Siege of Al-Karak (1834)

Egyptian troops looted the town and the countryside for five days, while Karak's famous fortifications were shelled with gunpowder and the town was reduced to ruins. The Karakis took vengeance upon the Pasha and his Egyptian army when Ibrahim Pasha was driven out of Syria, six years after the siege.

Background

The Peasants' Revolt was a rebellion against Egyptian conscription and taxation policies in Palestine. While rebel ranks consisted mostly of the local peasantry, urban notables and Bedouin tribes also formed an integral part of the revolt, which was a collective reaction to Egypt's gradual elimination of the unofficial rights and privileges previously enjoyed by the various classes of society in the Levant under Ottoman rule.

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 abide by Ibrahim Pasha's orders to conscript, disarm and tax the local peasantry. The religious notables of Safad followed suit. Qasim and other leaders of local clans rallied their kinsmen and launched a revolt against the authorities in May 1834, taking control of several towns. While the core of the fighting was in the central mountain regions of Palestine (Samaria and Judea), the revolt also spread to the Galilee, Gaza and parts of Transjordan. Jerusalem was briefly captured by the rebels and plundered. Faced with the superior firepower and organization of Ibrahim Pasha's troops, the rebels were defeated in Jabal Nablus, Jerusalem and the coastal plain before their final defeat in Hebron, which was leveled. Afterward, Ibrahim Pasha's troops pursued and captured Qasim in al-Karak, which was under siege for 17 days.