62 A Short History of the Middle East
even though her estimated population had fallen to two and a half
millions. Famine was frequent, and so was pestilence, by which
half-a~Hiillioii died in Egypt in 1619, and 230 villages were deso-
lated in 1643. In the mid-seventeenth century the country between
Aleppo and that part of the Euphrates nearest to the city was fertile
and efficiently irrigated, but a century later the land had become a
desert;1 and at the end of the eighteenth century it is stated that only
one-eighth of the villages formerly on the tax-register of the Aleppo
pashaliq were still inhabited. The population of Syria and Palestine
combined was then estimated at only one and a half millions,
with that of Palestine shrunken to perhaps under 200,000.
Already by 1600 the authority of the provincial governors was
weakening as the brief noontide of the Ottoman Empire passed.
Sometimes the provinces relapsed into anarchy; but sometimes the
power of the pashas was superseded by that of local rulers who
afforded greater internal stability, the possibility of sounder econo-
mic life, and freer commercial enterprise to European merchants,
than did the transient and rapacious Turkish administrators. The
Druze amirs of the Lebanon became virtually independent of the
Porte, and the relative security of life under their rule attracted a
considerable immigration from other parts of Syria. Outstanding
among them was Fakhr ud-Din, who carved out a kingdom for
himself in Lebanon and North Palestine between 1585 and 1635.
He made Ms own diplomatic agreements with European Powers;
encouraged the production and export of silk and cotton through
his ports of Sidon and Beirut in exchange for European goods; and
introduced Christian missions and European engineers. From 1600
to 1669 the pashaliq of Basra enjoyed firm government and pros-
perity under the local family of Afrasyab. Later it was the turn of
the Baghdad pashaliq to find stability and tolerant rule under
Hasan Pasha and his son Ahmed Pasha, 1704-47. After the death
of the latter, effective control remained till 1832 in the hands of a
corps of Georgian Mamluks, the majority Christian by birth,
which the two pashas had built up. The Georgian Sulaiman Pasha
the Great united the three pashaliqs of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul
from 1780 to 1802, paying only formal recognition to the Ottoman
Sultan in the form of'constant reports, rarer presents, and yet less
frequent tribute.'2 Until about 1750 Egypt was less fortunate. The
1 C. P, Grant, TheSyrian Desert, 161, n. 1.
s Longrigg, op. cit., 199,