Page:Syria and Palestine WDL11774.pdf/44

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28
HISTORY
[No 60.

the coast. He had to thank the Emir Beshir that the Palestine revolt of 1834 came to nothing in the end.

In the mountains not so much was attempted. Lebanon kept its single prince; but he was constrained to help the unpopular disarmament of his Druses, and the Mountain had to grow accustomed to the passage of Egyptian troops. The Metawalis were coerced by a regular garrison at Baalbek. The Ansarie found their coast firmly held and their contributions rigorously exacted. The predatory Turcomans and Kurds of the north, who continued recalcitrant throughout the Egyptian occupation, had to keep to their higher mountains or the Antioch marshes; and Kuchuk Ali had no successor at Payas.

The process, like all interference with vested abuses, was cordially detested; and, when the moment came for Egyptian withdrawal-even at the prospect of itIbrahim found whole districts rise upon his rear and flanks. But his name has lived on in Syria, to be used still with awe and respect, although Egyptians are almost as unpopular there as, on account of another past occupation, they are in Hejaz. Superior apparatus and knowledge of its use may compensate for presumed physical and moral inferiority, but it will never make the user acceptable in his surroundings.

Encouragement of Europeans.—The work of the Egyptian occupation, however, had further results. In opening up Syria to Europe, even as Egypt had been opened during a quarter of a century past, it went far beyond Mahmud's work in Asia Minor. Mention has been made already of Ibrahim's consideration for the non-Moslem elements in the native population-a consideration for which he paid the price of present unpopularity, and they that of irreconcilable rancour. Attracted by such evidence of a liberal policy, Europeans came to Syria as they had never come before; and all, except those who were so ill-advised as to throw the Sultan at his head, were made welcome by Ibrahim. The earliest books on Syria that are still read—Chesney's,