Mosul vilayet
| Arabic: ولاية الموصل Ottoman Turkish: ولايت موصل Vilâyet-i Musul | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire | |||||||||
| 1878–1918 | |||||||||
.svg) Flag | |||||||||
_2.800_Mosul_Vilayet.jpg) The Mosul Vilayet in 1892 | |||||||||
| Capital | Mosul[1] | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1897[2] | 475,415 | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 1878 | ||||||||
| 1918 | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of |  Iraq | ||||||||
The Mosul Vilayet[1] (Arabic: ولاية الموصل; Ottoman Turkish: ولايت موصل, romanized: Vilâyet-i Musul) was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire. It was created from the northern sanjaks of the Baghdad Vilayet in 1878.[3]
At the beginning of the 20th century, it reportedly had an area of 29,220 square miles (75,700 km2), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) gave the population as 300,280.[4] The accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered.[4]
The city of Mosul and the area south to the Little Zab was allocated to France in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement of the First World War, and later transferred to Mandatory Iraq following the Mosul Question.
Administrative divisions
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In official Ottoman correspondence, the Mosul Vilayet was considered part of the “Hıtta-i Irakiyye” (the Iraq region), a term that collectively referred to the provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. Ottoman officials used this designation in administrative and military documents to emphasize the interconnected nature of these three provinces, which were regarded as forming the core of Ottoman Iraq. This regional framework, which predated the Sykes-Picot Agreement, reflected the Ottoman state's view of Iraq as a coherent and administratively linked zone within the empire. Initially subordinate to the Baghdad Vilayet, Mosul was separated and elevated to vilayet status in 1878, a change that weakened administrative cohesion in the region. The separation reflected broader Ottoman efforts to manage the security and tribal dynamics of Northern Mesopotamia, where frequent uprisings and external pressures from Qajar Persia and Britain made centralized control increasingly difficult.[5]
Sanjaks of the vilayet and their capitals:[6]
- Sanjak of Mosul, Mosul
- Sanjak of Shahrizor[7] (later renamed Sanjak of Kirkuk),[8]: 190 Kirkuk
- Sanjak of Sulaymaniyah, Sulaymaniyah
Demographics
[edit]According to early 20th-century British intelligence, the vilayet had a Kurdish majority and a Turkoman minority.[9]
| Number | Percentage | |
|---|---|---|
| Kurds | 520,007 | 64.9% |
| Arabs | 166,914 | 20.8% |
| Christians | 61,336 | 7.7% |
| Turks | 38,652 | 4.8% |
| Yezidis | 26,257 | 3.3% |
| Jews | 11,897 | 1.5% |
| Total | 801,000 | 100% |
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ a b Geographical Dictionary of the World. Concept Publishing Company. p. 1230. ISBN 978-81-7268-012-1. Retrieved 2013-06-01.
- ^ Mutlu, Servet. "Late Ottoman population and its ethnic distribution" (PDF). pp. 29–31. Corrected population for Mortality Level=8.
- ^ Peters, John Punnett (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 193.
- ^ a b Asia by A. H. Keane, page 460
- ^ Musul – Kerkük ile İlgili Arşiv Belgeleri (1525–1919). Ankara: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü. 1993.
- ^ Musul Vilayeti | Tarih ve Medeniyet
- ^ Ágoston, Gábor; Masters, Bruce Alan (2009). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-1025-7.
- ^ "Mosul vilayet in the Ottoman empire" (PDF). Orsam.com.
- ^ Great Britain. Naval Intelligence Division (1944). Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Wellcome Library. [Oxford?] : Naval Intelligence Division. p. 307.
- ^ "Iraq". 2017-04-17. Archived from the original on 2017-04-17. Retrieved 2023-07-25.
External links
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Media related to Mosul Vilayet at Wikimedia Commons
