page_title: Ali Janbulad
section_title: Family background
hierarchical_section_title: Ali Janbulad / Family background
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Syria in the Ottoman Empire in 1600. العربية: خريطة فرنسية تقريبية عام 1600 تظهر سوريا (بلاد الشام) حسب التقسيم الإداري العثماني آنذاك من طوروس إلى سيناء.
context_page_description: Ali Janbulad Pasha was a 16th/17th century Kurdish tribal chief from Kilis and a rebel Ottoman governor of Aleppo who wielded practical supremacy over Syria in c. 1606–1607. His rebellion, launched to avenge the execution of his uncle Huseyn ibn Janbulad by the commander Jigalazade Sinan Pasha in 1605, gained currency among northern Syria's Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab tribes and expanded to include local Syrian governors and chiefs, most prominently Fakhr al-Din Ma'n of Mount Lebanon and his erstwhile enemy Yusuf Sayfa Pasha of Tripoli. Ali formed a secret military alliance with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand I, with the explicit aim of jointly destroying the Ottoman Empire and establishing the Janbulad family as the sovereigns of Syria.
  Ali's burgeoning ties with several Celali revolt leaders, whose influence spanned central Anatolia, Cilicia and part of Mesopotamia, posed a major threat to the Empire at a time in which it was at war with Austria-Hungary in the west and Safavid Iran in the east. The prospect of a foreign-backed, wide-scale rebellion in the Ottoman heartland prompted Grand Vizier Kuyucu Murad Pasha to launch an expedition against Ali.
context_section_description: Ali was the grandson of Janbulad ibn Qasim al-Kurdi (d. 1572), the sanjak-bey (district governor) of Kilis, part of Aleppo Eyalet, who suppressed brigandage in the district and took part in the 1571 Ottoman conquest of Cyprus during the war with Venice (1570–1573). He belonged to a family of Kurdish tribal chieftains based in the Kurd-Dagh (Kurd Mountains) west of Kilis and Aleppo. The family name Janbulad translates from Kurdish as "soul of steel". Janbulad and his family were rewarded for their military achievements with the hereditary governorships of the sanjaks of Kilis and Ma'arra. According to the historian William Griswold, the hereditary appointments to the militarily strategic and lucrative posts were "generous and represented considerable respect" by the Sublime Porte (imperial Ottoman government in Constantinople) for Janbulad. He built at least one Sunni Muslim mosque in Kilis in 1562 before his governorship, and he or one of his family members built a bathhouse in the city.
  After Janbulad's death his lands were bequeathed to his sons Huseyn and Habib. A third son, Ahmed, was Ali's father. Huseyn was a sipahi (fief-holding cavalryman) in Damascus and inherited the tribal emirate of Kilis, which he shared on a rotational arrangement with Habib. He participated in the 1578 Ottoman campaigns against the Safavids in Georgia and eastern Anatolia. Three years later he was appointed beylerbey (provincial governor) of Aleppo Eyalet, the first Kurd to attain the rank of beylerbey in Ottoman history and the first local to be appointed governor of Aleppo. In 1585 he was the lieutenant commander of Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha during the capture of Yerevan from the Safavid shah Mohammad Khodabanda. During his governorship Huseyn likely struggled against rivals seeking the post and accumulated debts. Not long after Yerevan, the Porte dismissed Huseyn and Habib from their Kilis and Ma'arra posts for unclear reasons, reassigning control of Kilis to a certain Kurd, Dev Sulayman. The authorities imprisoned Huseyn in Aleppo and sold his assets at a low price to pay back his debts and diminish his strength.
  Upon his release Huseyn returned to Kilis and with his musketeers drove out Dev Suleyman and reclaimed his former hereditary lands. By 1600 he had accrued significant wealth and influence with the Porte, and a well-trained and compensated army of sekbans, as well as his Kurdish tribesmen and Turkmen and Arab tribal levies from northern Syria. Huseyn was reappointed beylerbey of Aleppo in July 1604. Aleppo was a particularly wealthy city and the revenues of its province amounted to about 3.6 million akces. Around one year later Huseyn was executed in Van by the order of the general Jigalazade Sinan Pasha for refusing join the campaign against the Safavids.
caption: Map of Ottoman Syria (in French) c. 1600, showing the eyalets of Aleppo, Tripoli and Damascus
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