The Karak Plateau in the Ottoman period
Dr. Marcus Milwright
This period can be defined as lasting from the end of Mamluk occupation of Syria in 1516 to the departure of Ottoman troops from the north of Jordan at the end of September 1918. It is important to recognize, however, that the use of the term ‘Ottoman’ to describe this historical period does not mean that Karak, and the surrounding lands were always under the direct control of officials of the Ottoman empire. For much of the time, southern Jordan was a largely autonomous region governed by powerful local families. Some of the phases within this long time period remain poorly understood due to the uneven quality of the historical record. The latter part of the Ottoman period is, however, of considerable importance for it is during this time that many aspects of the economy, demography and material culture of the modern Karak plateau were defined.
In 1516 the forces of the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluk army at the battle of Marj Dābiq in northern Syria. In the aftermath of this victory, the Ottoman sultan was able extend his control over the province of Syria (that is, the region covered by the modern states of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestine Authority), and in the following year Cairo, the capital of the Mamluk sultanate, was taken. The Karak plateau, and the remainder of southern Jordan thus became part of the expanding Ottoman empire that was governed from the city of Istanbul in modern Turkey.
It would seem that this momentous political change had little immediate impact upon the region of Karak, but to understand the reasons for this it is necessary to review some of the events of the last few decades of Mamluk rule in the region. From what we know of the history of this period, Karak and the other regions of southern Jordan had become very difficult to govern in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Although these areas remained relatively fertile, it was proving very difficult for the central government in Cairo to ensure the safety of the region. In part, this difficulty can be attributed to the lack of investment in the area by the Mamluk sultans, but it was also due to the growth in power of the tribal factions in Jordan at this time. There were numerous incidents of bedouin tribes raiding merchants passing through the region, as well as the annual pilgrimage (Arabic: hajj) caravan that went south from Damascus to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina in the Hijāz. At times it was necessary for the governor of Damascus to bribe the tribes of southern Jordan with purses of gold to persuade them not to attack the pilgrims. The town of Karak also contained a governor appointed by the Mamluk sultan in Cairo, and answerable to the governor of Damascus, but he had insufficient troops at his command to deal with the outbreaks of lawlessness. In 1506-1507 even the governor of Karak was forced to flee the town because of a rebellion (Mamluk control over the town was only re-imposed in 1512). There appears to have been an acknowledgement by the sultans, and their officials in Damascus, that there was little hope of ever bringing the region under control and of taking advantage of the tax revenues from the productive agricultural lands and livestock. Mamluk intervention on the Karak plateau became limited to occasional punitive military expeditions by the governor of Damascus following local insurrections in Karak and attacks on the pilgrim caravans.
This was the troubled situation inherited by the Turkish officials and soldiers of the new Ottoman province of Damascus. The initial policy of the Ottomans was to employ high-ranking members of the Mamluk system to run the conquered territories. The first man to be named as the governor of Damascus was a Mamluk called Janbirdī al-Ghazālī. Before 1516 he had served as governor of Jerusalem and Karak in 1509, the Palestinian town of Safad in 1511, and the Syrian city of Hamā in 1513. With this extensive experience he was in a good position to understand the workings of the administration, and one of his major objectives during his brief rule was to secure the passage of the annual hajj caravan from Damascus. Using captured bedouin prisoners as a bargaining tool, he was able to conclude a peace treaty with the Jughaymān tribe in 1519-20, and in the same year the largest pilgrimage caravan in seventy years set out from Damascus for the journey south to Mecca and Medina. Unfortunately for Janbirdī, his political ambitions were not matched by sufficient military resources, and he was killed following a failed bid to make himself independent of central Ottoman rule.
In 1520 an Ottoman governor called Iyās Pāsha was installed in place of Janbirdī, and this date also marked the introduction of new administrative arrangements into the province of Damascus. Under the Mamluks the different administrative regions of Bilād al-Shām (including that of Karak) had been given the name of mamlaka (plural: mamlakāt), each one administered by a governor (Arabic: nā’ib). Under the Ottomans, the new regions were named sanjaqs (a word which can be translated as flag or banner). Each sanjaq was controlled by a sanjaqbey who was directly answerable to the provincial governor (beylerbey) in Damascus. The administrative changes were also felt at lower levels of the bureaucracy, and new titles and functions were created during the early decades of the sixteenth century. In addition, the governors of Damascus introduced surveys of the land and revenues of each region, and some of these documents are still extant today (see: The Economy of the Karak Plateau in the Ottoman). Although many of the sanjaqbeys in the province of Damascus were probably men from the Ottoman elite, it became common practice for those appointed to the position of sanjaqbey of Karak and Shawbak (the other major town of southern Jordan during this period) to come from the one of the powerful local families who inhabited the lands of southern Jordan. In some ways this policy represents a continuation of the Late Mamluk period in that the emphasis was upon containing the tribal factions (the most important of the sixteenth century appear to have been the Banū Atiyya, Hawaytāt, Banū Lām, and al-Mafārija) rather than trying to reimpose direct state control.
The principal concern of the Ottoman state was that the sanjaqbey of Karak-Shawbak could guarantee the security of the annual hajj caravan from Damascus as it passed through the regions of southern Jordan. Just as before under the Mamluks, this policy objective was achieved through a combination of financial incentives and the threat of military force. The sanjaqbey of Karak-Shawbak was provided with funds from Damascus to pay off the local tribes, and also to maintain the reservoirs and caravan stations along the route. In some cases, the sanjaqbey was also accorded the title of amīr al-hajj (commander of the pilgrimage). The policies of the Ottoman state might have been expected to achieve the minimal objectives in southern Jordan, but they did not take into account the destabilizing effect of the competition among the tribes for these official titles. The positions of sanjaqbey and amīr al-hajj carried some political influence, but perhaps more importantly, considerable scope for corruption given the very large sums of money set aside by the Ottoman state for the annual pilgrimage. As a result, the head (Arabic: shaykh) of one tribe was seldom willing to acknowledge the right of another to hold the positions of sanjaqbey or amīr al-hajj, and attacks on pilgrims are recorded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Hajj fort of Qatrana, exterior from the west
Another policy relating to the hajj followed by the Ottomans during this period was the construction of forts and watchtowers along the major route running south from Damascus to the Hijāz. In addition, some military installations dating to earlier periods, such as ‛Ajlūn and Salt were renovated during the sixteenth century. The new forts included those at Qatrāna and Ma‛ān, built in 1563, and ‛Unayza, built in c.1576. Located on the eastern fringe of the Karak plateau, and near to the modern Desert Highway, the fort of Qatrāna is one of the most complete of these Ottoman military constructions. It is a small, square building with a single entrance on the east side, and made from local stone and mortar. Around the building are two rows of arrow slits that would allow the occupants to repel attacks. Inside, there is a small courtyard surrounded by stables and storerooms.
Hajj fort of Qatrana, view of interior
The upper part of the building presumably housed the troops. Clearly, a small building like this was not meant to accommodate the thousands of pilgrims undertaking the hajj; rather, it was for a small garrison of troops intended to guard the reservoir located south of the fort and to help with protecting the caravan when it passed each year. The forts might also be used for the storage of animal fodder, and other supplies needed for the hajj. Official documents from this period give details concerning the numbers of troops in each fort (usually between about sixty and eighty men), but this number could be supplemented by the larger forces housed in Karak castle in times of greater need. Other structures were also built along the hajj route through the Ottoman period.
Bridge over wadi al-Hasa
In the seventeenth or early eighteenth century a bridge was constructed over the wadi at al-Hasā near to the site of a fort.
Karak castle exterior from the south
Using the available written sources, it is possible to gain a reasonably clear understanding of the historical development of the Karak plateau and southern Jordan during the sixteenth century. The region had recently been incorporated into the Ottoman empire, and the conquerors were keen to find ways to administer it effectively. The picture for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is much more difficult to discern, however. The written sources for this period were usually written by officials or scholars working in administrative centers of Cairo and Damascus, or in other cities in Syria or Palestine. The inhabitants of Karak, and the remainder of southern Jordan only appear in the written sources when there was a rebellion against Ottoman rule. By 1605 Karak was in the hands of the Arab tribes. Military expeditions were sent down to pacify the tribes in 1605-06, 1655-56, 1669-70, 1678-79 and 1710-11. These expeditions would result in the execution of local notables and the confiscation of money or livestock, but the army would usually return to Damascus after a relatively short occupation. The problem encountered by the Ottoman forces was that the rebels might either disappear into the countryside, or hold up in Karak castle. The castle was to remain a thorn in the side of the Ottoman authorities until the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries certain families became dominant in the political life of the Karak plateau. The military expedition of 1655-66 had been led by a commander called ‛Abdallāh Pāsha al-Nimr. After entering Karak he was able to govern the region until his death in 1669. After his death, other members of the same family were to take control of the Karak, and assert their independence from the Ottoman empire. In the eighteenth century the Nimr dynasty and their supporters (known collectively as the Imāmiyya) found their authority increasingly challenged by bedouin tribes such as the Banū ‛Amr and the Majālī. By c.1780 it was the Majālī, under their shaykh Khalīl, who controlled the Karak plateau. The Majālī ruled Karak as an autonomous state, although in the early years of the nineteenth century shaykh Yūsuf al-Majālī was careful to maintain good relations with the Wahhābīs, a conservative Muslim faction who controlled the Hijāz, and had spread their influence as far as southern Syria.
This relatively peaceful political arrangement was maintained in southern Jordan until the 1830s. In 1831-32 Ibrāhīm Pāsha was ordered to bring Syria back under the authority of the ruler of Egypt, his father, Muhammad ‛Alī. At first, there seemed little indication that Karak would become involved in the events occurring to the west in Palestine, but this was to change when one of the leaders of a rebellion near the Palestinian town of Nāblus fled first to Khalīl (Hebron), and then east to the Karak plateau. The rebel leader, Qāsim al-Ahmad, and his followers sought the safe haven of Karak castle. In 1834 the army of Ibrāhīm Pāsha reached Karak and besieged the castle. According to contemporary accounts of the event, the castle fell after seventeen days, and the inhabitants were executed. Ibrāhīm Pāsha then set about destroying Karak and the surrounding area. The walls of the castle were demolished using gunpowder, the houses of the town razed to the ground, and the cisterns filled. One contemporary account claims that the sound of the explosions was heard as far away as Jerusalem. In the countryside around the town the mills were destroyed, and the orchards and field burnt. Egyptian troops remained in the region until 1841. This ‘scorched earth’ policy resulted the widespread depopulation of the land, and it was not until the 1850s that there was rebuilding and resettlement of Karak.
Tomb of Faris al-Majali, Khirbat Faris
View of Tafila from the south
Despite the traumatic events of 1834-41, the Majālī managed to maintain their authority in the region until the final reassertion of Ottoman rule in 1893. The tomb of one prominent member of the family, Fāris al-Majālī, can still be found on the deserted site known either as Khirbat Tadūn or Khirbat Fāris. The arrival of Turkish troops to occupy Karak was strongly resisted by the inhabitants of the town, but unlike previous military incursions, the Ottoman authorities were determined to stay in the region. This event was part of a larger administrative policy by the Ottoman government. In the previous decades they had brought Balqā’, and the northern regions of Jordan back under central government control. There were attempts to repopulate ruined towns and villages, and this was matched by investment in the transport and communications infrastructure. The administrative capital was established in the town of Salt. The major changes happening to the north of the Wādī al-Mūjib were never matched on the Karak plateau and further south, because these areas were populated by tribal groups who were much less willing to give up the independence they had enjoyed since the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the Ottoman authorities persevered with their attempts to change the political and social environment of southern Jordan. Karak was established as a regional capital, and in 1894 plans were drawn up for the construction of a new mosque in the town. The present mosque dates to the 1920s. Other funds were set aside for the restoration of the tombs of the three Companions of the Prophet near the town of Mu’ta, and the establishment of primary and secondary schools in Karak, Ma‛ān and Tafīla.
The return of the Ottoman authorities brought many material improvements to the inhabitants of the Karak plateau, but there were also significant tensions. Centralized government meant the loss of political independence, the reintroduction of external taxation, and the possibility of being conscripted into the Ottoman army. These problems were at the root of the Karak Revolt in 1910. Following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 that led to the toppling of the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul, there were attempts by the new government to take a census of all the lands of Syria for the purposes of taxation. In addition, the government wanted to take measures to disarm the local population. Rebellions by the Druze against these measures in 1909 in southern Syria, Lebanon and northern Jordan were brutally suppressed. After an initial period of cooperation with this new government policy, the inhabitants of the Karak plateau started to resist. On 4 December 1910 a group of Ottoman soldiers and registration officials was attacked in the village of ‛Irāq, and by the following day trouble had moved to Karak itself. Government buildings were looted, and many officials and soldiers killed by the rioters. The shops and storerooms of merchants were also ransacked. Over the following days the rebellion spread to the southern towns of Tafīla and Ma‛ān, and rebels also attacked symbols of Ottoman rule such as the stations of the Hijāz railway and the telegraph offices.
The reaction was not long in coming, and on 14 December the Ottoman army marched into Karak. Over the following months the leaders of the Karak Revolt were captured and brought before a military tribunal. Significant numbers of the leading rebels were publicly executed, and the remainder given jail sentences. The punishment was extended in the form of heavy fines levied against members of the main tribal groups of the region to pay for the damage to Ottoman property. The suppression of the Karak Revolt may be seen as a victory by the Ottoman army, but it had an important effect among the Arab populace of Syria. The widespread sympathy for the people of Karak was expressed in the newspapers printed by Arab nationalists, and this public reaction was perhaps one reason why some death sentences against the rebels were later commuted to life imprisonment. Thus, for Arab nationalists, the Karak Revolt became a symbol of Ottoman oppression. The long-term effect upon the Karak plateau, and the remainder of southern Jordan, was to delay the economic development of the region in the early decades of the twentieth century.
The last chapter of the Ottoman period comes with the First World War and the Arab Revolt. The British campaigns in Palestine started in 1916, but British officials had been in negotiation with Sharīf Husayn of Mecca the previous year. They hoped that he would lead an Arab attack against the Ottomans. The northward expansion of the Arab army gave Karak and the surrounding regions a new strategic significance. It is perhaps surprising that the shaykhs and notables of Karak should have chosen to side with the Ottomans given the brutal suppression after the Karak Revolt. With the outcome of the war far from certain, they may have felt it was safer not to risk the wrath of the Ottoman authorities. Following the Arab capture of the port of ‛Aqaba in July 1917, the Ottoman commander, Mehmet Cemal Pāsha organized a force made up of Karak militias for a counterattack. The forces from Karak engaged the Arab army near Ma‛ān on 17 July and claimed a victory after a short battle. In May 1918 the inhabitants of Karak were again called upon to rally behind the Ottoman banner and resist a planned attack, but the British and the Arab armies had other priorities. They bypassed Jordan on the way north to take Damascus. The remaining Ottoman forces in Jordan were left isolated and in September 1918 they started their retreat from the southern town of Ma‛ān. Troops from Australia and New Zealand took the strategic towns of Salt and ‛Ammān, and on 26 September the last Ottoman soldiers left Jordan from the town of Irbid.