Word Finder - vilayet

definition

One of the chief administrative divisions or provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

The vilayet, of which Trebizond is the chief town, consists of a long irregular strip of coast country, the eastern half of which is deeply indented and mountainous.

Till 1881 it was the seat of a pasha in the vilayet of Jannina; it is now the capital of the Greek province and the seat of a nomarch.

North-eastern Albania forms part of the Turkish vilayet of Kossovo; the northern highlands are included in the vilayet of Shkodra (Scutari), the eastern portion of central Albania belongs to the vilayet of Monastir, and the southern districts are comprised in the vilayet of Iannina.

The population of the vilayet of Scutari is given as 237,000, that of the vilayet of Iannina as 552,000.

In the vilayet of Scutari they form about 55% of the population; central Albania is almost entirely Moslem; in southern Albania, however, there is a considerable Christian population, whose limits practically coincide with those of the Greek-speaking districts.

It forms, with the islands of Syme, Casos, Carpathos, Castelorizo, Telos and Charki, one of the four sanjaks into which the Archipelago vilayet of Turkey is divided.

The governor-general of the vilayet resides at the town of Rhodes.

The surface of the vilayet is generally mountainous, except in the central valley of the Maritza, and along the banks of its tributaries, the Tunja, Arda, Ergene, &c. On the west, the great Rhodope range and its outlying ridges extend as far as the Maritza, and attain an altitude of more than 7000 f t.

The vilayet suffered severely during the Russian occupation of 1878, when, apart from the natural dislocation of commerce, many of the Moslem cultivators emigrated to Asia Minor, to be free from their alien rulers.

The important silk industry, however, began to revive about 18go, and dairy farming is prosperous; but the condition of the vilayet is far less unsettled than that of Macedonia, owing partly to the preponderance of Moslems among the peasantry, and partly to the nearness of Constantinople, with its Western influences.

A vali or governor-general, nominated by the sultan, stands at the head of the vilayet, and on him are directly dependent the kaimakams, mutassarifs, deftardars and other administrators of the minor divisions.

Secondary education is supplied by the grammar school, of which there is one in the capital of every vilayet.

It is one of the four great shrines of the Shiite Moslems in the vilayet of Bagdad.

He is second only to the governor or vali pasha in power, and indeed his influence is often greater than that of the official ruler of the vilayet.

Since that date it has formed the vilayet of Adana (q.v.).

They are divided into the Persian Nestorians of the plain of Azerbaijan, and the Turkish Nestorians, inhabiting chiefly the sanjak of Hakkiari in the vilayet of Van, who are subdivided into the Rayat or subject, and the Ashiret or tribal, the latter being semi-independent in their mountain fastnesses.

The modern town of Erbil or Arbil, in the vilayet of Mosul, is about 40 m.

A good supply of drinking water was brought to the city by Fetid Pasha, who governed the vilayet ably for several years, till in 1903 he was appointed Grand Vizier.

The vilayet is now traversed by the Anatolian railway, and contains the railhead of the Ottoman line from Smyrna.

It is a thriving town, and the outlet for the trade of the Sivas vilayet.

The industries include dyeing, weaving, tanning and the manufacture of metal-work, wine and flour, but Uskiib is chiefly important as the commercial centre of the whole vilayet of Kossovo (q.v.).

It was situated on the lower southern slopes of the Sultan Dagh, in the Konia vilayet of Asia Minor, on the right bank of a stream, the ancient Anthius, which flows into the Hoiran Geul.

The Vilayet Of Mosul lies mainly east of the Tigris.

The horrors culminated in the capture of Tripolitsa, the capital of the vilayet.

It appears afterwards to have fallen under the power of the rulers of Tunisia, then to a native dynasty which reigned at Tripoli, and in the 16th century it became part of the Turkish vilayet of Tripoli.

The vilayet Kharput was founded in 1888, being the result of a provincial rearrangement, designed to ensure better control over the disturbed districts of Kurdistan.

In 1875 the district, till then a sanjak of the vilayet of Tripoli, was made to depend directly on the Ministry of the Interior at Constantinople; and the Senussites soon ceased to be de facto rulers of Cyrenaica.

The vilayet of Diarbekr extends south from Palu on the Euphrates to Mardin and Nisibin on the edge of the Mesopotamian plain, and is divided into three sanjaks - Arghana, Diarbekr and Mardin.

The headwaters of the main arm of the Tigris have their source in the vilayet.

The richest portion of the vilayet lies east of the capital in the rolling plains watered by tributaries of the Tigris.

The Erzerum vilayet extends from the Persian frontier at Bayazid, all along the Russian frontier and westward into Anatolia at Baiburt and Erzingan.

From the middle of the 17th century, when this region was annexed by the Turks, until about the middle of the 19th century, the vilayet of Bagdad was the largest province of the Turkish empire, constituting at times an almost independent principality.

The first reduction in size occurred in 1857, when some of the western portion of the vilayet was added to the newly created sanjak of Zor.

In 1878 the Mosul vilayet was created out of its northern, and in 1884 the Basra vilayet out of its southern sanjaks.

It is still, territorially, the largest province of the empire, and includes some of the most fertile lands in the Euphrates-Tigris valleys; but while possessing great possibilities for fertility, by far the larger portion of the vilayet is to-day a desert, owing to the neglect of the irrigation canals on which the fertility of the valley depends.

On the other hand, they withdrew large tracts of fertile and productive land from taxation (one-half of the cultivated land of the vilayet was said to be administered for the sultan's privy purse), and thus greatly reduced the revenue of the vilayet.

The chief city of the vilayet is its capital, Bagdad.

Of crops the vilayet produces wheat (which is indigenous), rice, barley (which takes the place of oats as food for horses), durra (a coarse, maize-like grain), sesame, cotton and tobacco; of fruits, the date, orange, lemon, fig, banana and pomegranate.

Cholera is endemic in some parts of the vilayet, and before 1875 the same was true of the bubonic plague.

At that date this disease was stamped out by energetic measures on the part of the government, but it has reappeared again in recent years, introduced apparently from India or Persia by pilgrims. There are four great centres of pilgrimage for Shiite Moslems in the vilayet, Samarra, Kazemain, a suburb of Bagdad, Kerbela and Nejef.

The area of the vilayet is 54,480 sq.

Almost the whole of Byzantine Phrygia is now included in the vilayet of Brusa, with the exception of a small part of Parorius and the district about Themisonium (Karayuk Bazar) and Ceretapa (Kayadibi), which belong to the vilayet of Konia, and the district of Laodicea and Hierapolis, which belongs to Aidin.

Other industries of less importance are basket-making, weaving, and silk and cotton 1 A sanjak is usually a subordinate division of a vilayet, but that of Jerusalem has been independent ever since the Crimean War.

The apple, pear, cherry and plum thrive well in the north; the orange, lemon, citron and sugar-cane in the south; styrax and mastic in the south-west; and the wheat lands of the Sivas vilayet can hardly be surpassed.

Turkomans are found in the Angora and Adana vilayets; Avshars, a tribe of Turkish origin, in the valleys of Anti-Taurus; and Tatars in the Angora and Brusa vilayets; Yuruks are most numerous in the Konia vilayet.

The Chepmi and Takhtaji, who live chiefly in the Aidin vilayet, appear to be derived from one of the early races.

The mineral wealth of the vilayet has never been fully explored, but is believed to be great.

The Bitlis vilayet comprises a very varied section of Asiatic Turkey, as it includes the Mush plain and the plateau country west of Lake Van, as well as a large extent of wild mountain districts inhabited by turbulent Kurds and Armenians on either side of the central town of Bitlis, also some of the lower country about Sairt along the left bank of the main stream of the Tigris.

It forms, with the islands of Psara, Nikaria, Leros, Calymnus and Cos, a sanjak of the Archipelago vilayet.

Further apprehension and unrest were caused in central and northern Kurdistan by the Sykes-Picot agreement, which provisionally assigned the Mosul vilayet to France, a Power regarded by the Kurds as violently pro-Christian.