[5] In the local chronicles, few events are recorded in Ahmad's career, showing a stable and peaceful thirty-year reign as the hereditary multazim (holder of an iltizam, or limited-term tax farm) of most of Mount Lebanon.
[9][10] Mulhim evaded capture and after defeating the Ma'ns' rivals for Druze leadership from the Alam al-Din dynasty, regained the iltizam of the Chouf, Matn, Jurd and Gharb nahiyas (subdistricts),[9] which collectively formed the so-called 'Druze Mountain' area of Sidon-Beirut.
The campaign was carried out by the troops of the sultan led by Grand Vizier Koprulu Mehmed Pasha and the governor of Sidon Eyalet, an administrative entity formed that year out of the Sidon-Beirut and Safed sanjaks to strengthen government control and taxation efforts of the Druze-dominated region.
[12] The troops wreaked havoc in the countryside but were unable to locate the rebel chiefs and expanded their targets to include the Ma'nid brothers when they refused to cooperate in handing over their allies.
In the ensuing conflict, Ahmad is held to have represented the 'Qays' faction, while the Alam al-Din emir led the 'Yaman'; these divisions alluded to the early Islamic-period Qays–Yaman tribo-political rivalry, but there was no actual known connection to that centuries-old feud.
[13][a] In a battle close to Beirut in 1667, Ahmad and the Qays routed the Yamani Druze led by the Alam al-Dins and the Sawwafs of the Matn, prompting them to leave Mount Lebanon for refuge in Damascus.
[15] In 1689 the Ottoman imperial government issued a call up of troops from the governors and military commanders of the Syrian eyalets to the war front with Hungary, threatening those officials who failed to cooperate with execution as infidels.
[18] Ahmad was issued orders two years later, this time to help the governors of Tripoli and Damascus stamp out the rebellion of the Hamada sheikhs, who are only referred to in government records as Kizilbash or Revafid, both derogatory terms used by the Ottomans for Shia Muslims, the former meant to associate them with pro-Safavid Persian rebels.
[18] The Hamadas, who were the multazims of Byblos, Jubbat Bsharri and Batroun, had commenced their rebellion in the hill country around Tripoli while the Ottomans were smarting from their losses on the Hungarian front in the 1680s.
[20] In May 1695, the imperial authorities formally voided Ahmad's control of his iltizam, which by then also included the nahiyas of Iqlim al-Kharrub and Marj Uyun to the south of the Druze Mountain.
[12] Upon vacating his iltizam, his Druze rival Musa Alam al-Din, who had been based in Damascus, was installed by the Ottomans in his place at Deir al-Qamar, the traditional seat of Ma'nid power in the Chouf.
The Ottoman government, which did not approve of Ahmad's practical rule, ordered different Syrian provincial governors to help reinstate Musa, who remained the legal multazim, and afterward reduce the tax burden on the Druze Mountain to boost his popularity there.
The government, having contended with nearly two centuries of frequent Druze rebellions and over two decades of a disastrous war effort in Hungary, was probably unable to effectively tend to such matters in Mount Lebanon.