User:Al Ameer son/Sa'd al-Umar

Life
Sa'd was the eldest son of Umar al-Zaydani, who had served as a multazim (limited-term tax farmer) of the Safed area as early as 1698 or 1699. After his death in 1702, Sa'd succeeded him as the head of the Banu Zaydan family. Other members of the Zaydan were also multazims, such as Umar's brother Ali in the Shefa-Amr area and their brother Hamza in the vicinity of Nazareth, by at least the first decade of the 18th century. Sa'd moved his family from the vicinity of Tiberias west, to the village of Arraba, after his brother, Zahir al-Umar, killed a Tiberias man during a brawl in 1707. While Sa'd was the head of the Zaydans, he and other members of the family often transferred their tax farms to Zahir's name, in a bid to protect themselves from being held accountable by the government for a default in payments. Throughout the 1720s, Sa'd and Zahir participated in Galilee caravans to Damascus, where they bought and sold goods, continuing the trade there commenced by their father.

From at least the 1720s and throughout the rest of their lives, Zahir, Sa'd and the other Zaydani leaders benefitted substantially from the growing European demand for Galilee cotton, selling the crop produced in their villages to the French traders of Acre. In April 1730, the governor of Sidon Eyalet attacked Safed. Sa'd was the multazim of Safed at the time and was arrested by the governor, who imprisoned him in Sidon. A group of French merchants paid the large sum of 20,000 kuruş to free Sa'd. Sa'd was also reinstated by the governor as the multazim of Safed.

Around 1730, Sa'd had been bypassed by the Banu Saqr, a powerful Bedouin tribe which had long dominated the area between Safed and Nablus, when its leaders chose Zahir to officially represent them with the government and lead the new alliance they formed with the Zaydan. Zahir soon after leveraged his support from the Bedouin to occupy Tiberias, evict its government-appointed tax collector, and gain the tax farming rights over its district. In exchange for the French bailout in 1730, Sa'd promised them that year's cotton crop from Shefa-Amr, Tamra and I'billin. The harvest was poor and Sa'd could not meet the promised amount, prompting the French merchants, who were apparently based in Sidon, to collect from him in Tiberias. There, Zahir intervened and offered to pay the whole sum of the bailout plus 12% interest. The merchants refused, insisting the payment come in the form of cotton, threatening Zahir was imprisonment in Sidon as a hostage.

Establishment in Deir Hanna
As Zahir expanded his tax farms and holdings north to Safed, northwest to Jiddin and west to Nazareth throughout the 1730s, Sa'd moved his base from Arraba to nearby Deir Hanna. There, he built significant fortifications and a mosque. The village fortifications were later expanded by Zahir and his son Ali, ultimately resulting in a double-wall around Deir Hanna with several towers. Sa'd is credited by the 18th century historian, Sa'id Effendi, with building the higher, inner wall and its twelve towers. He also built its mosque in 1732 or 1733, possibly on top of a Crusader-era ruin, and several houses as part of a larger compound. It was generally considered the most famous mosque built by the Zaydans in the Galilee, and though it was mostly destroyed by Jazzar Pasha in 1776, the latter used its plan to build the Jazzar Mosque of Acre. An inscription of the mosque read: "Praise is due to Allah alone for what he bestowed upon the Hashemite [the prophet Muhammad, the best of mankind O, how fortunate is he who witnessed, and held in esteem the builder of this dwelling place, Sa'd al-Umar"

After Sa'd's death, Zahir placed his son Ahmad in control of Deir Hanna, but by the early 1770s, he was replaced by another son, Ali.