Muhammad Ali Signs the Treaty of 1841 Returning Control of the Levant to the Ottomans

In 1841, following a series of local uprisings against Egyptian occupiers and the intervention of a British naval squadron, the Egyptian army retreated to Egypt. Muhammad Ali signed the Treaty of 1841, which returned control of the Levant to the Ottomans. As a result, Britain was able to increase the extraterritorial rights that various European nations had enjoyed throughout previous centuries under the terms of the Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire. One American diplomat noted that extraordinary privileges and immunities had become so embodied in successive treaties between the great Christian Powers and the Sublime Porte that for most intents and purposes many nationalities in the Ottoman Empire formed a state within the state. From 1840 onward, 'Palestine' was commonly used to describe the consular jurisdictions of the Western powers or for a region extending from Rafah to the Litani River, with the western boundary being the sea and the eastern boundary being the poorly defined place where the Syrian desert began. The Negev Desert was not included. The Consuls were originally magistrates who tried cases involving their own citizens in foreign territories. The Ottomans perpetuated the legal system they inherited from the Byzantine Empire, where the law in many matters was personal, not territorial, and the individual citizen carried his nation's law with him wherever he went. Capitulatory law applied to foreigners in Palestine, and only Consular Courts of the State of the foreigners concerned were competent to try them. This system extended protections to large communities of Jewish protégés who had settled in Palestine. The Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities of Palestine were allowed to exercise jurisdiction over their own members in matters of personal status.