The Zayadina (also transliterated Ziyadina or Ziyadneh; singular Zaydani or Zidany), or the Banu Zaydan, were an Arab tribal family based in the Galilee whose members served as local s (tax farmers) during the Ottoman period. Their best known sheikh, Daher al-Umar, became the strongman of northern Palestine and surrounding areas through economic monopolies, popular support, and military strength in the mid-18th century.Joudah, 1987, p. 19.
Emergence The Zayadina were a family of Bedouin origin. They moved to the Galilee in the second half of the 17th century. By the time of Daher al-Umar's grandfather's generation, they transitioned from partial nomadism to a settled life as cultivators. The origins of the family before this time are obscure. Near-contemporary chroniclers of the family, Abbud al-Sabbagh and Isa al-Ma'luf, name Zaydan as the family's eponymous ancestor while members of the family claim descent from Zayd, the son of Hasan and grandson of Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam. The Zayadina were Sunni Muslims. Mikha'il al-Sabbagh, another near-contemporary chronicler, places the Zayadina as a small family () of some fifty members in the environs of Maarrat al-Numan before their migration to the Galilee. In Maarrat al-Numan, which sits on the main road between the major Syrian cities of Aleppo and Damascus, they lived under the protection of a tribe called the Banu Asad. The historian Ahmad Joudah cautions on this point that Mikha'il's narrative contains several "popular type stories" and that he could not identify a 'Banu Asad' among the Syrian tribes of that period.
The initial area of the Zayadina's settlement in the Galilee was in or around Tiberias, then shortly after in the village of Arrabat al-Battuf (Arraba) in the adjoining Shaghur (fiscal district). Oral histories first relayed by the Damascene writer Nu'man al-Qasatili (1877) note that the Zaydani sheikh who established the family in Arraba became the sheikh of Shaghur after defeating the Druze sheikh of the nearby village of Sallama. This event, (the 'Sallama incident'), is tentatively dated by historian Kais Firro to 1688–1692. Sallama was destroyed along with nine other close-by Druze villages (Kammaneh, Dallata, Nijmiyya, Umm al-Amad, al-Marjam, Sabbana, Jazur and al-Rabadiyya) at that time, or at least by the start of the 18th century as the Zayadina consolidated power in the area. The Sallama incident sealed the Zayadina's power in the Shaghur, after which they obtained its (tax farm). The 19th-century chroniclers disagree on the name of the Zaydani sheikh who first established the family in the Galilee, with some referring to him simply as (). This sheikh, assuming he was the grandfather of Daher al-Umar, was later identified as 'Salih'.
Salih's son Umar al-Zaydani was appointed the sheikh of (, i.e. the Galilee) in 1698–1699 by Bashir Shihab, the emir of the Druze in Mount Lebanon. Bashir had acquired the of both the Galilee and the predominantly Twelver Shia Muslim (commonly called 'Metawali') districts of Jabal Amil (south Lebanon) from the governor of Sidon Eyalet, Arslan Pasha Matarci. This was in reward for his suppression of the Metawali Ali al-Saghir clan of the Bilad Bishara . Afterward, Bashir appointed his Qaysi factional allies in place of his opponents from the Yamani faction to which the Metawali rebel sheikhs belonged. Umar was one such Qaysi sheikh, though his appointment also likely stemmed from the Zayadina's already established power and influence in the Galilee. Umar was the preeminent figure among his brothers and as early as 1703 was referred to as the ('paramount sheikh of the country', i.e. the Galilee) in a French consular report. His brother, Ali, is mentioned in other French consular reports, dated to 1704 and 1705, as the sheikh in control of the western Lower Galilee, including the key cotton-growing villages of Shefa-Amr, Tamra and I'billin. A third brother, Hamza (referred to as 'Amsy' in a French consular report from 1708), was active in the vicinity of Nazareth. With the death of Bashir in 1707, the governor of Sidon may have stripped the Zayadina of their tax farms to reassert direct control over the Galilee from the Shihabs. In the summer of 1708, he sought imperial sanction to move against Umar and his brothers for their refusal to remit the full amount of their tax obligations.
Expansion Despite the efforts of the governor, the Zayadina retained their influence and were strengthened by Bashir's successor, Emir Haydar Shihab, following his victory against government-backed Druze rivals at the Battle of Ain Dara in 1711. By then Umar had died and was succeeded by his eldest son Sa'd al-Umar. Conflict between the governor of Sidon and the Zayadina persisted into the second decade of the 18th century. Punitive campaigns were launched against them and their sheikhs were occasionally imprisoned until their obligations were paid, though the governors never attempted to oust or replace them. The next generation of Zayadina also emerge around this time, other than Sa'd, including Umar's youngest son Daher and Ali's son Muhammad. The family often leased their in Daher's name, hoping this would mitigate their obligations to the government in the event of a default on their tax payments. Daher allied with the Banu Saqr and in took over Tiberias from its government-appointed and thereafter obtained its . Under Daher, Tiberias was fortified and established as the family's headquarters, though the family of his uncle Ali, now led by Muhammad, maintained its base in Damun in the western Galilee. Daher's dependence on the Bedouin levies of the Banu Saqr was tenuous, especially as his policy of law and order did not align with the Bedouins' highway banditry and village raids. Daher raised a 200-strong troop of Zaydani horsemen and put them under Muhammad's command. As locals, Daher and the Zayadina enjoyed the support of the inhabitants of their .
In 1738, Daher mobilized a 1,500-strong force of Zaydani horsemen and local levies and defeated Sheikh Ahmad al-Husayn, who controlled the of Sahil Akka from his fortress in Jiddin. Daher's takeover was solicited by the peasants of Sahil Akka who sought relief from the Husayns' heavy-handedness and the harassment of the Bedouins. The Zayadina effectively gained control of Jiddin's dependencies, Abu Sinan and Tarshiha. Daher was subsequently granted the of Sahil Akka, but kept the Husayns in place as his vassals, subleasing the to them. Daher also began to procure his private army of Maghrebi mercenaries during this conflict, which greatly strengthened him against his regional counterparts.
Between 1738 and 1740, the Zayadina expanded their control northward, gaining the surrender of the key town of Safed, which was the traditional administrative center of the Galilee and from the high hilltop it occupied, gave its holder a commanding view of the surrounding countryside. Its at that time had been Muhammad al-Nafi', who capitulated after a negotiated surrender. Al-Nafi' similarly surrendered his other fortress villages of Suhmata and Bi'ina to Daher. The Zayadina's struggle over the other main fortress village in the vicinity, Deir al-Qassi, concluded with its surrender by Daher's marriage to the daughter of its sheikh, Abd al-Khaliq Salih. Like the Husayns, Daher kept the Nafi sheikhs in place as vassals in the Safed and Jira , along with the sheikhs of the Murad and Shahin families into the early 1760s.
Although administratively part of Safed, Nazareth and the fertile Marj Ibn Amer plain (Jezreel Valley) to its south were effectively dominated by the sheikhs of Jabal Nablus (hill country of Nablus). As early as 1735, Daher entered into conflict over these areas with the Nablus sheikhs, led by the Jarrar and Madi families, who had entered into alliance with Daher's erstwhile supporters, the Banu Saqr. The sheikhs of Nablus were also backed by the governor of Damascus, under whose jurisdiction Nablus belonged. Strategically, Nazareth and Marj Ibn Amer formed the crossroads of the main trade routes linking Damascus with Nablus, and Nazareth further acted as a trade center for the merchants of Nablus. Two of Daher's wives lived in Nazareth, through whom he forged ties with its residents, who favored his religious tolerance and opposed the extortions of the Nablus merchants. With his Zaydani horsemen, Maghrebi infantry and the Nazarenes, Daher defeated the Nablus–Saqr coalition in a battle in the Marj Ibn Amer. Although this victory sealed Zaydani control over Nazareth and Marj Ibn Amer by 1740, the Jarrars repulsed the Zayadina's advance into Jabal Nablus from their hilltop fort at Sanur.
Early trading activities The Zayadina may have engaged in trade with Aleppo and Damascus from their time in Maarrat al-Numan. Umar al-Zaydani maintained trade relations with the Damascenes and regional tribes. His sons Sa'd and Daher continued their family's traditional trade with Damascus throughout the 1720s, taking caravans to the city where they bought and sold goods and forged ties with the city's social and commercial elites. The Zayadina's mercantile pursuits enabled them to accumulate the wealth needed to establish themselves as cultivators and tax farmers.
Around the time of the Zayadina's rise, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, European demand for Levantine raw cotton significantly increased. The French were the dominant European purchaser of Palestinian and Lebanese cotton. The cotton of the Galilee was especially prized for the quality of its fiber. The French merchants of Marseille conducted their trade from their main base in the city of Sidon, but their counterparts in Acre increasingly took up the trade independently of Sidon. In 1691, there were thirteen French merchants operating out of Acre's Khan al-Ifranj caravansary; at the time, Acre was a ruined but spacious fishing village of 300 people, vulnerable to Bedouin raids by land and Maltese piracy along the coast. The French merchants set the price of cotton which they purchased from the sheikhs or peasants of the villages, but increasing demand and internal competition moved prices higher.
The local sheikhs of the Galilee, the Zayadina chief among them, benefited greatly from the booming cotton trade. During a period of internal rivalry among the French merchants, Paul Maashoek, an enterprising Dutch merchant and British vice-consul of Acre, moved to monopolize the trade in Acre in collaboration with some of the French merchants there, by gaining control of the Galilee's cotton crop at the point of production in the villages. In 1704, he forged an agreement with Daher's uncle Ali (who controlled the region's best cotton-producing villages) stipulating Ali's exclusive sale of his cotton crop to Maashoek in exchange for the latter advancing the full amount of Ali's tax obligation to the governor of Sidon. This developed into the preferred mode of trade among the sheikhs and was increasingly adopted by the French merchants after Maashoek's death in 1711, eventually becoming a "regular forward market", according to historian Thomas Philipp. When Sa'd was imprisoned by the governor of Sidon for failure to pay his obligations, the French merchants paid his bail and he was reinstalled as a tax farmer; in return, Sa'd paid them with the cotton crop of Shefa-Amr, Tamra and I'billin. When it became apparent that the harvest was poor, the French merchants negotiated his debt with Daher in Tiberias. This was Daher's first dealing with the French merchants.
Conflict with Damascus