conquest of Cyprus during the war with Venice (1570–1573). He belonged to a family of Kurdish tribal chieftains based in the Kurd-Dagh (Kurd Mountains) west of Kilis and Aleppo. The family name Janbulad translates from Kurdish as "soul of steel". Janbulad and his family were rewarded for their military achievements with the hereditary governorships of the sanjaks of Kilis and Ma'arra. According to the historian William Griswold, the hereditary appointments to the militarily strategic and lucrative posts were "generous and represented considerable respect" by the Sublime Porte (imperial Ottoman government in Constantinople) for Janbulad. He built at least one Sunni Muslim mosque in Kilis in 1562 before his governorship, and he or one of his family members built a bathhouse in the city. After Janbulad's death his lands were bequeathed to his sons Huseyn and Habib. A third son, Ahmed, was Ali's father. Huseyn was a sipahi (fief-holding cavalryman) in Damascus and inherited the tribal emirate of Kilis, which he shared on a rotational arrangement with Habib. He participated in the 1578 Ottoman campaigns against the Safavids in Georgia and eastern Anatolia. Three years later he was appointed beylerbey (provincial governor) of Aleppo Eyalet, the first Kurd to attain the rank of beylerbey in Ottoman history and the first local to be appointed governor of Aleppo. In 1585 he was the lieutenant commander of Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha during the capture of Yerevan from the Safavid shah Mohammad Khodabanda. During his governorship Huseyn likely struggled against rivals seeking the post and accumulated debts. Not long after Yerevan, the Porte dismissed Huseyn and Habib from their Kilis and Ma'arra posts for unclear reasons, reassigning control of Kilis to a certain Kurd, Dev Sulayman. The authorities imprisoned Huseyn in Aleppo and sold his assets at a low price to pay back his debts and diminish his strength. Upon his release Huseyn returned to Kilis and with his musketeers drove out Dev Suleyman and reclaimed his former hereditary lands. By 1600 he had accrued significant wealth and influence with the Porte, and a well-trained and well-compensated army of sekbans, as well as his Kurdish tribesmen and Turkmen and Arab tribal levies from northern Syria. Huseyn was reappointed beylerbey of Aleppo in July 1604. Aleppo was a particularly wealthy city and the revenues of its province amounted to about 3.6 million akces. Around one year later Huseyn was executed in Van by the order