Free Arabs by Eugene Rogan Page A

rest of the eighteenth century. With the rise of the Qazdughlis, the extreme factional violence abated, bringing a measure of peace to the strife-torn city. The Ottomans, for their part, never managed to impose their full authority over the rich but unruly province of Egypt. Instead, a distinct political culture emerged in Ottoman Egypt in which the Mamluk households continued to exercise political primacy over Istanbul’s governor centuries after Selim the Grim had conquered the Mamluk Empire. In Egypt, as in Lebanon and Algeria, Ottoman rule adapted to local politics.
     
    Two centuries after conquering the Mamluk Empire, the Ottomans had succeeded in extending their empire from North Africa to South Arabia. It had not been a smooth process. Unwilling, or unable, to standardize government in the Arab provinces, the Ottomans in many cases chose to rule in partnership with local elites. The diverse Arab provinces might have had very different relations with Istanbul and wide variations of administrative structures, but they were all clearly part of the same empire. Such heterogeneity was common to the multiethnic and multisectarian empires of the day, such as the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires.
    Until the mid-eighteenth century, the Ottomans managed this diversity with some success. They had faced challenges—most notably in Mount Lebanon and Egypt—but had succeeded by a variety of strategies in entrenching Ottoman rule, ensuring that no local leader posed an enduring threat to the Ottoman center. The dynamics between this center and the Arab periphery changed, however, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. New local leaders emerged who began to combine forces and pursue autonomy in defiance of the Ottoman system, often in concert with the empire’s European enemies. These new local leaders posed a real challenge to the Ottoman state that, by the nineteenth century, would put its very survival in jeopardy.

CHAPTER 2
    The Arab Challenge to Ottoman Rule
    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