Ottoman rulers considered creating the province as early as 1585. The districts of Beirut-Sidon and Safed (encompassing much of the Galilee) were united under the rule of Ma'nid emir Fakhr al-Din Ma'n.[3]
The province was briefly created during Fakhr al-Din's exile in 1614–1615, and recreated in 1660.[3][4] 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.[3]
Despite conflicts in the 1660s, the Ma'n 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."[5]
The Ma'ns were succeeded by the Shihab family in ruling the mountainous interior of Sidon-Beirut from the final years of the 17th century through the 19th century.[5] The governor of Sidon's rule also remained nominal in the Safed sanjak as well, where in the 18th century different local chiefs, mainly the sheikhs of the Zaydan family in the Galilee and the sheikhs of the Shia clans of Ali al-Saghir, Munkar, and Sa'b families in Jabal Amil.[6] Even the coastal towns of Sidon, Beirut, and Acre were farmed out to the Sidon-based Hammud family. By the late 1720s, Beirut and its tax farm also went over to the Shihabs under Emir Haydar, while Acre and its tax farm came under the rule of the Zaydani sheikh Zahir al-Umar in the mid-1740s.[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.[9] In 1840, the governor of Sidon moved his residence to Beirut, effectively making it the new capital of the eyalet.[10] 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.[9]
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. 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. In the 1860 Lebanon conflict that followed, thousands of Christians were killed in massacres that culminated with the Damascus Riots of July 1860.[9]
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. The new arrangement ended the turmoil, and the region prospered in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire.[9]
By the start of the 18th century, Sidon Eyalet was not divided into sanjaks and third-level kazas (judicial districts) as most other eyalets, including neighboring Damascus, were administratively divided at the time. Instead, Sidon comprised several smaller, fiscal districts, most commonly called muqata'as in the contemporary government documents, and less commonly referred to as nahiyes.[11] There were several, mostly insignificant changes to the territorial jurisdictions of the muqata'as throughout the century but for the most part, the province comprised the following muqata'as:
Safed and Rama (these had been separate muqata'as but were merged by the governor Jazzar Pasha in 1777)[13]
Jira (countryside of Safed; sometimes, this district was called 'Jira and Tarshiha')[14]
Shefa-Amr and Nazareth (these had been separate muqata'as but were merged by Jazzar Pasha in 1777)[13]
Haifa and Yajur (these had been part of the Damascus Eyalet, but were appended to Sidon in 1723. They were later re-appended, in name only, to Damascus in the 1760–1762, but were afterward restored to Sidon)[15]
Sahil Atlit (the Atlit coast south of Haifa was effectively annexed from Damascus, without imperial sanction, by the powerful tax farmer, Zahir al-Umar, in the late 1750s, and became officially part of Sidon during Jazzar Pasha's governorship, 1776–1804)[16]
Marj Ayyun (appended to Sidon during Jazzar Pasha's governorship)[16]
Sidon Eyalet consisted of seven sanjaks (districts) in the early 19th century:[17]
Abu-Husayn, Abdul-Rahim (1992). "Problems in the Ottoman Administration in Syria during the 16th and 17th Centuries: The Case of the Sanjak of Sidon-Beirut". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 24 (4): 665–675. doi:10.1017/S002074380002239X. S2CID159670509.
Joudah, Ahmad Hasan (2013). Revolt in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century: The Era of Shaykh Zahir al-Umar (Second ed.). Gorgias Press. ISBN978-1-4632-0002-2.
Süreyya, Mehmet (1996) [1890]. Nuri Akbayar; Seyit A. Kahraman (eds.). Sicill-i Osmanî (in Turkish). Beşiktaş, Istanbul: Türkiye Kültür Bakanlığı and Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı. ISBN9789753330411.
Winter, Stefan (2010). The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman rule, 1516–1788. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-76584-8.
