Egypt Eyalet Abd al-Hadi clan of Arraba Abu Ghosh clan of Jerusalem region (From July 1834) Supported by Urban notables of Nablus, Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed Rural clans and Bedouin tribes of Palestine Supported by Muhammad Ali Ibrahim Pasha Salim Pasha Rashad Bey † Mustafa Bey (WIA) Husayn Abd al-Hadi Qasim al-Ahmad Yusuf al-Qasim Isa al-Amr Abdullah al-Jarrar Isa al-Barqawi Mas'ud al-Madi Isa al-Madi Ismail ibn Simhan Abd al-Jabir Barghouti Aqil Agha Salim Atawna † Subh Shawkah Ismail Majali Galilee, Mount Lebanon and Hauran Palestine and Transjordan The Peasants' Revolt[2][3] was a rebellion against Egyptian conscription and taxation policies in Palestine.

[4] As part of Muhammad Ali's modernization policies, Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian governor of the Levant, issued conscription orders for a fifth of all Muslim males of fighting age.

Encouraged by rural sheikh Qasim al-Ahmad, the urban notables of Nablus, Hebron and the Jerusalem-Jaffa area did not carry out Ibrahim Pasha's orders to conscript, disarm and tax the local peasantry.

By the 20th century, the revolt was largely absent in the Palestinian collective memory,[5] from which "the humiliating and traumatic events" were "conveniently erased", according to Israeli historian Baruch Kimmerling.

[4] In consolidating his power, Muhammad Ali, the rebel governor of Ottoman Egypt, was modeling his rule on the bureaucratic organization characteristic of modern European states.

Muhammad Ali alleged that 6,000 fellahin (peasants or farm laborers) had fled to Acre to escape the Egyptian draft, corvée, and taxes, and he demanded their return.

[11][12] The move was a power-play by Ibrahim Pasha and the Abd al-Hadis,[11] who were quickly gaining prominence in the region; their members had been appointed to head the Sidon Eyalet (which included part of northern Palestine) and a number of its districts.

[11] The Abu Ghosh clan, based in the Jerusalem-area village of Qaryat al-Inab, traditionally served as toll collectors for the Jerusalem-Jaffa road, and were increasingly considered by Ibrahim Pasha to be extortionists.

"[15] The notables replied in the affirmative,[15] but asserted that their men were already trained in the art of war and like the generations before them, they would "willingly shed blood" for the "fatherland" and "defend their country" from "the enemies of our religion".

At the time of the notables' stated failure to conscript local peasants, Ibrahim Pasha had been in need of new troops to replenish his army in preparation for further advances against the Ottomans.

In response, some 500 Egyptian troops left the citadel to pursue the rebels, but began to loot homes in the city in revenge before Rashad Bey ordered them to cease.

Afterward, residents sympathetic to the revolt opened the Damascus Gate and 2,000 peasant irregulars from Nablus entered to reinforce the rebels, whose numbers in Jerusalem then reached some 20,000.

The next day, over 1,000 rebels from the Ta'amirah tribe entered the adjacent town of Bethlehem to protect their families and the Christian inhabitants from potentially experiencing the same fate as Beit Jala.

[33] When the notables of Jerusalem learned that Muhammad Ali was set to arrive in Palestine with reinforcements, they offered to mediate a truce between the Egyptians and the rebel leaders through the mufti Tahir Effendi al-Husayni, who had since been released.

In return for the allegiance of the Abu Ghosh clan, Ali heeded their request, released Jabr and appointed him mutassalim of Jerusalem in place of Muhammad al-Qasim, who had defected to the rebels at the start of the revolt.

[44] Following the rebels' rout at Deir al-Ghusun on 14 July, Ibrahim Pasha's troops proceeded to Nablus unhindered,[42] passing through Arraba, the loyalist stronghold of the Abd al-Hadi family, and then through Sanur, the throne village of the Jarrar clan.

[42] For the most part, due to the loyalty of the Abd al-Hadi's to Muhammad Ali, and the neutrality of the powerful Nimr clan, the inhabitants of the city of Nablus had not participated in the revolt.

In late July, Emir Bashir led his forces toward Galilee, but before advancing further southward, he made a number of proclamations advising that the rebels of Safad surrender.

[45] According to Joseph Schwarz, a historian and rabbi who wrote A Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine in 1850, most of the Muslim population managed to flee beforehand to the nearby hills.

[54] Not long after the end of Egyptian rule, the intermittently recurring civil strife between the Qays and Yaman tribo-political factions resumed in parts of central Palestine.

[6] Coinciding with these efforts, the international powers began a tug-of-war of influence in Palestine as they sought to extend their protection over the country's religious minorities, a struggle carried out mainly through their consular representatives in Jerusalem.

[41] In the greater Jerusalem region, the main rebel clans were Sam'an of Ras Karkar, Barghouti of Bani Zeid and, until their defection to Ibrahim Pasha, Abu Ghosh of Qaryat al-Inab.

In the north, the rebel forces around Acre and Haifa were commanded by the Madi family,[1] while the Hawwara irregulars of Aqil Agha,[61] who had defected from Ibrahim Pasha's service,[62] and local sheikhs did most of the fighting in the heart of the Galilee, outside of Safad.

In the southern Gaza region, Egypt dispatched Bedouin from the tribes of Awlad Ali, al-Jamaiyat, al-Jahma, and al-Fawayd to pursue rebels and raid their villages.

However, a "proto-national sense" of Palestine (Filastin) had developed among the people of the Gaza, Jerusalem, Nablus, Lajjun and Safad districts (administratively part of either the Sidon or Damascus Eyalet) by at least the 17th century, according to historian Khaled M. Safi.

The 17th century Ramla-based intellectual, Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, used the term often in his fatawat (religious edicts) without specifying its boundaries, suggesting that the population of Palestine was aware of its geographic definition.

[1] Historians Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal argue that the revolt was a formative event for the Palestinian sense of nationhood, in that it brought together disparate groups against a common enemy.

[57] In the 20th century, the passing along of any oral testimonies from that time period were not sought after and recorded due to the prevailing nationalist atmosphere which largely focused on the anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist struggle in Palestine.

[69] Due to the aforementioned factors, the revolt was often considered to either be a manipulation of the commoners by a reactionary elite against modernization,[69][70] a successful Ottoman bid to hamper Egypt's efforts to liberate and unify its Arab lands,[70] or was sidelined.

[71] The concept that the revolt's diverse participants were acting based on their own interests and actual grievances rather than manipulation was largely ignored in Palestinian historiography until recent decades.