In eighteenth-century Palestine, on the shores of Galilee's Lake Tiberias, visionary political and military leader Daher al-Umar al-Zaydani undertakes a journey toward the greatest aim anyone could hope to achieve in his day: the establishment of an autonomous Arab state. To do so he must challenge the rule of the greatest power in the world at the time-the Ottoman Empire-while translating the ideals of human dignity, justice, and religious tolerance into concrete daily realities.