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Throughout the region, peasant family farms, which were rarely totally unconnected to markets, have increasingly been displaced by commercial agriculture, while the proportion of agriculture in national economies has declined. In some cases the expanded role of markets and cash has increased the economic dependency of rural women; in others the migration of men and enhanced access of women to cash has increased their social autonomy. The relative decline of agriculture increased the social weight of urban wage workers and expanded the use of wage labor in both the countryside and cities.

Local merchants constituted the economic and social links among peasant producers of agricultural commodities, artisans, and local notable families. The expansion of commercial agriculture, the primary source of wealth in Jabal Nablus from the second half of the seventeenth to the twentieth century, allowed merchants based in the town of Nablus to establish their control over its agricultural hinterland (Doumani 1995: 20). The most important agricultural product of the region was olive oil, the raw material for the high-quality soap manufactured in factories in the town of Nablus and renowned from Damascus to Egypt.

The revolts were directed against both Amir Bashir II and his most important ally, Bashir Junblat. The Maronite bishop, Yusuf Istfan (1759–1823), played a leading role in the first revolt. He organized the peasants into village communes and had them choose a representative (wakil) to lead and represent each village. The Druze muqata ajis blocked the collection of additional levies from Druze peasants or paid them themselves. The taxes were collected only from the Maronite peasants of Maronite muqata ajis in the northern districts, who Bashir II thought lacked a leadership capable of opposing him.