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- The Turabay dynasty (Arabic: آل طرباي) was the preeminent household of the Bedouin Banu Haritha tribe in northern Palestine whose chiefs traditionally served as the multazims (tax farmers) and sanjak-beys (district governors) of Lajjun Sanjak during Ottoman rule in the 16th–17th centuries. The sanjak spanned the towns of Lajjun, Jenin, Haifa and Atlit and the surrounding countryside. The progenitors of the family had served as chiefs of Marj Bani Amir (the Plain of Esdraelon or Jezreel Valley) under the Mamluks in the late 15th century. During the Ottoman conquest in 1516–1517, the Turabay chief Qaraja and his son Turabay aided the forces of Ottoman sultan Selim I. The Ottomans kept them in their Mamluk-era role as guardians of the strategic Via Maris and Damascus–Jerusalem highways and rewarded them with tax farms in northern Palestine. Their territory became a sanjak in 1559 and Turabay's son Ali became its first governor. His brother Assaf was appointed in 1573, serving for ten years before being dismissed and exiled to Rhodes for involvement in a rebellion. His nephew Turabay was appointed in 1589 and remained in office until his death in 1601. His son and successor Ahmad, the most prominent chief of the dynasty, ruled Lajjun for nearly a half-century and repulsed attempts by the powerful Druze chief and Ottoman governor of Sidon-Beirut and Safad, Fakhr al-Din Ma'n, to take over Lajjun and Nablus in the 1620s. In the effort, he consolidated the family's alliance with the Ridwan and governing dynasties of Gaza and Nablus, which remained intact until the dynasties' demise toward the end of the century. As multazims and sanjak-beys the Turabays were entrusted with collecting taxes for the Ottomans, quelling local rebellions, acting as judges, and securing roads. They were largely successful in these duties, while keeping good relations with the peasantry and the village chiefs of the sanjak. Although in the 17th century a number of their chiefs lived in the towns of Lajjun and Jenin, the Turabays largely preserved their nomadic way of life, pitching camp with their tribesmen near Caesarea in the winters and the plain of Acre in the summers. The eastward migration of the Banu Haritha to the Jordan Valley, Ottoman centralization drives, and diminishing tax revenues brought about their political decline and they were permanently stripped of office in 1677. The family remained in the area, with members living in Jenin at the close of the century and in Tulkarm. (en)
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