| Vilayet of Aleppo ولاية حلب Vilâyet-i Haleb | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vilayet of Ottoman Empire | |||||||||||||
| 1866–1918 | |||||||||||||
.svg) Flag | |||||||||||||
.png) The Aleppo Vilayet in 1900 | |||||||||||||
| Capital | Aleppo | ||||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||||
| • Coordinates | 36°28′N37°05′E / 36.46°N 37.09°E /36.46; 37.09 | ||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||
• Muslim, 1914[1] | 576,320 | ||||||||||||
• Greek, 1914[1] | 21,954 | ||||||||||||
• Armenian, 1914[1] | 40,843 | ||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
| 1866 | |||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1918 | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Today part of | Syria Turkey | ||||||||||||
TheVilayet of Aleppo[2] (Ottoman Turkish:ولايت حلب,romanized: Vilâyet-i Halep;[3]Arabic:ولاية حلب,romanized: Wilāyat Ḥalab) was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of theOttoman Empire, centered on the city ofAleppo.
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The vilayet was established in March 1866.[4] The new boundaries of Aleppo were stretched northward to include the largely Turkish-speaking cities ofMaraş,Antep andUrfa giving the province a roughly equal number of Arabic- and Turkish-speakers, as well as a large Armenian-speaking minority.[5]
Thanks to its strategic geographic location on the trade route betweenAnatolia and the east, Aleppo rose to high prominence in the Ottoman era, at one point being second only toConstantinople in the empire. However, the economy of Aleppo was badly hit by the opening of theSuez Canal in 1869, and since thenDamascus rose as a serious competitor with Aleppo over the title of the capital of Syria.
Historically, Aleppo was more united in economy and culture with its sister Anatolian cities than with Damascus. This fact still shows today with the distinctive cultural differences between Aleppo and Damascus.
At the end of World War I, theTreaty of Sèvres made most of the Province of Aleppo part of the newly established nation ofSyria, whileCilicia was promised by France to become an Armenian state. However,Mustafa Kemal Atatürk annexed most of the Province of Aleppo as well as Cilicia toTurkey in hisWar of Independence. The Arab residents in the province (as well as the Kurds) supported the Turks in this war against the French, a notable example beingIbrahim Hanano who directly coordinated with Atatürk and received weaponry from him. The outcome, however, was disastrous for Aleppo, because as per theTreaty of Lausanne, most of the Province of Aleppo was made part of Turkey with the exception of Aleppo andAlexandretta; thus, Aleppo was cut from its northern satellites and from the Anatolian cities beyond on which Aleppo depended heavily in commerce. Moreover, theSykes-Picot division of the Near East separated Aleppo from most ofMesopotamia, which also harmed the economy of Aleppo. The situation exacerbated further in 1939 when Alexandretta was annexed to Turkey, thus depriving Aleppo from its main port ofİskenderun and leaving it in total isolation within Syria.
At the beginning of the 20th century it reportedly had an area of 30,304 square miles (78,490 km2), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) reported a population of 1,500,000.[6] The accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered.[6]
The dominant language was Arabic, but Turkish was spoken among the villagers ofKilis andAintab, and Kurdish aroundUrfa. Ethnic groups in the vilayet included Arabs,Turks, Circassians, Kurds, Turkomans,Ansaris,Yezidis,Druze,Armenians,Syriacs,Maronites,Jews, and some Germanic-speaking Europeans.[7]
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_2.126_Aleppo_Vilayet.jpg)
Sanjaks of the vilayet, circa 1876[8]
