Kaplan Pasha

Kaplan Pasha was a probable descendant of a janissary based in Latakia, Matarci Ali, who died in 1666 and whose descendants remained in Latakia.^[1] When Kaplan's brother, Arslan Pasha, was appointed the governor of Tripoli Eyalet, he appointed Kaplan the governor of the Latakia Sanjak.^[2] He is mentioned as the governor of Tripoli in mid-September 1697 in a letter by the Sufi traveler Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi.^[3] In 1698,^[4] Kaplan was appointed by the imperial Ottoman government the governor of Sidon Eyalet, a post he held until 1703.^[5]

In 1698 or 1699 Kaplan Pasha was appointed the amir al-hajj (commander of the Hajj pilgrim caravan), replacing the governor of Damascus, Ahmed Pasha Salih Pashazade, who was executed by Sultan Mustafa II.^[6]

Kaplan Pasha's son, Mehmed Bey, governed Latakia in the early 18th century. He was accused of a host of injustices, including "oppressing the poor", "confiscating tobacco stores" in a government document, but could not be dislodged from his saray (government house) in the city.^[2]

• Akkach, Samer (2010). Letters of a Sufi Scholar: The Correspondence of ʻAbd Al-Ghanī Al-Nābulusī (1641-1731). Leiden and Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-17102-2.
• Barbir, Karl K. (1980). Ottoman Rule in Damascus, 1708–1758. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400853205.
• Joudah, Ahmad Hasan (2013). Revolt in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century: The Era of Shaykh Zahir al-Umar (Second ed.). Gorgias Press. ISBN 978-1-4632-0002-2.
• Winter, Stefan (2010). The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1788. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139486811.
• Winter, Stefan (2016). A History of the 'Alawis: From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691173894.