamluk Empire, in 1769. Following this success, he began to strike coins bearing his name rather than that of the reigning Ottoman sultan, signaling his rebellion against Ottoman sovereignty. ’Ali Bey had embarked on his project for the restoration of the Mamluk Empire of old. The Ottomans, tied up with their wars with Russia, were powerless to stop him.
‘Ali Bey’s revolt against the Ottomans was in full swing when Zahir al-’Umar first approached him in 1770 with the offer of an alliance against the governor of Damascus. His timing could not have been better. “When ‘Ali Bey received this news,” a contemporary chronicler noted, “he viewed it as the fulfillment of his greatest aspirations. He resolved to rebel against the Ottoman state, and to extend his rule over the lands from ’Arish in Egypt to Baghdad.”19 ‘Ali Bey concluded an alliance with Zahir al-’Umar and agreed to unseat the Ottoman governor in Damascus.
‘Ali Bey escalated the crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean when he wrote to the sultan’s nemesis, the empress Catherine the Great of Russia, to seek her assistance in his war against the Ottomans. He asked Catherine for Russian ships and cavalry to drive the Ottomans out of Greater Syria, in return promising to help the Russians conquer territory in southern Persia. Although the empress refused to provide cavalry, she agreed to the assistance of the Russian fleet, which was then roaming the Eastern Mediterranean. ’Ali Bey’s treason had not escaped the notice of the Ottoman government. However, pinned down by Russian forces in the Black Sea and Eastern Europe, the Ottomans were in no position to stop him.
Encouraged by his alliances with Catherine and Zahir, ‘Ali Bey began to mobilize his forces. He raised an army of some 20,000 men to invade Syria under the command of one of his most trusted generals, a Mamluk named Isma’il Bey. In November 1770 the Mamluk force swept through Gaza; following a four-month siege, it occupied the port of Jaffa. Zahir and his men joined forces with Isma’il Bey and accompanied the Mamluk army on its march through Palestine. They crossed the Jordan Valley and headed east to the Pilgrimage Road along the desert’s edge. The rebel army then made haste toward Damascus, intent on seizing the city from its Ottoman governor. They got as far as the village of Muzayrib, one day’s march south of Damascus.
When Isma‘il Bey entered Muzayrib he came face to face with the governor of Damascus—and he completely lost the will to fight. It was then the pilgrimage season, when pious Muslims were fulfilling one of the pillars of Islam and making the perilous journey through the desert from Damascus to Mecca. ’Uthman Pasha, the governor, was carrying out his duties as commander of the pilgrimage. Isma‘il Bey was a pious man who had received more religious education than most Mamluks. To attack the governor at that moment would have been a crime against religion. Without warning or explanation, Isma’il Bey ordered his soldiers to withdraw from Muzayrib and return to Jaffa. The astonished Zahir al-‘Umar protested in vain, and the rebel campaign came to a complete halt for the rest of the winter of 1770–1771. ’Ali Bey must have been furious with Isma‘il Bey. In May 1771 he sent a second force to Syria, headed by Muhammad Bey, nicknamed “Abu al-Dhahab,” or “the father of gold.” He had earned his nickname through a flamboyant gesture: when’Ali Bey promoted Muhammad to the rank of bey and gave him his freedom, Muhammad Bey threw gold coins to the crowds that lined the street between the Citadel and the center of town. It was a public relations coup that made Muhammad Bey a household name.
Muhammad Bey set off at the head of 35,000 troops. They swept through southern Palestine and in Jaffa united with the army commanded by Isma‘il Bey. The combined Mamluk forces of Isma’il Bey and Muhammad Bey were unstoppable. They marched through Palestine and, after a minor engagement, drove the Ottoman governor out of Damascus in June. The Mamluks were now in control of Egypt, the Hijaz, and Damascus—’Ali Bey had nearly fulfilled his life’s ambition to reconstruct the Mamluk Empire.
Then the unthinkable happened: without warning or explanation, Muhammad Bey abandoned Damascus and set course for Cairo at the head of his army. Once again it was the pious Mamluk general Isma‘il who was to blame. No sooner did the Mamluk commanders find themselves in control of Damascus than Isma’il Bey confronted Muhammad Bey with the enormity of their crime—not just against the sultan but against their religion as well. Isma‘il Bey had spent some time in Istanbul before entering ’Ali Bey’s service, which instilled in him reverence for the sultan’s position as head of the greatest Islamic empire of his day. He warned Muhammad Bey that the Ottomans would not allow such a major rebellion go unpunished in this life and that God would hold them accountable in the afterlife. “For truly rebellion against the Sultan is one of the schemes of the Devil,” Isma’il Bey warned Muhammad Bey.
Once Isma‘il Bey had provoked Muhammad Bey’s anxiety, he turned next to play upon the latter’s ambition. ’Ali Bey, he argued, had left the path of Islam by entering into a pact with the Russian empress against the sultan. “Now any Muslim would be permitted by Islamic law to kill [‘Ali Bey] with impunity, claim his harem and his wealth,” Isma’il Bey argued.20 Essentially, Isma‘il Bey reasoned that Muhammad Bey would gain redemption before God and the sultan, and promotion to ’Ali Bey’s position of primacy over Egypt, by turning against his master. Isma‘il Bey’s arguments carried the day, and two of ’Ali Bey’s most trusted generals were now returning to Egypt at the head of a huge Mamluk army bent on the overthrow of their former master.
Shock waves reverberated around the Eastern Mediterranean after the Mamluks’ conquest and rapid abandonment of Damascus. “The people of Damascus were completely astonished by this amazing event,” a contemporary chronicler exclaimed, and so too were Zahir al-‘Umar and his allies. While the Mamluk forces were attacking Damascus, Zahir had taken the town of Sidon and had placed a 2,000-man garrison in Jaffa. Overextended, he had now lost his most important ally and risked facing the wrath of the Ottomans alone. For his part, ’Ali Bey recognized his situation was hopeless. He could only raise a token number of supporters, and these were scattered after a skirmish with the army led by Muhammad Bey. In 1772, ’Ali Bey fled Egypt to take refuge with Zahir in Acre.
‘Ali Bey’s dreams of a neo-Mamluk empire dissolved with his flight from Egypt. Muhammad Bey established himself as the ruler of Egypt and sent Isma’il Bey to Istanbul to secure for him the governorship of both Egypt and Syria. Not for him dreams of empire; Muhammad Bey instead sought recognition within the Ottoman framework.
‘Ali Bey was impatient to reclaim his throne and acted in haste, before he had the chance to mobilize enough of an army to confront the formidable Mamluk household he himself had created. He set off for Cairo in March 1773, at the head of a small force in a hopeless bid to recover his kingdom. Muhammad Bey’s army engaged him in battle and routed ’Ali Bey’s forces. ‘Ali Bey was wounded and taken prisoner. Muhammad Bey took his master back to Cairo and kept him in his own home, where ’Ali Bey died a week later. Inevitably, there were rumors of foul play. “Only God knows the manner of his death,” the chronicler al-Jabarti concluded.21
The death of ’Ali Bey proved a disaster for Zahir. He was now a very old man—well into his eighties at a time when life expectancy was half that. He had no allies in the region and had entered into outright treason against his Ottoman sovereign. Improbably, Zahir still sought formal recognition from the authorities and, with the Ottomans mired in their wars with Russia and keen to secure peace in their troubled Syrian provinces, seemed to be on the verge of realizing his lifetime ambition. In 1774 the Ottoman governor of Damascus informed him that he would be appointed governor of Sidon, including northern Palestine and parts of Transjordan.
The imperial decree from Istanbul confirming Zahir’s gubernatorial appointment never arrived. In July 1774, the sultan concluded a peace treaty with Russia, bringing the six-year war to an end. He was in no mood to reward traitors who had entered into alliance with his Russian foes. Instead of sending a decree of promotion, the sultan dispatched Muhammad Bey, at the head of a Mamluk army, to overthrow the aged strongman of Palestine. Egyptian troops overran the city of Jaffa in May 1775 and massacred the inhabitants. Panic spread to the other towns under Zahir’s control. Zahir’s administration and much of the population fled Acre by the end of the month. Muhammad Bey occupied Acre in early June.
Remarkably, Muhammad Bey, the hale and hearty Mamluk ruler of Egypt, took ill almost as soon as he occupied Acre. He died suddenly of a fever on June 10, 1775. Zahir reclaimed his city days later and restored order after the panic of the Egyptian occupation. But Zahir’s reprieve proved short-lived. The Ottomans sent the admiral of their fleet, Hasan Pasha, with fifteen vessels to demand Zahir’s submission and payment of back taxes. Zahir mounted no opposition. “I am an old man,” he told his ministers, “and I don’t have the nerve anymore for fighting.” His battle-weary ministers agreed: “We are Muslim people, obedient to the Sultan. For the Muslim, believing in One God, it is not permitted to fight against the Sultan in any form.”22
Zahir’s plans for a peaceful retirement were shattered by his own family. He had agreed to withdraw from Acre with his family and retainers and take refuge with his Shi’ite allies in south Lebanon. He was betrayed by his son, ‘Uthman, who suspected his father of feigning a retreat only to return to power at the first opportunity, as he had done time and again. ’Uthman called on one of Zahir’s long-serving officers, a North African commander named Ahmad Agha al-Denizli, and told him that his father was fleeing the city of Acre. “If you wish to be [Admiral] Hasan Pasha’s favourite person, carry out God’s will on my father, for he is outside, alone with his family.” Al-Denizli gathered a group of North African mercenaries and waited to ambush Zahir.
The assassins had to lay a trap to catch the elusive old shaykh. Fifteen minutes beyond the gates of Acre, Zahir noticed that one of his concubines was missing. The rest of his household had no idea where she was. “This is no time to leave a person behind,” the old shaykh chided, and rode back to collect the abandoned woman. He found her near the spot where al-Denizli’s band were hiding and reached down to pull her onto his horse. Age and anxiety had taken their toll. Zahir, now eighty-six years old, was pulled from his mount by the younger woman and fell to the ground. The assassins leapt out and struck down the old man with their daggers. Al-Denizli took out his sword and struck off Zahir’s head as a trophy for the Ottoman admiral, Hasan Pasha.
If al-Denizli had hoped by this act to gain favor with Hasan Pasha, he was to be sorely disappointed. The Ottoman admiral had his men clean Zahir’s severed head. He then placed it on a chair and meditated on the wizened face of the elderly shaykh. The admiral turned back to the mercenary. “May God not forgive me if I fail to avenge Zahir al-’Umar against you!”23 He then ordered his men to take al-Denizli away, strangle him, and throw his body into the sea.
So ended the story of Zahir al-‘Umar and ’Ali Bey al-Kabir. The Ottoman Empire had just withstood the most serious internal challenge to its rule after more than 250 years of dominion over the Arab world. Two local leaders, in league with a Christian power, had combined the wealth of two rich territories—Egypt and Palestine—to make common cause against the government of the sultan. Yet even at this critical juncture, when ‘Ali Bey seemed on the verge of reestablishing the ancient Mamluk Empire of Syria, Egypt, and the Hijaz under his personal rule, the Ottomans still exercised tremendous influence over their rebellious subjects in the Arab lands. Mamluk generals like Isma’il Bey and Muhammad Bey crossed the threshold of rebellion only to retrace their footsteps to the limits of legitimacy and seek the Porte’s recognition. Most local leaders still believed that “rebellion against the Sultan” was, in Isma’il Bey’s words, “one of the schemes of the Devil.”
The fall of Zahir al-‘Umar and ’Ali Bey did not signal the end of local rulers in the Arab world. The Mamluks continued to dominate political life in Egypt, though no single ruler emerged after the deaths of ’Ali Bey and of Muhammad Bey. Instead, the Mamluk households reverted to factional fighting that left Egypt in a state of instability for the remainder of the eighteenth century. The Ottomans reasserted their hold over the Syrian provinces and appointed strong governors to Damascus, Sidon, and Tripoli. More remote places, like Mount Lebanon, Baghdad, and Mosul, continued to be ruled by local leaders, though none attempted to challenge Istanbul’s rule directly.
The next real challenge to Ottoman rule in the Arab world arose beyond the boundaries of the empire, in the heart of Central Arabia. The movement was all the more threatening for its ideological purity, and it would menace Ottoman rule in an arc stretching from Iraq through the Syrian Desert to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Hijaz. Unlike Zahir al-‘Umar and ’Ali Bey, the leader of this movement now enjoys the distinction of being a household name in both the Middle East and the West: Muhammad ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabi reformist movement.
Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was born in 1703 to a family of scholars in the small oasis town of ’Uyayna in the Central Arabian region known as the Najd. He traveled widely as a young man, pursuing his religious studies in Basra and Medina. He was trained in the most conservative of the four legal traditions of Islam—the Hanbali school—and was profoundly influenced by Ibn Taymiyya, a fourteenth-century theologian. Ibn Taymiyya argued for a return to the practices of the early Muslim community of the Prophet Muhammad and his first successors, or caliphs. He condemned all mystical practices associated with Sufism as deviations from the true path of Islam. Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab returned home to the Najd with a clear set of beliefs and the ambition to put them into practice.
At first the passionate young reformer enjoyed the support of the ruler of his home town. However, his views soon proved controversial. When Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab ordered the public execution of a woman for adultery, leaders in neighboring towns and key trade partners of ’Uyayna were appalled—and alarmed. This was not Islam as the townspeople of ’Uyayna had known and practiced their faith. They pressured their ruler to kill the radical theologian, but he chose to exile Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab instead.
The exiled young theologian with the dangerous ideas did not have far to wander. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was welcomed by the ruler of the nearby oasis of al-Dir‘iyya, Muhammad ibn Sa’ud. Modern Saudis date the founding of their first state to this historic meeting in 1744–1745, when the two men agreed that the reformed Islam preached by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab would be observed by the Saudi ruler and his followers. The “Dir’iyya Agreement” set out the basic tenets of the movement that would come to be called Wahhabism.
At the time the movement was forming, the Wahhabis were widely misunderstood by the outside world. They were described as a new sect and accused of unorthodox beliefs. Quite the contrary, their beliefs were extremely orthodox, calling for a return to the pristine Islam of the Prophet and his successors, the caliphs. The Wahhabis sought to draw a line around the third century after the revelation of the Qur’an, and to ban all subsequent developments as “pernicious innovation.”
The single most important tenet of Wahhabism was the unique quality of God, or, as they put it, the “oneness of God.” Any association of lesser beings with God was denounced as polytheism (in Arabic, shirk), for if one believed God had partners or agents, one believed in more than one God. Islam, like many other religions, is a dynamic faith and has undergone significant changes over time. Over the centuries, a number of institutions had developed in Islam that fell foul of this absolute tenet of Wahhabism, the unity or oneness of God.
There was, for instance, a widespread veneration of saints and holy men in the Arab world, from the companions of the Prophet Muhammad to the humblest of local village holy men, each with his own shrine or sacred tree. (These shrines are still maintained in many parts of the Arab world today.) The Wahhabis objected to Muslims praying to holy men to intercede on their behalf with God, as this compromised God’s oneness. They argued that greater reverence was shown to outstanding Muslims by following their example rather than worshiping at their graves. The shrines to saints, and the annual pilgrimages marking a given saint’s day, were thus an early target of Wahhabi attack. Muhammad Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab chopped down sacred trees and shattered the tombs of holy men with his own hands. This horrified mainstream Sunni Muslim society, which saw such desecration of tombs as a mark of disrespect to some of the most revered figures in Islam.
Along with his abhorrence of saint worship, Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab was particularly intolerant of the mystical practices and beliefs associated with Sufism. Islamic mysticism takes many forms, from mendicant ascetics to the famous whirling dervishes. Sufis use a wide range of techniques, from fasting to chanting and dancing to self-immolation, to reach the ecstasy of mystical union with the Creator. Organized into orders that convened regular prayer sessions, Sufism was a fundamental part of Ottoman religious and social life. Some orders built fine lodges and attracted the elites of society, and others called for complete abstinence and abandonment of worldly goods. Certain trades and professions were linked to particular Sufi orders. It is hard to think of a religious institution more closely connected to Ottoman society. Yet the Wahhabis believed that all who engaged in Sufism were polytheists for aspiring to mystical union with their Creator. It was a very serious charge.
By defining much of Ottoman Islam as polytheistic, the Wahhabis set themselves on a collision course with the empire. Although Orthodox Islam decrees tolerance of other monotheistic faiths, such as Judaism and Christianity, it is absolutely intolerant of polytheism, or the belief in many gods. Indeed, all good Muslims have a duty to persuade polytheists of the error of their ways and convert them to the true path of Islam. Failing that, Muslims have a duty of jihad to fight and eliminate polytheism. By characterizing mainstream practices such as Sufism and the veneration of saints as polytheistic, Wahhabism posed a direct challenge to the religious legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire.
The challenge of Wahhabism was easy for the Ottomans to overlook so long as the movement remained confined to the central Arabian region of the Najd, beyond Ottoman frontiers. Between 1744 and the death of Muhammad ibn Sa’ud in 1765, expansion of the Wahhabi movement was limited to the oasis towns of central Najd. It wasn’t until the late 1780s that Wahhabism reached Ottoman frontiers in southern Iraq and the Hijaz.
In the 1790s the Ottomans took notice of the new threat to their Arab provinces and urged their governor in Baghdad to take action. The pasha of Baghdad delayed sending his troops into the hostile terrain of the Arabian peninsula for as long as he could. It was not until 1798 that he finally mustered a 10,000-man army to fight the Wahhabis. The Ottoman forces did not fare well in Wahhabi territory; they soon were surrounded and forced to negotiate a truce with Sa‘ud ibn ’Abd al-’Aziz, the Saudi commander. In agreeing to the truce, the Wahhabis made no promises to respect the towns and villages of Ottoman Iraq in the future. The pasha of Baghdad had serious grounds for concern.
The Wahhabis pursued their crusade into Ottoman territory for the first time in 1802, when they attacked the southern Iraqi shrine city of Karbala. Karbala holds a special position in Shiite Islam, for it was here that Husayn ibn ’Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was killed by the forces of the Umayyad caliph in 680 AD. The martyred Husayn is venerated as the third of twelve infallible leaders, or imams, of Shi’ite Islam, and the mosque built on the site of his tomb was lavishly decorated with a gilt dome. Thousands of pilgrims would come each year to lay precious gifts on the tomb of the imam and undertake acts of devotion in his honour—just the sort of saint veneration that the Wahhabis found most abhorrent.
The Wahhabi attack on Karbala was chillingly brutal. The chronicler Ibn Bishr gives a contemporary description of the carnage:
The Muslims [i.e., Wahhabis] surrounded Karbala and took it by storm. They killed most of the people in the markets and houses. They destroyed the dome above Husayn’s grave. They took away everything they saw in the mausoleum and near it, including the coverlet decorated with emeralds, sapphires and pearls which covered the grave. They took away everything they found in the town—possessions, arms, clothes, fabric, gold, silver and precious books. One cannot count their spoils. They stayed there for just one morning and left after midday, taking away all the possessions. Nearly 2,000 people were killed in Karbala.24
The slaughter, the desecration of Husayn’s tomb and mosque, and the plundering of the town established the Wahhabis’ violent reputation in Arab public opinion. The brutality of the attack and the killing of so many unarmed men, women, and children in a place of worship provoked widespread revulsion across the Ottoman world. The residents of towns and villages in southern Iraq, eastern Syria, and the Hijaz turned to the Ottoman government to shield them from this grave threat.
The Ottomans faced great difficulty in confronting the Wahhabi challenge. The reform movement was based in Central Arabia, beyond some of the most remote Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman troops had to march for months from Anatolia to reach the borderlands of the Najd. As the governor of Baghdad had already discovered, it was very difficult to fight the Wahhabis on their own terrain. Just keeping large armies supplied with food and water proved a tremendous challenge for the Ottomans in such a hostile environment. The Ottoman government found itself powerless to contain the Wahhabi menace.
The Wahhabis next struck at the very heart of Ottoman legitimacy by attacking the holy cities of Islam—Mecca and Medina. In March 1803, the Saudi commander Sa‘ud ibn ’Abd al-’Aziz advanced on the Hijaz; by April, he entered the city of Mecca. His army met no resistance and promised no violence. They first explained their beliefs to the residents of Mecca and then imposed their new laws: silk clothes and smoking were banned, shrines were destroyed, domes on buildings were knocked down. After holding the holy cities for a number of months, the Wahhabis withdrew to the Najd. It was not until 1806 that the Wahhabis decided to strip the Hijaz from Ottoman domains and annex the province to their rapidly expanding state.
Once the Wahhabis were in control of Mecca and Medina, pilgrims from the Ottoman Empire were no longer admitted to Islam’s holy cities to perform their religious duty of pilgrimage. Both of the official Ottoman pilgrimage caravans, from Damascus and Cairo, were accompanied by amahmal, a richly decorated litter carried by a camel. The mahmal contained a cover for the shrine holding the holy black stone known as the Ka‘ba, at the center of the mosque in Mecca, as well as copies of the Qur’an and rich treasures. The mahmal was surrounded by musicians playing drums and blaring horns. The use of music, the decoration of the Ka’ba shrine, and the association of opulence with worship all offended Wahhabi strictures, and they refused to admit the mahmal to Mecca, breaking with centuries of Sunni Muslim veneration for Mecca’s holiest shrine.
One of the officers accompanying the Egyptian caravan in 1806 related his experiences with the Wahhabis to the chronicler al-Jabarti:
Pointing to the mahmal, the Wahhabi had asked him: “What are these gifts of yours that you bring and hold in such veneration among yourselves?”
He had answered: “It is a custom which has been observed from ancient times. It is an emblem and a signal for the pilgrims to gather.”
The Wahhabi said: “Do not do so, and do not bring it after this time. If you ever bring it again, I shall smash it.”25
In 1807 a Syrian caravan without the mahmal and musicians sought entry to Mecca and was nevertheless denied. With or without the mahmal, the Wahhabis believed Ottoman Muslims to be no better than polytheists and denied them entry to Islam’s holiest places.
The most important of the sultan’s imperial titles emphasized his role as the defender of the faith and protector of the holy cities of the Hijaz. The Wahhabis’ annexation of the Hijaz and ban on the Ottoman pilgrimage caravans defied the temporal powers of the Ottoman state in securing its territories as well as the sultan’s religious legitimacy as the guardian of Islam’s holiest cities. The gravity of this threat could not be more severe. The Ottomans would not survive if they failed to respond to this challenge and reassert their authority.
Although the Ottomans were quick to dismiss the Wahhabis as savage Bedouins of the desert, they knew it would be difficult to defeat the movement. As modern wars in Kuwait and Iraq have shown, great powers face huge logistical problems in fighting wars in Arabia. Troops would have to be sent on sailing ships and marched great distances overland, in terrible heat, with long and vulnerable supply lines. They would be forced to fight on the Wahhabis’ own terrain. And the Wahhabis were zealots, convinced that they were doing God’s work. There was always the risk that Ottoman soldiers might respond to the Wahhabis’ powerful message and cross over to the other side.
There was no question of sending a campaign force all the way from Istanbul to the Hijaz. The Ottomans lacked both the financial and military resources for such an enterprise. Instead, they made repeated demands of their provincial governors in Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. The governor in Baghdad was fighting continued Wahhabi attacks in his southern provinces and had yet to succeed in repelling the raiders. The Kurdish governor in Damascus, Kanj Yusuf Pasha, promised Istanbul to reopen the pilgrimage route. However, he lacked the resources to undertake such a campaign. As the Syrian chronicler Mikhayil Mishaqa observed, Kanj Yusuf Pasha “could neither send enough soldiers nor supply them with enough ammunition to drive the Wahhabi from the Hejaz, which was a forty-day march away [from Damascus] through burning sands without food or water along the way for themselves or their beasts.”26
There was only one person who could mobilize the necessary forces and had demonstrated sufficient ability to defeat the Wahhabis and restore the Hijaz to the Ottoman Empire. Since 1805, Egypt had been ruled by a governor of extraordinary ability. Yet the talent and ambition that so recommended him to address the Wahhabi challenge would soon be turned against the Ottoman state. Indeed, Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha proved the culmination of a dangerous trend, of provincial leaders challenging Istanbul’s rule in the Arab provinces. Muhammad ’Ali proved strong enough to threaten the overthrow of the Ottoman dynasty itself.