The Diplomatic Career and Historical Work of Olympiodorus of Thebes

Abstract

The rise of the Druze emir, Fakhr al-Din II Ma’n, is best treated as a case study in political dynamics. A tax farmer in the Shuf in 1590, who received his first administrative appointment three years later, he became the most powerful provincial leader along the Levantine coast by the late 1620s, when he controlled three districts (sanjaks) in the Ottoman province of Damascus, and also the province of Tripoli. Except for Jaffa and Alexandretta, he controlled the key ports along the coast of Syria and Palestine — Sidon, Beirut, and Tripoli; smaller ports like Acre; and most of the trade in regional goods and the associated revenues. ¹ Of die five ports along the southern Levantine coast - Acre, Sur, Hait~, Tanmra, and Jaffa - olfly tile last earned sigtfificant revenues ill tile late sixteenth century, from pilgrims: W. Hfitteroth and K. Abdulfattah, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan, and Southern Syria in the Late 26th Century (Erlangen, t977)., pp. 15, 18q9, 2.5-6, 95.