Smith. By the beginning of June, 1799, Napoleon had withdrawn from Palestine.
Mohammed ʾAli and Ibrahim Pasha.—The reforming Sultan Mahmud II. (1808–39) introduced some order into the Turkish administration of Palestine, but his efforts were hampered by the turbulence of ʾAbdullah, son of Jezzar, who became Pasha of Acre in 1820 and soon made himself almost independent of the Sultan. The crisis and end of ʾAbdullah's career were provoked by a conflict with Mohammed ʾAli, ruler of Egypt. The Egyptian invasion of Palestine in 1831 was directed against ʾAbdullah in the first place, although it was taken by the Ottoman Government to be a challenge to its authority, and so inaugurated a war between Egypt and the Ottoman Turks for the possession of Syria. A brief campaign, in which a siege of Acre and a battle near Homs were the chief events, secured Palestine and Syria for the Egyptians. After several years of occupation, in which the Ottoman Government acquiesced, the struggle was renewed (1839). A fleet, chiefly British, representing the European allies of the Sultan, attacked the coast towns in 1840. Within four months, without any great battle being fought, the Egyptian army, under Ibrahim Pasha, evacuated the country. Nevertheless, the nine years of Egyptian occupation had done much towards centralizing the administration of the country. Ibrahim abolished the decentralized pashaliks and broke the power of the local chieftains; he enforced regular taxation; and he compelled the recognition of non-Moslem rights in local government. During his régime, moreover, Europeans were encouraged in Palestine and Syria as they were by his father in Egypt; and to this period we owe the travel books of Kinglake, Lamartine and many others. During these nine years Europe progressed from a state of mediaeval ignorance of the country almost to its present well-informed condition.
Palestine held aloof from the troubles which beset Syria in 1860 and led to the intervention of Napoleon III.
