defences fell on 4 August, it was sacked by Ibrahim Pasha's army. An estimated 500 Muslims from Hebron were killed in the attack and some 750 were conscripted. 120 youths were abducted and put at the disposal of Egyptian army officers. Most of the Muslim population managed to flee beforehand to the hills. Many Jews fled to Jerusalem, but during the general pillage of the town at least five were killed. In 1838, the total population was estimated at 10,000. When the government of Ibrahim Pasha fell in 1841, the local clan leader Abd ar-Rahman Amr once again resumed the reins of power as the Sheik of Hebron. Due to his extortionate demands for cash from the local population, most of the Jewish population fled to Jerusalem. In 1846, the Ottoman Governor-in-chief of Jerusalem (serasker), Kıbrıslı Mehmed Emin Pasha, waged a campaign to subdue rebellious sheiks in the Hebron area, and while doing so, allowed his troops to sack the town. Though it was widely rumoured that he secretly protected Abd ar-Rahman, the latter was deported together with other local leaders (such as Muslih al-'Azza of Bayt Jibrin), but he managed to return to the area in 1848. According to Hillel Cohen, the attacks on Jews in this particular period are an exception that proves the rule, that one of the easiest place for Jews to live in the world were in the various countries of the Ottoman Empire. In the mid-eighteenth century, rabbi Abraham Gershon of Kitov wrote from Hebron that:"the gentiles here very much love the Jews. When there is a brit milah (circumcision ceremony) or any other celebration, their most important men come at night and rejoice with the Jews and clap hands and dance with the Jews, just like the Jews'." Late Ottoman period By 1850, the Jewish population consisted of 45–60 Sephardic families, some 40 born in the town, and a 30-year-old Ashkenazic community of 50 families, mainly Polish and Russian, the Lubavitch Hasidic movement having established a community in 1823. The ascendency of Ibrahim Pasha devastated for a time the local glass industry for, aside from the loss of life, his plan to build a Mediterranean fleet led to severe logging in Hebron's forests, and firewood for the kilns grew rarer. At the same time, Egypt began importing cheap European glass, the rerouting of the hajj from Damascus through Transjordan eliminated Hebron as a