imam, who in the last years of his rule was Ali ibn Khalid of Sha'ab. An agha was also appointed to supervise the customs payments made by the European merchants in Acre and Haifa. Zahir's initial military forces consisted of his Zaydani kinsmen and the inhabitants of the areas he ruled. They numbered about 200 men in the early 1720s, but grew to about 1,500 in the early 1730s. During this early period of Zahir's career, he also had the key military backing of the Banu Saqr and other Bedouin tribes. As he consolidated his hold over Galilee, his army rose to over 4,000 men, many of the later recruits being peasants who supported Zahir for protecting them against Bedouin raids. This suppression of the Bedouin in turn caused the tribes to largely withdraw their military backing of Zahir. The core of his private army were the Maghrebi mercenaries. The Maghrebis' commander, Dinkizli, also served as Zahir's top military commander from 1735 until Dinkizli's defection during the Ottoman siege of Acre in 1775. From the time Zahir reconciled with Sheikh Nasif of Jabal Amil in 1768 until most of the remainder of his rule, Zahir also counted on the support of Nasif's roughly 10,000 Metawali cavalrymen. However, the Metawalis did not aid Zahir during the Ottoman offensive of 1775. Zahir's fortified villages and towns were equipped with artillery installments and his army's arsenal consisted of cannons, matchlock rifles, pistols and lances. Most of the firearms were imported from Venice or France, and by the early 1770s, the Russian imperial navy. General security According to Joudah, the two principal conditions Zahir established to foster his sheikhdom's prosperity and its survival were "security and justice". Before Zahir's consolidation of power, the villages of northern Palestine were prone to Bedouin raids and robberies and the roads were under constant threat from highway robbers and Bedouin attacks. Despite being left destitute following the looting raids, the inhabitants of these agrarian villages remained obligated to pay the Ottoman government the . To avoid punitive measures for not paying the , the inhabitants would abandon their villages for safety in the larger towns or the desert. This situation hurt the economy of the region as the raids sharply reduced the villages' agricultural output, tax collectors could not collect their impositions, and trade could not be safely conducted due to the insecurity of the roads. By 1746,