Jazzar Pasha

Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (c. 1720/1730s–1804) was the Acre-based Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet from 1776 until his death, and at intervals governor of Damascus ¹. He is best known for defending Acre against Napoleon in 1799 and for the buildings he left in the city, among them the el-Jazzar Mosque and the Khan al-Umdan ^{1 2}.

Al-Jazzar was born, possibly as Ahmed Pervan, to the Pervan family of Fatnica near Stolac in Herzegovina; the Arabic article states plainly that his family was Christian ^{1 2}. The accounts of his flight from Bosnia as a youth differ — Volney's biography has him flee at sixteen, Olivier's at seventeen after a stabbing — and he drifted through Anatolia as a sailor before selling himself to a slave trader; in Olivier's account he subsequently converted to Islam in Egypt, while the Arabic article says he embraced Islam of his own will after being sold to the Sublime Porte ^{1 2}. In Egypt he served Mamluk officials, and when Bedouin killed his master Abdullah Bey he ambushed them and killed some seventy tribesmen, earning the name al-Jazzar, 'the Butcher', an epithet of respect for one who slaughtered Bedouin raiders ¹.

Ali Bey al-Kabir, impressed by his loyalty and courage, adopted al-Jazzar as his protégé and appointed him sanjak-bey of Cairo, where he enforced law and order as a chief enforcer ¹. He fell out with Ali Bey in 1768 after refusing to take part in the assassination of another former master, fled to Syria, defended Beirut against the Russian navy and Daher al-Umar, surrendered, entered Daher's service and then defected from him ¹.

After the Ottomans eliminated Daher, al-Jazzar became their garrison commander in Acre, and in 1776 governor of Sidon with his capital at Acre, which he strongly fortified ¹. He held the governorship of Damascus for four separate terms between 1785 and 1804, each time gaining influence against his rivals of the Azm family ¹. In 1799, with the help of the British navy, he defended Acre from Napoleon, forcing him to withdraw from Palestine ^{1 2}. His rule improved road security and made Acre and Beirut prosper, though his military expeditions and exploitative taxation drove high emigration ¹.

Al-Jazzar was afflicted with a tertian fever from August 1803, and the English article records that he died on 7 May 1804 ¹. The Arabic article gives 23 April 1804, and Wikidata agrees with it ^{2 3}. He was succeeded in Acre by his mamluk Sulayman Pasha al-Adil ¹.

No source read names a legal school for the man himself. Born to a Christian family in Bosnia, he converted to Islam — in Egypt, in the English article's account; of his own will, in the Arabic article's — and lived and ruled as a Muslim Ottoman pasha, building his mosque in Acre ^{1 2}. His birth religion is origin, not attestation of a school, generic Islam names no value in the museum's list, and Wikidata gives only Islam ³. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown.

His birth year is the most contested fact of his life: one source lists 1720, Philipp judges the 1730s more likely, the Arabic article gives 1734 in its heading and 1735 in its text, and Wikidata gives 1722 ^{1 2 3}. Wikidata's death place, Damascus, is supported by neither article and is not followed ³. His service under Ali Bey al-Kabir is written once, as a patron_of edge in Ali Bey's record.