A vilayet (Ottoman Turkish: ولایت, 'province'; [vi.laː.jet]), also known by various other names, was a first-order administrative division of the late Ottoman Empire. It was introduced under the Vilayet Law of 21 January 1867, part of the Tanzimat reform movement initiated by the Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856. The Danube Vilayet had been specially formed in 1864 as an experiment under the leading reformer Midhat Pasha. The Vilayet Law expanded its use, but it was not until 1884 that it was applied to all of the empire's provinces. Writing for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1911, Vincent Henry Penalver Caillard claimed that the reform was intended to provide the provinces with greater local self-government but in fact centralized more power with the sultan and local Muslims at the expense of other communities.
Names The Ottoman Turkish vilayet (ولایت) was a loanword borrowed from Arabic wilāya (وِلَايَة), an abstract noun formed from the verb waliya (وَلِيَ, 'to administer'). In Arabic, it had meant 'province', 'region', or 'administration' as general ideas, but following the Tanzimat reforms the Ottoman term formalized it in reference to specific areas in a defined hierarchy. It was borrowed into Albanian vilajet, Bulgarian vilaet (вилает), Judaeo-Spanish vilayet, and French vilaïet and vilayet, which was used as a lingua franca among the educated Jews and Christians. It was also translated into Armenian as gawaŕ (գաւառ), Bulgarian as oblast (област), Judaeo-Spanish as provinsiya, and Greek as eparchía (επαρχία) and nomarchía (νομαρχία). The early Republic of Turkey continued to use the term vilayet until it renamed them il in the late 1920s.
Organization The Ottoman Empire had already begun to modernize its administration and regularize its eyalets in the 1840s, but the Vilayet Law extended this throughout the empire, regulating the hierarchy of administrative units. Each vilayet or province was governed by a vali appointed by the sultan. Acting as the sultan's representative, he was notionally the supreme head of administration in his province, subject to various caveats. Military administration was entirely separate, although the vali controlled local police. His council comprised a secretary (mektupçu), a comptroller (defterdar), a chief justice (müfettiş-i hükkâm-ı şeriyye), and directors of foreign affairs, public works, and agriculture and commerce, each nominated by the respective ministers in Istanbul. The defterdar in particular answered directly to the finance minister rather than the vali. A separate vilayet council was composed of four elected members, comprising two Muslims and two non-Muslims. If the vali fell ill or was absent from the capital, he was variously replaced by the governor of the chief sanjak (merkez sancak) near the capital, the muavin, and the defterdar. A similar structure was replicated in the lower hierarchical levels, with executive and advisory councils drawn from the local administrators and—following long-established practice—the heads of the millets, the various local religious communities. The Vilayet Law (1864) saw a general reorganization, with the hierarchy vilayet—sanjak—kaza—nahiye, the vilayet administrated by the Vali under whose authority was the mutasarrif of the sanjak appointed by the Sultan, the kaymakam of the kaza appointed by the Interior Ministry, the mudür of the nahiye, the muhtar of the village.
Lists
1870s Vilayets, sanjaks and autonomies in the mid-1870s:
1905
By 1905, the Ottoman Empire had lost administrative control over Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia, Crete and Cyprus, even though these were all still under nominal Ottoman sovereignty, as was Egypt. In this list, the numbering and place names are indicated as in the French-language source, with present-day names in parentheses where different:
The same document added Jerusalem, Bengazi, Zor, Izmid, Biġa, and Tchataldja as independent departments, but did not mention the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate and Principality of Samos, both self-administered under a leader appointed by the Ottoman government. The Sharifate of Mecca was another special case, coexisting with the Hejaz vilayet without being subordinate to it.
1917 Vilayets and independent sanjaks in 1917: Vilayets included:
Independent sanjaks included:
Vassal states and autonomous provinces:
1927 The early Turkish Republic had 63 vilayet in the 1927 Turkish census:
Maps
See also Provinces of Turkey Six Vilayets, the Armenian vilayets of the empire Vilayet Law
References
Further reading Sublime Porte (1867). Sur la nouvelle division de l'Empire en gouvernements généraux formés sous le nom de Vilayets. Constantinople.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - About the Law of the Vilayets
External links Vilayet Law of 1864, official translation to French pp. 36–45, in Young, George, Corps de droit ottoman; recueil des codes, lois, règlements, ordonnances et actes les plus importants du droit intérieur, et d'études sur le droit coutumier de l'Empire ottoman, Volume 1, 1905. Vilayet Law of 1867, in French, in Législation ottomane, published by Gregory Aristarchis and edited by Demetrius Nicolaides, Volume 2
