Shamdin Agha

Biography

Shamdin Agha, also called Shamlin Agha, died in 1860. He was an Ottoman Kurdish commander who led irregular troops for the governors of Damascus and Sidon, effectively becoming a powerful paramilitary leader in Damascus. His descendants formed a notable family bearing his name in Ottoman Syria. He was born in Acre to a Kurdish tribal sheikh named Musa.

Early in the 1800s, he relocated to the al-Salihiyah district of Damascus, where he gathered support from Kurdish newcomers and was put in charge of a city garrison under Kunj Yusuf Pasha, the Kurdish governor of Damascus. When Sulayman Pasha al-Adil of Acre took over as governor, Shamdin kept his role as head of the Kurdish cavalry unit called the Dalat. He was one of three Kurdish cavalry officers under Sulayman Pasha, alongside Ni'mat Agha and Ayalyaqin Agha.

After Sulayman Pasha died in 1819, his deputy Abdullah Pasha ibn Ali succeeded him. Shamdin was the only officer from Sulayman's time to remain in service under Abdullah, who governed from 1820 to 1831. During the 1820s, Damascus officials gave Shamdin authority over several rural areas in the Damascus province, including the Beqaa Valley. When Muhammad Ali of Egypt’s forces took Damascus between 1831 and 1840, Shamdin stayed loyal to the Ottomans, earning thanks from Sultan Abdülmecid I. In 1857, the Ottomans ordered him to eliminate Aqil Agha, a semi-autonomous Bedouin chieftain in Galilee.

Shamdin’s forces suffered a decisive defeat at the Horns of Hattin. He lost his garrison command when the Ottomans abolished local garrisons in Damascus as part of their Tanzimat reforms. His son Muhammad Sa'id then became commander of the new centralized garrison in the city.