Tripoli Eyalet

Tripoli Eyalet Eyālet-i Ṭrāblus-ı Şām طرابلس الشام
Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire
←   ← 1579–1864 →
Tripoli Eyalet in 1609
Capital		Tripoli[1] 34°26′N 35°51′E / 34.433°N 35.850°ECoordinates: 34°26′N 35°51′E / 34.433°N 35.850°E
History
•	Established	1579
•	Disestablished	1864
Today part of		Lebanon  Syria

Tripoli Eyalet (Ottoman Turkish: ایالت طرابلس شام Eyālet-i Ṭrāblus-ı Şām‎;^[2] Arabic: طرابلس الشام‎) was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. The capital was in Tripoli. Its reported area in the 19th century was 1,629 square miles (4,220 km²).^[3]

It extended along the coast, from the southern limits of the Amanus mountains in the north, to the gorge of al-Muamalatayn to the south, which separated it from the territory of the sanjak of Sidon-Beirut.^[4]

Along with the chiefly Sunni Muslim coastal towns of Latakia, Jableh, Baniyas, Tartus, Tripoli, Batrun and Byblos, the eyalet included the An-Nusayriyah Mountains, inhabited by Alawites, as well as the northern reaches of the Lebanon range, where the majority of inhabitants were Maronite Christians.^[4]

History

Ottoman rule in the region began in 1516,^[5] but the eyalet wasn't established until 1579, when it was created from the north-western districts of the eyalets of Damascus and Aleppo.^[6] Previously, it had been an eyalet for a few months in 1521.^[4]

From the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1516 until 1579, the affairs of the sanjak were under the control of the Turkoman ‘Assaf emirs of Ghazir in Kisrawan.^[4] When the eyalet was reconstituted in 1579, a new Turkoman family was put in charge, the Sayfas, and they held power until the death of the family's patriarch, Yusuf, in 1625.^[4] The Sayfas were frequently dismissed as governors, mainly for failing to meet their financial obligations to the state, rather than for being rebellious.^[4]

From 1800–08, 1810–20 and 1821-35 the governor of the eyalet was Mustafa Agha Barbar.

Administrative divisions

Eyalet consisted of five sanjaks between 1700 and 1740 as follows:^[7]

1. Tripoli Sanjak (Trablus-Şam : Paşa Sancağı , Tripoli)
2. Hama Sanjak (Hama Sancağı, Hama)
3. Homs Sanjak (Hums Sancağı, Homs)
4. Salamieh Sanjak (Selemiyye Sancağı, Salamiyah)
5. Jebella Sanjak or Jebellieh Sanjak (Cebeliyye Sancağı, Jableh)

References

1. Commercial statistics: A digest of the productive resources, commercial... By John Macgregor, p. 12, at Google Books
2. "Some Provinces of the Ottoman Empire". Geonames.de. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
3. The Popular encyclopedia: or, conversations lexicon 6. Blackie. 1862. p. 698. Retrieved 2013-05-25.
4. Abdul Rahim Abu Husayn (2004). The View from Istanbul: Ottoman Lebanon and the Druze Emirate. I.B.Tauris. pp. 91–92. ISBN 978-1-86064-856-4. Retrieved 2013-05-25.
5. Gábor Ágoston; Bruce Alan Masters (2009-01-01). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase Publishing. p. 571. ISBN 978-1-4381-1025-7. Retrieved 2013-05-25.
6. The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman rule, 1516-1788, p. 38, at Google Books By Stefan Winter
7. Orhan Kılıç, XVII. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında Osmanlı Devleti'nin Eyalet ve Sancak Teşkilatlanması, Osmanlı, Cilt 6: Teşkilât, Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, Ankara, 1999, ISBN 975-6782-09-9, p. 95. (Turkish)