son of Ali, as commander of the family militia. Zahir spent the 1730s fortifying Tiberias and expanding his territory. Northern and western expansion Due to the relative justice and fairness of his rule, peasants from nearby areas moved to Zahir's domains or invited him to rule over them. The people living under the rule of Ahmad al-Husayn, the of the Jiddin district, in the northwestern Galilee, appealed for Zahir to relieve them of Ahmad's heavy-handedness, as well as the extortions of the Bedouins. Zahir accepted their proposition and obtained permission from Sidon's governor, Ibrahim Pasha al-Azm, to seize the area. Ahmad had also requested permission to attack Zahir, to which Ibrahim Pasha consented in the hope of neutralizing two powerful local leaders. In 1738, Zahir assembled a 1,500-strong force and defeated Ahmad's forces near the Jiddin fortress, occupying it and the adjacent areas under its control, namely Abu Sinan, to the west, and Tarshiha, to the east. He was then formally granted the of Jiddin. During the confrontation, Zahir encountered a mercenary, Ahmad Agha al-Dinkizli, whom he commissioned to raise and command a private army of Maghrebi troops. Zahir next moved on Safed, whose , Muhammad al-Naf'i, surrendered the town around 1740, after prolonged negotiations and military pressure. Control of the strategically situated town, with its citadel built on a high hill, gave the Zaydans command over the surrounding countryside. Afterward, the fortified village of Bi'ina, which had withstood a siege by Zahir in 1739, was added to his domains through an agreement sealed by Zahir's marriage to the daughter of the village (headman). He also acquired the fortress of Suhmata through diplomacy, followed by the nearby fortified village of Deir al-Qassi, after marrying the daughter of its sheikh, Abd al-Khaliq Salih. All the above gains solidified his hold over the northern and eastern Galilee. Elsewhere, Sa'd had taken control of Deir Hanna, establishing his headquarters there, while their cousin Muhammad, who was already the of Damun, added Shefa-Amr to his holdings, increasing the presence of the Zaydans in the western Galilee. Capture of Nazareth and conflict with Nablus Nazareth, a mostly Christian town, came under Zahir's control by the end of 1740, following his capture of Safed. Philipp contends the extension of Zahir's rule southward toward Nazareth and the neighboring Marj Ibn Amer, the wide plain between the Galilee and Jabal Nablus through which the Damascus–Nablus trade routes passed,