62 Facts About Yusuf Sayfa

Yusuf Sayfa Pasha was a chieftain and multazim in the Tripoli region who frequently served as the Ottoman beylerbey of Tripoli Eyalet between 1579 and his death.

Yusuf Sayfa became a multazim in Akkar subordinate to the Assaf chieftains of the Keserwan for most of his career until his promotion to the rank of pasha and appointment as Tripoli's first beylerbey in 1579.

Yusuf Sayfa was given command by the Sublime Porte over the armies in the region of Syria to suppress the rebel Ali Janbulad of Aleppo in 1606.

Relations with the Ottomans deteriorated over the next ten years, a period in which Fakhr al-Din gained steady advantage over Yusuf Sayfa, who was abandoned by most of his local allies and his nephews.

Yusuf Sayfa remained under financial strain with large debts due to the Porte and owed to Fakhr al-Din, who gained control over most of the eyalet's districts.

Yusuf Sayfa was noted by contemporary historians for his generosity and patronage of poets and Sufis, which contributed to his poor financial state.

The Yusuf Sayfa family were conventionally considered to be Kurds based on the 19th-century, local chronicle of Tannus al-Shidyaq.

Yusuf Sayfa was likely ten to twelve years old at the time.

Yusuf Sayfa was headquartered in the fortress village of Hisn Akkar.

From Hisn Akkar Yusuf Sayfa controlled Jabal Akkar, the northernmost part of Mount Lebanon, and possibly the Homs Gap plain at Jabal Akkar's northeastern edge.

The Yusuf Sayfa family, lacking the local power base of the Shu'aybs, consequently fled Akkar.

Yusuf Sayfa was promoted to the rank of pasha and appointed the new eyalet's first beylerbey.

The subsequent loss of tax farms in Tripoli Eyalet, such as the predominantly Maronite area of Bsharri, and the appointment of Yusuf Sayfa, weakened the Assafs.

Duwayhi held that Yusuf Sayfa owed Muhammad tax arrears, while Ottoman records indicate that Muhammad had owed taxes to the Porte, which ordered the beylerbey of Damascus to collect them with Yusuf Sayfa's assistance shortly before Muhammad's death in 1590 or 1591.

Muhammad had set out from Ghazir against Yusuf Sayfa but was assassinated en route at Musayliha on Yusuf Sayfa's orders.

Muhammad's tax liability was transferred to Yusuf Sayfa, who was ordered to appropriate all of Muhammad's money, real property and stockpiled goods.

Yusuf Sayfa took possession of Assaf properties in Beirut, Ghazir and Antelias, either forcibly or by purchasing them from Muhammad's widow.

In 1593 Yusuf Sayfa married Muhammad's widow and took control of the Keserwan and Beirut iltizam.

Yusuf Sayfa's increasing proximity to Ma'nid domains in the southern Lebanon range provoked Fakhr al-Din II, the sanjak-bey of Sidon-Beirut Sanjak from 1592 and the son and successor of Qurqumaz ibn Yunis, who had died in the 1585 expedition.

Fakhr al-Din held the two territories for one year, before agreeing to withdraw his forces and return both territories to Yusuf Sayfa after reaching unspecified accommodations with him.

Yusuf Sayfa engaged the Hamades in 1600 to assault and drive out the muqaddams of the village of Jaj in the Byblos nahiya in retaliation for their alleged support for Fakhr al-Din.

Yusuf Sayfa furthered his ties with the Damascene Janissaries, allying with one of their two main leaders, Kurd Hamza.

In 1601 Yusuf Sayfa sent 1,000 soldiers to back the Damascene Janissaries when they were blocked from entering Aleppo by an imperial guard.

Kurd Hamza repaid Yusuf Sayfa the following year by participating in his fifty-day siege of Musa in Baalbek.

In that village, Yusuf executed several captive partisans of Musa because of their alleged culpability in the slaying of Ali Sayfa at Nahr al-Kalb.

Yusuf Sayfa, fearing the ambitions of the Janbulads and seeking to curry favor with the Porte, requested and obtained from the imperial government military aid and the rank of serdar of the Ottoman forces throughout Syria in late 1606.

Yusuf Sayfa stood to gain considerable clout by neutralizing the Janbulads without obligating the Porte to intervene directly.

Yusuf Sayfa fled to Tripoli and most of his allies defected to Ali.

Fakhr al-Din, despite Ottoman orders to join Yusuf Sayfa, joined Ali after Hama.

Yusuf Sayfa fled the city for Cyprus, leaving command of Tripoli's citadel to his mamluk Yusuf Sayfa.

From Cyprus Yusuf Sayfa went to Haifa, a port village controlled by the sanjak-bey of Lajjun, Ahmad Turabay.

Yusuf Sayfa mobilized his Damascene troops, including the Janissaries, which were swelled by soldiers from Jerusalem, Nablus, Gaza, Lajjun, and Ajlun, all sanjaks of Damascus located in Palestine and Transjordan.

Yusuf Sayfa attempted to escape, but the officials of Damascus, alarmed at the potential economic fallout of the city's impending sack, forced him to pay 100,000 gold piasters as compensation before allowing his departure.

Ali lifted the siege after being bribed by the Damascenes with Yusuf Sayfa's forfeited money plus an additional 25,000 piasters.

Ali pursued Yusuf Sayfa and demanded that he make peace sealed by a marriage alliance between their families.

Yusuf Sayfa married off one of his daughters to Ali, while Yusuf Sayfa's son Husayn was wed to Ali's sister.

Around that time a kapicibasi sent by the beylerbey of Damascus Ahmad Pasha al-Hafiz to collect a debt from Yusuf Sayfa was taken captive and executed by Yusuf Sayfa along with his two attendants.

Yusuf used the opportunity to reclaim the Porte's favor, sending a force under his son Husayn and nephew Ahmad Sayfa to fight alongside al-Hafiz.

Fakhr al-Din plundered the fortress and a caravan of provisions bound for Yusuf Sayfa, who had set up base in Krak des Chevaliers with his Druze allies.

Muhammad and Sulayman Yusuf Sayfa, meanwhile, restated their alliance with the Ma'ns and fortified themselves in Safita.

Yusuf Sayfa remained under financial strain due to debts owed to the Porte, the beylerbeys of Damascus and Aleppo, and Fakhr al-Din.

In 1620 Yusuf Sayfa attempted to regain the tax farms by offering Fakhr al-Din permanent peace terms, but his offer was rejected.

The Ma'nid emir advanced against Yusuf Sayfa's domains, capturing the fortress of al-Bahsas south of Tripoli before besieging its citadel.

Yusuf Sayfa persuaded the Porte that Fakhr al-Din was using the tax issue to take over Tripoli Eyalet and promised to pay the arrears.

Yusuf Sayfa then fled to Akkar, but was abandoned by his son Beylik, who defected to Fakhr al-Din, his father-in-law.

Yusuf Sayfa's authority was effectively restricted to the city of Tripoli, Krak des Chevaliers, the Jabala Sanjak governed by his son Qasim, and the Koura nahiya held by the Kurdish emirs of Ras Nhash; the rest of the eyalet, namely the nahiyas of Jubbat Bsharri, Batroun, Byblos, Dinniyeh and Akkar and the sanjaks of Safita and Homs, were in the hands of Fakhr al-Din or his Sayfa allies.

Naima noted that Yusuf Sayfa had lived for considerably longer than a century.

The divisions within the Sayfa household deepened with Yusuf's death.

Yusuf Sayfa's rule was not recognized by the Porte, which appointed Mustafa Pasha ibn Iskandar beylerbey in late 1625.

Around that time Yusuf Sayfa's sons surrendered Margat and Krak des Chevaliers to Fakhr al-Din, who interceded on their behalf with Mustafa Pasha.

Yusuf Sayfa's son Assaf, whose mother, Malak Sama bint Abdullah, was a concubine, drove Ali out of Tripoli after two months in office.

Yusuf Sayfa invited the Safya chiefs to meet in his camp in the Homs Gap where he trapped and executed Assaf, hanging his body at Krak des Chevaliers, while Ali, suspicious of the summons, fled the eyalet.

The only recorded survivors of the family were Ali, Assaf's mother Malak, and a certain Sulayman Sayfa whose relation to Yusuf was not clarified by the sources.

The Sunni Muslim Tripolitanian scholar Mustafa Jamal al-Din Ibn Karama offered the most positive view of Yusuf Sayfa's rule, writing "In his eyalet, the ra'iyya sleep in peace, and wake up happy because he is there".

Salibi asserts Yusuf Sayfa's spending and patronage partly caused his consistently poor financial state.

Likewise, Abu-Husayn holds that Yusuf Sayfa's generosity represented "a costly means to gain recognition" amid persistent financial difficulties, which frequently resulted in his dismissal from office or his loss of fiscal districts.

Yusuf Sayfa Pasha was a devious old man with a white beard, a sunburnt complexion, and a long face.

Yusuf Sayfa killed many men in Tripoli and threw them into a well, so that nobody could say that the Pasha killed any one.

Yusuf Sayfa terrorized people to that extent, and by so doing he managed to acquire large amounts of money, burying many treasures in various ruins.

Yusuf Sayfa strove to gain the trust of the Maronites of Byblos, Batroun and Jubbat Bsharri, for whom the Ottomans were generally unpopular.

Nonetheless, Yusuf Sayfa continued to be viewed as an agent of the state and its oppressive policies by the Maronite peasantry.

Yusuf Sayfa concocted evidence that the ships' crews were Maltese pirates and consequently had all eighty crew members beheaded on the shore.