page_title: Aqil Agha
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Aqil Agha / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: ruins of ancient wall in ibbilin עברית: שרידי ביצורים מימי דאהר אל עומר באעבלין
context_page_description: Aqil Agha al-Hasi was the strongman of northern Palestine in the mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule. He was originally a commander of Arab irregular soldiers, known as the Hawwara tribe, in the service of the Ottoman governors of Acre. His influence in the Galilee grew as he strengthened his alliances with the powerful Beni Sakhr and Anizzah tribes of Transjordan, and recruited unemployed Bedouin irregulars from Egypt into his own band of irregulars, who thenceforth became known as the Hanadi tribe. He was known by his men and Western travelers to be courageous, cunning and charismatic, all qualities that contributed to his rise as the de facto ruler of Galilee.
  Throughout his rule, Aqil remained at least nominally in service to the Ottoman Empire, which paid him for protecting the roads of northern Palestine from Bedouin raids and for maintaining the security of this region. He also exacted his own tolls on the local population in return for ensuring their security.
context_section_description: Aqil died in 1870, although his death was erroneously recorded by R. A. Stewart Macalister to have occurred in 1867. According to Macalister, Aqil died in the vicinity of Shefa-'Amr. He was buried in I'billin, his previous Galilee headquarters. As of the early 1980s, descendants of Aqil still inhabited I'billin.
  Aqil's son Quwaytin succeeded him as the chief of the Hanadi tribesmen who continued to inhabit the Galilee and its vicinity. In the late 19th century, Quwaytin's tribe had some 900 members and was based in the northern Jordan Valley. Quwaytin donned the honor cross medallions given to his father by various European governments. However, Hanadi influence and strength in the region diminished under Quwaytin and was gradually suppressed by various Ottoman actors, eventually reducing the Hanadi to an ineffectual tribe. Quwaytin's son and successor Rida also entered into Ottoman service and held the title of agha like Aqil. In the early 20th century, Rida Agha held the equivalent rank of a lieutenant and served as commander of police in the Balqa Sanjak in Transjordan.
  For nearly two decades Aqil had been a major local power in northern Palestine. He asserted to other tribal sheikhs that the land they roamed in belonged to the Arabs and that one day they would take it back from the Turkish Ottoman "conquerors". According to Finn, Aqil may have ultimately envisioned forming an Arab confederation in the southern Levant independent of the Ottomans and backed by France. However, despite these perceived intentions, Aqil ruled under the auspices of the Ottoman authorities, was paid by them, and was at least partially dependent upon their support. His ties with France and Europe contributed to his power, but he lacked the necessary support from these countries to pursue any desire of independence that he had. Aqil's death marked the removal of "the last obstacle to the implementation of full centralized Ottoman rule" in northern Palestine, according to historian Mahmoud Yazbak. When full Ottoman centralization in the Galilee was realized, local powers permanently lost their influence over the region's development. That power was instead passed on to wealthy businessmen from Haifa and Beirut, ultimately leaving the Sursock family of Beirut as the new "masters" of the Galilee, according to anthropologist Alexander Schölch.
  One of the factors Schölch attributes to Aqil's failure to secure an autonomous rule similar to that of the Arab sheikh Zahir al-Umar was Aqil's refusal to accept a sedentary life. While I'billin frequently functioned as a headquarters of sorts for Aqil, he did not take up permanent residence there, or anywhere. Instead it served as a symbol of his authority in the Galilee. Aqil was adamantly a Bedouin and once remarked to William Lynch that it would be a "disgrace" to "till the ground like a fellah". The nomadic, marauding lifestyle of Aqil ran counter to the modernization efforts of the Ottomans, which strongly encouraged settlement of the land and centralization. These processes were eventually embraced by the peasantry and the urban notables, but resisted by the Bedouin tribes whose traditional livelihoods were at risk.
  Schölch asserts that Aqil contributed little to the socio-economic development of Palestine, and was not a "benefactor of the peasants". However, Aqil is described in a mostly positive light by modern-day sources and in local tradition. In the Arab nationalist political atmosphere that followed the Ottoman Empire's fall in 1917, Aqil's Arab identity and his struggles against the Ottomans contributed to the prevailing positive commemoration of his life. Palestinian Christians in particular remember him fondly for protecting Christians during his rule.
caption: Remains of the Zaydani fortress in I'billin. Aqil temporarily lived in I'billin, and the village served as his rural headquarters. He was buried there in 1870.
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