Sidon Eyalet

The Province was briefly created during Fakhr-al-Din's exile in 1614–15, and recreated in 1660.[4][5] The province continued to be subordinated in some ways, both in fiscal and political matters, to the Damascus province out of which it was created.[4]

Despite conflicts in the 1660s, the Maan family "played the leading role in the management of the internal affairs of this eyalet until the closing years of the 17th century, perhaps because it was not possible to manage the province-certainly not in the sanjak of Sidon-Beirut-without them."[6]

The Maans were succeeded by the Shihab family in ruling Sidon-Beirut from the final years of the 17th century through the 19th century.[6] The Maans were first recognized as "emirs" in 1592 when Fakhr al-Din Maan was made (honorary) governor of the sanjak of Safad, and both the Maans and the Shihabis were recognized by the Ottomans as incumbents of an only vaguely defined, only implicitly "Druze" emirate. They never actually exercised any administrative function beyond that of multazim (tax farmer) over several mountain districts in the eyalet of Sidon (the Shuf). In 1763 the Shihabis were also invested with tax farms in the eyalet of Tripoli that had formerly been held by the Shiite Hamada family, which marks the beginning of the "emirate"'s sovereignty over the whole of Mt Lebanon.

In 1775, when Jezzar Ahmed Pasha received the governorship of Sidon, he moved the capital to Acre.[7] In 1799, Acre resisted a siege by Napoleon Bonaparte.[7]

As part of the Egyptian–Ottoman War of 1831–33, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt took Acre after a severe siege on May 27, 1832. The Egyptian occupation intensified rivalries between Druzes and Maronites, as Ibrahim Pasha openly favoured Christians in his administration and his army.[8] In 1840, the governor of Sidon moved his residence to Beirut, effectively making it the new capital of the eyalet.[9] After the return to Ottoman rule in 1841, the Druzes dislodged Bashir III al-Shihab, to whom the sultan had granted the title of emir.[8]

In 1842 the Ottoman government introduced the Double Kaymakamate, whereby Mount Lebanon would be governed by a Maronite appointee and the more southerly regions of Kisrawan and Shuf would be governed by a Druze. Both would remain under the indirect rule of the governor of Sidon.[8] This partition of Lebanon proved to be a mistake. Animosities between the religious sects increased, and by 1860 they escalated into a full-blown sectarian violence.[8] In the 1860 Lebanon conflict that followed, thousands of Christians were killed in massacres that culminated with the Damascus Riots of July 1860.[8]

Following the international outcry caused by the massacres, the French landed troops in Beirut and the Ottomans abolished the unworkable system of the Kaymakamate and instituted in its place the Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon, a Maronite-majority district to be governed by non-Lebanese Christian mutasarrıf, which was the direct predecessor of the political system that continued to exist in Lebanon's early post-independence years.[8] The new arrangement ended the turmoil, and the region prospered in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire.[8]