Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

7 | Regional leadership and the prosecution of
a governor
Background to the case
In his memoirs Salih al-Tall reports that the first governor of ‘Ajlun district
was Da’ud ‘Abbada. 1 In fact there were governors in both ‘Ajlun and Salt for more
than a decade before ‘Abbada’s appointment to the post in 1877–78. 2 But Da’ud
‘Abbada’s time in the post was indeed memorable. As an official who invoked the
vali of his day, the major reform statesman Midhat Pasha, and as a graduate of the
College of Arts (mekteb-i fünun) with over a quarter of a century’s experience in
government service, ‘Abbada appears to have been a forceful administrator. 3 Along
with the treasurer, another Damascene, Jurji Qabawat, he came to be prosecuted
on charges of taking bribes. The claimants represented a veritable cross-section of
village and regional leaders. As the secretary of the district Antun Siyur observed,
‘the meetings held to achieve their appointment to [council] memberships and
honorific directorships [of nahiyes] resembled a kind of general revolt’. 4
The matter was a little more complex than Siyur’s succinct description. The
case pitting members of the two major councils against the governor came at
a time when the vali Midhat Pasha lamented to the Porte that ‘the conditions
and public procedures of the councils and courts were extremely corrupt and
disordered’ and that new elections were in order. 5 The case came against a
background of troubles the year before ‘Abbada’s appointment when a number
of villages of the ‘Ajlun mountains refused to pay their taxes. 6 ‘Abbada’s tenure
as governor saw the introduction of tax reforms associated with land registration,
which entailed bypassing regional leaders and negotiating directly with village
authorities and cultivators. 7 It is this aspect of the conflict that concerns us, but
first a word about the basic outline of the case.
In the latter part of the tenure of Da’ud ‘Abbada the mutasarrıf of the Hauran,
Shihabizade Salim Bey Efendi, together with his brother Najib Bey (or as he is
called elsewhere, Mir Najib), came to the district to confirm the appointment of
directors (müdürs) to several nahiyes and members to the administrative council
and court of first instance, and to examine certain aspects of tax reform and
tapu registration. 8 During this time, in collaboration with Jurji Qabawat, Da’ud
‘Abbada demanded substantial payments from local leaders appointed. When it
was learned a few months later that the governor was to be transferred to the less
important neighbouring district of Qunaitra, two of the subsequent claimants,
members of the administrative council, Muhammad al-Mutlaq of al-Bariha village
and Jabr ‘Abd al-Rahman of al-Husn, followed the governor to the Hauran sanjak
headquarters where, according to their testimony, ‘Abbada promised that if they
80