Rakka Eyalet
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The eyalet of Rakka or Urfa (; ) was an
eyalet Eyalets (, , ), also known as beylerbeyliks or pashaliks, were the primary administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. From 1453 to the beginning of the nineteenth century the Ottoman local government was loosely structured. The empire was a ...
of the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
. Its reported area in the 19th century was . The eyalet was created in 1586 on territory previously under the jurisdiction of Diyarbekir. By Stefan Winter In the 16th century, the town of
Raqqa Raqqa (, also , Kurdish language, Kurdish: ''Reqa'') is a city in Syria on the North bank of the Euphrates River, about east of Aleppo. It is located east of the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest dam. The Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine city and b ...
again entered the historical record as an Ottoman customs post on the Euphrates. However, the capital of this ''eyalet'' and seat of the vali was not Raqqa but ar-Ruha about north of Raqqa.Stefan Winter, "The Province of Raqqa under Ottoman Rule, 1535-1800" in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 68 (2009), 253-67.


Sanjak of Rakka

From 1535 until the creation of Rakka Eyalet in 1586, Rakka was a ''
sanjak A sanjak or sancak (, , "flag, banner") was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans also sometimes called the sanjak a liva (, ) from the name's calque in Arabic and Persian. Banners were a common organization of nomad ...
'' of Diyarbekir Eyalet. The first documentation of this sanjak is in a list of sanjaks under Diyarbekir from sometime between 1548 and 1551. The earliest tax census for the sanjak dates from 1564 and returned a value of 1,339,629
akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (anglicized as ''akche'', ''akcheh'' or ''aqcha''; ; , , in Europe known as '' asper'') was a silver coin mainly known for being the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. It was also used in other states includi ...
s (compared to the Aleppo sanjak's 11,734,193 akçes). The sanjak of Rakka was at this time divided into four ''
nahiye A nāḥiyah ( , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiyeh, nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level divisi ...
''s: one was Rakka proper, called ''Nefs-i Rakka''; the second comprised the
Balikh The Balikh River () is a perennial river that originates in the spring of Ain al-Arous near Tell Abyad in the Eastern Mediterranean conifer-sclerophyllous-broadleaf forests ecoregion. It flows due south and joins the Euphrates at the modern city ...
valley north of Rakka (aka 'Ayn 'Arūs); the third was Ja'bar; and the fourth was Kapulı Bük (literally "reed thicket"), which probably consisted of the areas immediately downstream from Raqqa on the Euphrates. The main agricultural products in the sanjak were wheat, "corn" (''"demet"''), barley, and cotton. Taxes were partly collected
in kind The term in kind (or in-kind) generally refers to goods, services, and transactions not involving money or not measured in monetary terms. It is a part of many spheres, mainly economics, finance, but also politics, work career, food, health and o ...
on these crops. Most taxes in the sanjak, particularly in the Balikh and Nefs-i Rakka nahiyes, were collected through
iltizam An iltizam () was a form of tax farm that appeared in the 15th century in the Ottoman Empire. The system began under Mehmed the Conqueror and was abolished during the Tanzimat reforms in 1856. Iltizams were sold off by the government to wealthy n ...
tax farming rather than through the
timar A timar was a land grant by the sultans of the Ottoman Empire between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, with an annual tax revenue of less than 20,000 akçes. The revenues produced from the land acted as compensation for military service. A ...
or
zeamet Ziamet was a form of land tenure in the Ottoman Empire, consisting in grant of lands or revenues by the Ottoman Sultan to an individual in compensation for their services, especially military services. The ziamet system was introduced by Osman I, ...
systems. During this period, the sanjak of Rakka was "fully integrated into the empire's military-administrative structure", with Ottoman officials directly in charge. The three main Ottoman officials were the
sanjak-bey ''Sanjak-bey'', ''sanjaq-bey'' or ''-beg'' () was the title given in the Ottoman Empire to a bey (a high-ranking officer, but usually not a pasha) appointed to the military and administrative command of a district (''sanjak'', in Arabic '' liwa’' ...
, or governor-commander; the
kadı A kadi (, ) was an official in the Ottoman Empire. In Arabic, the term () typically refers to judges who preside over matters in accordance with sharia Islamic law; under Ottoman rule, however, the kadi also became a crucial part of the imperi ...
, or judge; and the
dizdar Dizdar (; ) was the title given in the Ottoman Empire to a castle warden or fortress commander, appointed to manage troops and keep the fortress in its role as a defence point. The word is of Persian language, Persian origin, meaning gatekeeper ...
, or the commander of the citadel in Raqqa. The sanjak-bey was appointed directly by the
Sublime Porte The Sublime Porte, also known as the Ottoman Porte or High Porte ( or ''Babıali''; ), was a synecdoche or metaphor used to refer collectively to the central government of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul. It is particularly referred to the buildi ...
and had control over the imperial troops stationed at Raqqa. The kadı, in additional to his judicial role, was responsible for collecting
waqf A (; , plural ), also called a (, plural or ), or ''mortmain'' property, is an Alienation (property law), inalienable charitable financial endowment, endowment under Sharia, Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot ...
dues from nomadic tribes, report and address abuses by tax farmers, and act as a check on the sanjak-bey's power. The dizdar had "police authority" over Raqqa's citadel and probably also the whole city. In the late 1500s, the Ottomans prioritized "establishing control over its Mesopotamian periphery"; they saw the region as needing a "reconquest". Beginning around 1565, they increasingly directed the sanjak-beys of Rakka to subjugate local tribes and collect overdue taxes from them. Ottoman authorities settled soldiers and members of Ottoman-allied tribes in the sanjak of Rakka, which sometimes led to conflicts with nomadic pastoralist tribes who already lived there. For example, in 1572, the kadı of Raqqa and the local head of the Banu Rabi'a Arab tribe sent a joint petition to Istanbul requesting that the lands around Qal'at Ja'bar, which had been "ruined and abandoned since
Timur Timur, also known as Tamerlane (1320s17/18 February 1405), was a Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, becoming the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty. An undefeat ...
's time", be converted into at least 100
sipahi The ''sipahi'' ( , ) were professional cavalrymen deployed by the Seljuk Turks and later by the Ottoman Empire. ''Sipahi'' units included the land grant–holding ('' timar'') provincial ''timarli sipahi'', which constituted most of the arm ...
-level fiefs, to be granted to people who could redevelop the land for agriculture again.


Eyalet of Rakka

In the late 1500s, the Ottoman administrative system was shifting away from military-command-based sanjaks as the basic territorial unity of the empire and replacing them with taxation-based
eyalet Eyalets (, , ), also known as beylerbeyliks or pashaliks, were the primary administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. From 1453 to the beginning of the nineteenth century the Ottoman local government was loosely structured. The empire was a ...
s. This trend, as well as an "increasing awareness of the Middle Euphrates's productive capacity", a need for the Ottomans to secure the frontier, and the temporary importance of the region due to the war with the Safavids from 1578 to 1590, all factored into the creation of the Eyalet of Rakka in 1586. The new eyalet may have originally been intended to encompass the entire Middle Euphrates region as far south as
Anah Anah or Ana (, ), formerly also known as Anna, is an Iraqi town on the Euphrates approximately midway between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Persian Gulf. Anah lies from west to east on the right bank along a bend of the river just before it tu ...
, along with the entire Khabur valley, but if this was the case then these territories were "soon detached again".
Birecik Birecik is a municipality and district of Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Its area is 912 km2, and its population is 93,866 (2023). It lies on the Euphrates. Built on a limestone cliff 400 ft. high on the left/east bank of the Euphrates, " ...
would have been detached as well, but it was re-attached to Rakka Eyalet in 1588. The
Celali rebellions The Celali rebellions () were a series of rebellions in Anatolia of irregular troops led by bandit chiefs and provincial officials known as ''celalî'', ''celâli'', or ''jelālī'', against the authority of the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th and ...
and the costly
Ottoman–Habsburg wars The Ottoman–Habsburg wars were fought from the 16th to the 18th centuries between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy, which was at times supported by the Kingdom of Hungary, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Holy Roman Empire, The ...
caused Ottoman central authority to decline in Rakka Eyalet in the early 1600s. From about 1606 until 1618, the
beylerbey ''Beylerbey'' (, meaning the 'commander of commanders' or 'lord of lords’, sometimes rendered governor-general) was a high rank in the western Islamic world in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, from the Anatolian Seljuks and the I ...
of Raqqa was given to the Kurdish emir of
Cizre Cizre () is a city in the Cizre District of Şırnak Province in Turkey. It is located on the river Tigris by the Syria–Turkey border and close to the Iraq–Turkey border. Cizre is in the historical region of Upper Mesopotamia and the cultura ...
, Şeref Paşa, rather than an Ottoman official. At other times, the position was "nothing more than a
sinecure A sinecure ( or ; from the Latin , 'without', and , 'care') is a position with a salary or otherwise generating income that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labour, or active service. The term originated in the medieval church, ...
for prominent military commanders or their sons". Governance in the eyalet was mostly in the hands of powerful '' ümera'' families based at Urfa. In the late 1600s, though, Rakka Eyalet returned to prominence as a center of the empire's Iskan project of tribal sedentarization. The citadel in Raqqa was renovated in 1683, and then the iskan program began in earnest under Kadızade Hüseyin Paşa, who was the eyalet's governor from 1590 to 1595. Hüseyin was tasked with settling Turkmen and Kurdish tribes from Anatolia in the eyalet, particularly in the Balikh valley upstream from Raqqa. An important feature of the eyalet's governance during this period is that its governor was often authorized to cross into other provinces to subjugate tribes. The heavily Kurdish district of
Kilis Kilis is a city in southernmost Turkey, near the Syria–Turkey border, border with Syria, and the administrative centre of Kilis Province and Kilis District. Its population is 112,187 (2022). On 6 February 2023 Kilis was badly affected by the tw ...
was especially important for this, and the governors of Rakka were often given the iltizam tax farms over Kilis.


Administrative divisions

Sanjaks of Rakka Eyalet in the 17th century: By
Evliya Çelebi Dervish Mehmed Zillî (25 March 1611 – 1682), known as Evliya Çelebi (), was an Ottoman Empire, Ottoman explorer who travelled through his home country during its cultural zenith as well as neighboring lands. He travelled for over 40 years, rec ...
,
Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (; 9 June 1774 – 23 November 1856) was an Austrian orientalist, historian and diplomat. He is considered one of the most accomplished orientalists of his time. Life Born Joseph Hammer in Graz, Duchy of S ...
# Sanjak of Jemasa # Sanjak of Kharpud (
Harput Harpoot () or Kharberd () is an ancient town located in the Elazığ Province of Turkey. It now forms a small district of the city of Elazığ. p. 1. In the late Ottoman period, it fell under the Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet (also known as the Harpu ...
) # Sanjak of Deir Rahba # Sanjak of Beni Rebia # Sanjak of Saruj # Sanjak of
Harran Harran is a municipality and Districts of Turkey, district of Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Its area is 904 km2, and its population is 96,072 (2022). It is approximately southeast of Urfa and from the Syrian border crossing at Akçakale. ...
# Sanjak of Rika (
Raqqa Raqqa (, also , Kurdish language, Kurdish: ''Reqa'') is a city in Syria on the North bank of the Euphrates River, about east of Aleppo. It is located east of the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest dam. The Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine city and b ...
) # Sanjak of Ana ve Hit (
Anah Anah or Ana (, ), formerly also known as Anna, is an Iraqi town on the Euphrates approximately midway between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Persian Gulf. Anah lies from west to east on the right bank along a bend of the river just before it tu ...
& Hit in Al-Anbar) # Sanjak of Roha or
Urfa Urfa, officially called Şanlıurfa (), is a city in southeastern Turkey and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province. The city was known as Edessa from Hellenistic period, Hellenistic times and into Christian times. Urfa is situated on a plain abo ...
, the seat of the Pasha Sanjaks between 1700 and 1740: # Sanjak of the Pasha (
Raqqa Raqqa (, also , Kurdish language, Kurdish: ''Reqa'') is a city in Syria on the North bank of the Euphrates River, about east of Aleppo. It is located east of the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest dam. The Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine city and b ...
-
Ruha Ruha (pronounced /ˈruːhə/) is a term with spiritual connotations found across various religious traditions. In Arabic, Ruh () signifies "spirit" or "soul" and is a fundamental concept in Islam, referring to the divine breath of life.Esposito, ...
) # Sanjak of
Birecik Birecik is a municipality and district of Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Its area is 912 km2, and its population is 93,866 (2023). It lies on the Euphrates. Built on a limestone cliff 400 ft. high on the left/east bank of the Euphrates, " ...
# Sanjak of Deyr-i Rahba # Sanjak of Beni Rabi'a


See also

*
Raqqa Governorate Raqqa Governorate (, Kurdish: ''Parêzgeha Reqa'') is one of the fourteen governorates of Syria. It is situated in the north of the country and covers an area of 19,618 km2. The capital is Raqqa. The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant claim ...


References

Eyalets of the Ottoman Empire in Asia Ottoman Syria 1586 establishments in the Ottoman Empire 1864 disestablishments in the Ottoman Empire {{Ottoman-stub