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| Province of Ochakiv Eyalet-i Silistra | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire | |||||||||||||
| 1593–1864 | |||||||||||||
.svg) Flag | |||||||||||||
.png) The Silistra Eyalet in 1609 | |||||||||||||
| Capital | Silistra[1] andÖzi | ||||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||||
| • Coordinates | 44°7′N27°16′E / 44.117°N 27.267°E /44.117; 27.267 | ||||||||||||
• 1856[2] | 94,858 km2 (36,625 sq mi) | ||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
• Established | 1593 | ||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1864 | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
TheEyalet of Silistra orSilistria[3] (Ottoman Turkish:ایالت سیلیستره,romanized: Eyālet-i Silistre),[4] later known asÖzü Eyalet (Ottoman Turkish:ایالت اوزی,romanized: Eyālet-i Özi,lit. 'Province ofOchakiv')[4] was aneyalet of theOttoman Empire along theBlack Sealittoral and south bank of theDanube River in southeasternEurope. Thefortress ofAkkerman was under the eyalet's jurisdiction.[5] Its reported area in the 19th century was 71,140 square kilometres (27,469 sq mi).[6]
The Eyalet of Silistra was formed in 1593 asbeylerbeylik of Özi (Ukrainian:Очаків,Očakiv)[7] from territory of the formerPrincipality of Karvuna, laterDobruja, Silistra was originally theSilistra Sanjak ofRumelia Eyalet.
It was named afterSilistra, since its governor often resided in this Danubian fortress. Around 1599, it was expanded and raised to the level of an eyalet likely as a benefit to its first governor-general (beylerbeyi), thekhan ofCrimea.[citation needed] It was centered on the regions ofDobruja,Budjak (OttomanBessarabia), andYedisan and included the towns ofVarna,Kustendja (Constanța),Akkerman (Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi), andKhadjibey (Odesa) with its capital at the fortresses ofSilistra (now inBulgaria) orÖzi (nowOchakiv inUkraine).
In the 17th century, Silistra Eyalet was expanded to the south and west to include most of modernBulgaria and EuropeanTurkey including the towns ofAdrianople (Edirne),Filibe (Plovdiv), andVidin. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, a series ofRusso-Turkish Wars truncated the eyalet in the east withRussia eventually annexing all ofYedisan andBudjak to theDanube by 1812.
Edirne Eyalet was constituted from south of Silistra Eyalet in1830. With Ottoman administrative reforms of 1864 the Silistra Eyalet was reconstituted as theDanube Vilayet.
Evliya Çelebi mentioned in his book (Seyahatnâme) that the Silistra or Özi Eyalet had ten sanjaks:[8]
According toSancak Tevcih Defteri, eyalet consisted of eight sanjaks between 1700 and 1730 as follows:[9]
Sanjaks in the early 19th century:[10]
