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41-479: The eyalet was created in 1586 on territory previously under the jurisdiction of Diyarbekir . In the 16th century, the town of Raqqa 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 200 kilometres (120 mi) north of Raqqa. From c. 1535 until the creation of Rakka Eyalet in 1586, Rakka

82-456: A virtual viceroy of the Sultan : he had full authority over matters of war, justice and administration, except in so far as they were limited by the authority of other officials also appointed by the central government, chiefly the various fiscal secretaries under the mal defterdari , and the kadı , who could appeal directly to the imperial government. In addition, as a further check to their power,

123-508: Is of Turkish origin, meaning " beg of begs" (commander of commanders). Under the Safavids, it meant governor-general. The title first appears in 1543/44, when the Safavid ruler Tahmasp I ( r.  1524–1576 ) issued a decree that referred the governor of Herat as beglerbegi . The title was created to distinguish more important governors from less important ones. As a result, starting in

164-571: Is that its governor was often authorized to cross into other provinces to subjugate tribes. The heavily Kurdish district of Kilis was especially important for this, and the governors of Rakka were often given the iltizam tax farms over Kilis. Sanjaks of Rakka Eyalet in the 17th century: This Ottoman Empire –related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Eyalet of Diyarbekir The Eyalet of Diyarbekir ( Arabic : إيالة ديار بكر ; Ottoman Turkish : ایالت دیاربكر , romanized :  Eyālet-i Diyār-i Bekr )

205-541: The atabak al-asakir , the commander-in-chief of the army. The Ottomans used the title beylerbey from the late 14th until the mid-19th century, with varying meanings and degrees of importance. The early Ottoman state continued to use the term beylerbey in the meaning of commander-in-chief, held by princes of the Ottoman dynasty : under the Ottoman Empire's founder, Osman I (ruled 1299–1326), his son Orhan held

246-423: The salyane system, i.e. their revenue was sent to the imperial treasury, and the officials and soldiers were paid salaries from it. The size of these new provinces varied enormously: some containing as many as twenty sanjak s, and others as few as two, including the beylerbey ' s own residence (or pasha -sanjakı ). Among themselves, the various beylerbey s had an order of precedence based on

287-983: The Emirate of Soran . After his death in 1836, his successor was Hafiz Mehmet Pasha who continued to subdue the Kurdish tribes and the Yazidi in Sincar. In the 1840s, the Eyalet ceded the Sanjak of Cizre , which before was part of the Emirate of Bohtan in the Diyarbekır Eyalet, to the Mosul Eyalet , which led to a Kurdish revolt led by Bedir Khan Beg . Beylerbey Beylerbey ( Ottoman Turkish : بكلربكی , romanized :  beylerbeyi , lit.   ' bey of beys', meaning

328-597: The Janissary contingents stationed in the province's cities were outside his authority, and beylerbey s were even forbidden from entering the fortresses garrisoned by the Janissaries. The beylerbey also had his own court and government council ( divan ) and could freely grant fiefs ( timar s and ziamet s) without prior approval by the Sultan, although this right was curtailed after 1530, when beylerbey authority

369-411: The beglerbegi . The beglerbegis had complete command over the soldiers and khans under their command. According to the early 18th-century Dastur al-Moluk , a beglerbegi was superior to a khan in rank, and the soltans were subordinate to the khan. The beglerbegi , who was also an emir, was also known as the emir al-omara of the province that he oversaw. There were eleven beglerbegis towards

410-401: The beylerbey of Raqqa was given to the Kurdish emir of Cizre , Şeref Paşa, rather than an Ottoman official. At other times, the position was "nothing more than a sinecure 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

451-577: The kadı , or judge; and the dizdar , or the commander of the citadel in Raqqa. The sanjak-bey was appointed directly by the Sublime Porte and had control over the imperial troops stationed at Raqqa. The kadı, in additional to his judicial role, was responsible for collecting waqf 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

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492-500: The viziers ; both viziers and beylerbey s were titled pashas , with the viziers sporting three horse-tails and the beylerbey s two. From the 16th century on, however, viziers could be appointed as provincial beylerbey s, enjoying precedence and authority over the ordinary beylerbey s of the neighbouring provinces. Towards the end of the 17th century, the title of ' beylerbey of Rumelia' (' Rumeli beylerbeysi ) also began to be awarded as an honorific rank, alongside

533-579: 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 Ilkhanids to Safavid Empire and the Ottoman Empire . Initially designating a commander-in-chief , it eventually came to be held by senior provincial governors. In Ottoman usage, where

574-434: The 1540s, governor-general ( beglerbegi ), senior-governor ( hakem-khan ), and junior-governor ( hakem-soltan ) were one of the titles that would be given to a emir governing a province or smaller administration. Other beglerbegis soon appear in records, such as the beglerbegi of Astarabad in 1548, and the beglerbegi of Kerman in 1565. According to Willem Floor : "This, and the fact that beglerbegis also were at

615-672: The Arabic title of malik al-umara ("chief of the commanders"), designating the army's commander-in-chief. Among the Mongol Ilkhanids , the title was used to designate the chief amir al-ulus ("emir of the state")—also known by the Turkic title ulusbegi and the Arabic amir al-umara –while in the Golden Horde it was applied to all the holders of the rank of amir al-ulus . The Mamluks of Egypt possibly used it as an alternative title for

656-933: The Ottoman territories in Europe ( Rumelia ). This marked the beylerbey effectively as the viceroy of the European territories, as the Sultans still resided in Anatolia , and as the straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles , which connected the two parts of the Ottoman state, continued to escape full Ottoman control until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Lala Shahin died after 1388. Sometime in 1385–87 Çandarlı Kara Halil Hayreddin Pasha succeeded him in

697-466: The Persian mir-i miran or mirmiran , which had been used as equivalents of the beylerbey , now increasingly came to refer only to the honorary rank, which in turn was increasingly devalued. The process culminated with the vilayet reform of 1864, after which wali became the only official designation for the governor-general of a province, while the title of beylerbey survived only in

738-488: The actual holder of the provincial post, even to officials unrelated to the provincial administration, such as the chief treasurer ( defterdar ). Beginning in the 18th century, the Arabic-origin title of wali began to be increasingly used for provincial governors-general at the expense of beylerbey , except for the two original beylerbey s of Rumelia and Anatolia; the Arabic title amir al-umara , and

779-567: The basic territorial unity of the empire and replacing them with taxation-based eyalets . 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

820-527: The continuous growth of the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries, new provinces were established, and the ranks of the beylerbey s swelled to a peak of 44 by the end of the 16th century. A list of eyalet s in 1609 mentions 32 in total: 23 of them regular eyalet s where revenue was distributed among the military fief-holders, while the rest (in North Africa and the Middle East ) were under

861-529: The date of conquest or formation of their provinces. The beylerbey of Rumelia , however, retained his pre-eminence, ranking first among the other provincial governors-general, and being accorded a seat in the Imperial Council ( divan ) after 1536. In addition, the post was occasionally held by the Sultan's chief minister, the Grand Vizier himself. In his province, the beylerbey operated as

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902-644: The defter, and another for the chavushes ; a secretary ( katib ), a colonel, and a lieutenant colonel of the militia". After Reşid Mehmet Pasha assumed as Wāli in 1834, he led military campaigns against the local Kurdish tribes of the Garzan, Bedir Khan and Milli as well as the Yazidi in Sinjar . In 1835 he also subdued the Milli tribe in Mardin and in 1836, he defeated the ruler from

943-528: 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

984-402: The end of the reign of Shah Abbas II ( r.  1588–1629 ); five gholams ( Fars , Karabakh , Baghdad , Astarabad, Shirvan ), two valis of some sort ( Lorestan and Kurdistan ) and four Qizilbash emirs ( Khorasan , Chokhur-e Sa'd (Erivan) , Azerbaijan , Qandahar ). Herat and Kerman, which were among the first provinces to be administered by a beglerbegi , are not included in

1025-493: The entire Middle Euphrates region as far south as Anah , along with the entire Khabur valley, but if this was the case then these territories were "soon detached again". Birecik would have been detached as well, but it was re-attached to Rakka Eyalet in 1588. The Celali rebellions and the costly Ottoman–Habsburg wars caused Ottoman central authority to decline in Rakka Eyalet in the early 1600s. From about 1606 until 1618,

1066-439: The honorary rank of Rumeli beylerbeysi , which continued in use alongside its Perso-Arabic equivalents. Under the Safavid dynasty of Iran , the title ( beglerbegi ) was used from ca. 1543/44 on for governors (generically styled hakim ) of the more important provinces. The title was thus used for the governors of Herat , Azerbaijan , Ganja , Karabakh , Shirvan , Fars , Iraq , and Astarabad . The Safavids also used

1107-502: 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 's time", be converted into at least 100 sipahi -level fiefs, to be granted to people who could redevelop the land for agriculture again. In the late 1500s, the Ottoman administrative system was shifting away from military-command-based sanjaks as

1148-404: The land revenues, but also all the other taxes which in the sanjaks are paid to the possessor of the ziamet or timar, such as the taxes for pasturage, marriages, horses, vineyards, and orchards. [...] The officers of the divan of Diarbeker are the defterdar of the treasury with a ruz-namji (journal writer); a defterdar of the feudal forces an inspector ( emin ), and a lieutenant kehiya of

1189-505: The position of commander-in-chief in Rumelia. In 1393 Sultan Bayezid I ( r.  1389–1402 ) appointed Kara Timurtash as beylerbey and viceroy in Anatolia, when Bayezid himself crossed over into Europe to campaign against Mircea I of Wallachia . This process marked the birth of the first two, and by far the most important, beylerbeylik s: those of Rumelia and Anatolia , while

1230-421: The post, and during Orhan's reign (1324–1362), his brother Alaeddin Pasha and Orhan's son Süleyman Pasha . The first step towards the transformation of the office into a gubernatorial title occurred when Murad I ( r.  1362–1389 ) gave the title to Lala Shahin Pasha as a reward for his capture of Adrianople (modern Edirne ) in the 1360s. In addition, Lala Shahin was given military authority over

1271-628: The rank survived the longest, it designated the governors-general of some of the largest and most important provinces, although in later centuries it became devalued into a mere honorific title. The title is originally Turkic and its equivalents in Arabic were amir al-umara , and in Persian , mir-i miran . The title originated with the Seljuqs , and was used in the Sultanate of Rum initially as an alternative for

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1312-430: The same time emir al-omara of their jurisdiction, contradicts the view that the term beglerbegi was simply a Turkish translation of the title emir al-omara ." Beglerbegi was only applied to governors of large administrations in the second half of the 16th-century. The title was more commonly employed in the latter part of the 17th century, even for lesser administrations. Several khans and soltans were subject to

1353-402: The sanjak, particularly in the Balikh and Nefs-i Rakka nahiyes, were collected through iltizam tax farming rather than through the timar or zeamet 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 , or governor-commander;

1394-458: The second comprised the Balikh 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 on these crops. Most taxes in

1435-410: The third beylerbeylik , that of Rûm , followed soon after. The beylerbey was in charge of a province—termed a beylerbeylik or generically vilayet , "province", while after 1591 the term eyalet was used and beylerbeylik came to mean the office of beylerbey . Territorial beylerbeylik s were subdivided into sanjak s or liwa s under sanjakbey s. With

1476-440: The time of the conquest conferred on Kurdish begs with the patent of family inheritance for ever. Like other sanjaks they are divided into ziamets and timars , the possessors of which are obliged to serve in the field; but if they do not, the ziamet or timar may be transferred to a son or relation, but not to a stranger. The hakumets have neither ziamets nor timars. Their governors exercise full authority, and receive not only

1517-508: The title of wali for provinces even more important than those of the beglerbegi . Towards the end of the Safavid period, the title of beglerbegi had been eclipsed by that of wali , most notably being the wali's of the shah's their Georgian areas. Beglerbegi ( Persian : بیگلربیگی ) was a title generally held by governors of provinces of higher importance in Safavid Iran . The title

1558-512: 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,

1599-466: Was a sanjak 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 akçes (compared to the Aleppo sanjak's 11,734,193 akçes). The sanjak of Rakka was at this time divided into four nahiye s: one was Rakka proper, called Nefs-i Rakka ;

1640-583: Was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire . Its reported area in the 19th century was 20,332 square miles (52,660 km ), slightly larger than the original Abbasid province in Upper Mesopotamia . In 1846 it was succeeded by the Kurdistan Eyalet . The 17th-century traveller Evliya Çelebi reported on the organization of the eyalet: "In this province there are nineteen sanjaks and five hakumets (or hereditary governments) [...] eight [sanjaks] were at

1681-446: Was restricted to the smaller timar s only. Reflecting the office's origin in the military, the primary responsibility of the beylerbey s and their sanjakbey s was the maintenance of the sipahi cavalry, formed by holders of the military fiefs, whom they led in person on campaign. From the reign of Mehmed II ( r.  1451–1481 ) onwards, the title of beylerbey also became an honorary court rank, coming after

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