| Tripoli Eyalet Eyālet-i Ṭrāblus-ı Şām طرابلس الشام | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire | |||||||||||||
| 1579–1864 | |||||||||||||
.svg) Flag | |||||||||||||
.png) The Tripoli Eyalet in 1609 | |||||||||||||
| Capital | Tripoli[1] | ||||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||||
| • Coordinates | 34°26′N35°51′E / 34.433°N 35.850°E /34.433; 35.850 | ||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
• Established | 1579 | ||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1864 | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Today part of | Lebanon Syria | ||||||||||||
Tripoli Eyalet (Ottoman Turkish:ایالت طرابلس شام,romanized: Eyālet-i Ṭrāblus-ı Şām;[2]Arabic:طرابلس الشام) was aneyalet of theOttoman Empire. The capital was inTripoli, Lebanon. 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 theAmanus mountains in the north, to the gorge ofMaameltein to the south, which separated it from the territory of thesanjak of Sidon-Beirut.[4]
Along with the chiefly Sunni Muslim and Maronite Christian coastal towns ofLatakia,Jableh,Baniyas,Tartus, Tripoli,Batrun andByblos, the eyalet included theWadi al-Nasara valley (the Valley of the Christians), theAn-Nusayriyah Mountains, inhabited byAlawites, as well as the northern reaches of the Lebanon range, where the majority of inhabitants wereMaronite Christians.[4]
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 ofDamascus andAleppo.[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 theTurkoman‘Assaf emirs ofGhazir inKisrawan.[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 to 1808, 1810–20 and 1821–35 the governor of the eyalet wasMustafa Agha Barbar.
The Eyalet had seven sanjaks in the 17th century, according toEvliya Çelebi:[7]
Eyalet consisted of five sanjaks between 1700 and 1740 as follows:[8]
