Dahir al-Umar

Dahir al-Umar al-Zaydani emerged from a family of tax farmers in Galilee and consolidated Tiberias, Safed, Nazareth and Acre from the 1730s onward. He fortified Acre, encouraged the cotton trade, protected agricultural production and used alliances with local communities and regional powers to build a state-like domain within Ottoman Palestine.

His authority survived repeated challenges from Ottoman governors and rival relatives, but conflict among his sons and a renewed imperial campaign destroyed the Zaydani regime. Dahir was killed while fleeing Acre in August 1775. His career remains central to the history of local autonomy, economic development and political power in eighteenth-century Palestine.

In Ibrahim Nasrallah’s The Lanterns of the King of Galilee, on the shores of Lake Tiberias, Dahir al-Umar al-Zaydani rises from the Zayadina clan to become the dominant ruler of eighteenth-century Galilee.