This paper examines how the replacement of the Timar land-holding system with the Iltizam form within the Ottoman Eyalet of Tripoli impacted the Alawi religious community settled in the “Nusayri” (or “Alawite”) Mountain (“Jabal Al Alaouieen”, along the coast of present-day Syria) which fell within that administrative district. In the new Eltizam form of land holding, the tax revenues were divided between the Ottoman state and a Multazim, nurturing the rise of a stratum of local notables from within the Alawite community. The author studies the ensuing transformation as a historical-social-economic process which unravelled over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period during which the two systems of land holding coexisted side-by-side. When this transformation was complete, local authority was invested in regional Alawite notables, and drawn away from the central authority of the Sublime Porte. Gradually, the authority of these Alawite notables was sanctioned by the religious authorities in Tripoli who officially recognized their responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security and of public works. This process was accelerated by the rise of tobacco as a cash crop harvested in the Jabal Al Alaouieen, and the region’s increased integration into the world economy.