And
He Effectually Extorted From His Father A Promise Not To Kill Any Of
Them.
It is said that Ibrahim foretold his son that the time would come
when he would repent of his intercession.
A short time afterwards
Ibrahim was nominated a second time to the Pashalik of Damascus, which
[p.651] became vacant by Djezzar’s death, in 1804. His prisoners were
obliged to follow him to Damascus; from whence they found means to open
a correspondence with the Emir Beshir, the chief of the Druses, and to
prevail upon him to use all his interest with Ibrahim to effect their
deliverance. Ibrahim stood at that time in need of the Emir’s
friendship; he had received orders from the Porte to seize upon
Djezzar’s treasures at Akka, and to effect this the co-operation of the
Druse chief was absolutely necessary. Upon the Emir’s reiterated
applications, the prisoners were at last liberated.
When Ibrahim Pasha removed to Damascus, he procured the Pashalik of
Aleppo for his son Mohammed Pasha, a man who possesses in a high degree
the qualification so necessary in a delegate of the Porte, of
understanding how to plunder his subjects. The chief of a Sherif family,
Ibn Hassan Aga Khalas (who has since entered into the corps of the
Janissaries, and is now one of their principal men), was the first who
resolved to oppose open force to his measures; he engaged at first only
seven or eight other families to join him, and it was with this feeble
force that the rebellion broke out which put an end to the Pasha’s
government. The confederates began by knocking down the Pasha’s men in
the streets wherever they met them, Janissaries soon assembled from all
quarters to join Hassan’s party; and between two or three hundred Deli
Bashi or regular troops of the Pasha were massacred in the night in
their own habitations, to which the rebels found access from the
neighbouring terraces or flat roofs. Still the Pasha’s troops would have
subdued the insurgents had it not been for the desperate bravery of
Hassan Aga. After several months daily fighting in the streets, in which
the Pasha’s troops had thrown up entrenchments, want of food began to be
sensibly felt in the part of the city which his adherents occupied near
the Serai, a very spacious building now in ruins. He came therefore to
the resolution of abandoning the city. At Mohammed’s request a Tartar
was sent, from Constantinople, with orders enjoining him to march
against Berber, governor of Tripoli, who had been declared a rebel.
Having thus covered the disgrace of his defeat, he marched out of Aleppo
in the end of 1804, but instead of proceeding to Tripoli, he established
his head quarters at Sheikh Abou Beker, a monastery of Derwishes
situated upon an elevation only at one mile’s distance from Aleppo,
where he recruited his troops and prepared himself to besiege the town.
His affairs, however, took a more favourable turn upon the arrival of a
Kapidgi Bashi or officer of the Porte from Constantinople, who carried
with him the most positive orders that Mohammed Pasha should remain
governor of Aleppo, and be acknowledged as such by the inhabitants, The
Kapidgi’s persuasions, as well as the Sultan’s commands, which the
Janissaries did not dare openly to disobey, brought on a compromise, in
consequence of which the Pasha re-entered the city.
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