Arabic: إيالة الرقة
Ottoman Turkish: ایالت رقه
Eyalet-i Rakka
Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire
1586–1864

The Rakka Eyalet in 1609
CapitalUrfa[1]
History 
• Established
1586
• Disestablished
1864
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Eyalet of Diyarbekir
Aleppo Vilayet
Today part ofSyria
Turkey
Iraq

The eyalet of Rakka or Urfa[2] (Arabic: إيالة الرقة; Ottoman Turkish: ایالت رقه, romanized: Eyālet-i Raqqa)[3] was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. Its reported area in the 19th century was 24,062 square miles (62,320 km2).[2]

The eyalet was created in 1586 on territory previously under the jurisdiction of Diyarbekir.[4] 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.[5] [6]

Sanjak of Rakka

From c. 1535 until the creation of Rakka Eyalet in 1586, Rakka was a sanjak of Diyarbekir Eyalet.[6]: 253–5  The first documentation of this sanjak is in a list of sanjaks under Diyarbekir from sometime between 1548 and 1551.[6]: 254  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).[6]: 255  The sanjak of Rakka was at this time divided into four nahiyes: one was Rakka proper, called Nefs-i Rakka; 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.[6]: 255  The main agricultural products in the sanjak were wheat, "corn" ("demet"), barley, and cotton.[6]: 255  Taxes were partly collected in kind on these crops.[6]: 255  Most taxes in 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.[6]: 257 

During this period, the sanjak of Rakka was "fully integrated into the empire's military-administrative structure", with Ottoman officials directly in charge.[6]: 253  The three main Ottoman officials were the sanjak-bey, or governor-commander; the kadı, or judge; and the dizdar, or the commander of the citadel in Raqqa.[6]: 256–7  The sanjak-bey was appointed directly by the Sublime Porte and had control over the imperial troops stationed at Raqqa.[6]: 256  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.[6]: 257  The dizdar had "police authority" over Raqqa's citadel and probably also the whole city.[6]: 257 

List of sanjak-beys of Rakka sanjak[6]: 256 
Name Years in office Notes
Şeyhi Beğ (1) 1548-?
Sami Beğ sometime before 1554
Ferruh Beğ ?-1554
Melik Halil-oğlı Mehmed Beğ 1554-1556
Murad Beğ 1556
Şeyhi Beğ (2) 1556-1560
Hacci Beğ-oğlı Ahmed Beğ 1560-1564
Nimetullah Beğ 1565-1575 Not to be confused with a different Nimetullah Beğ who was governor of Salamiya; he was accused of stealing 500 camels in 1574 and then attacking the çavuş sent to investigate; he was then removed from office and imprisoned at Diyarbekir.[6]: 256 
Hacci Beğ 1575-6 (983 AH) Never actually arrived
Nimetullah Beğ 1576-? Reinstated as sanjak-bey after complaints from locals that bedouin sheep rustlers in the district.[6]: 256 

In the late 1500s, the Ottomans prioritized "establishing control over its Mesopotamian periphery"; they saw the region as needing a "reconquest".[6]: 257  Beginning around 1565, they increasingly directed the sanjak-beys of Rakka to subjugate local tribes and collect overdue taxes from them.[6]: 256  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.[6]: 257  For example, in 1572, 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.[6]: 257 

Eyalet of Rakka

In the late 1500s, the Ottoman administrative system was shifting away from military-command-based sanjaks as the basic territorial unity of the empire and replacing them with taxation-based eyalets.[6]: 258  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.[6]: 256, 8  The new eyalet may have originally been intended to encompass 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".[6]: 258  Birecik would have been detached as well, but it was re-attached to Rakka Eyalet in 1588.[6]: 258–9 

The Celali rebellions and the costly Ottoman-Habsburg wars caused Ottoman central authority to decline in Rakka Eyalet in the early 1600s.[6]: 259  From about 1606 until 1618, the beylerbey of Raqqa was given to the Kurdish emir of Cizre, Şeref Paşa, rather than an Ottoman official.[6]: 259  At other times, the position was "nothing more than a sinecure for prominent military commanders or their sons".[6]: 259  Governance in the eyalet was mostly in the hands of powerful ümera families based at Urfa.[6]: 260 

In the late 1600s, though, Rakka Eyalet returned to prominence as a center of the empire's Iskan project of tribal sedentarization.[6]: 260  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.[6]: 261  Hüseyin was tasked with settling Turkmen and Kurdish tribes from Anatolia in the eyalet, particularly in the Balikh valley upstream from Raqqa.[6]: 261–2  An important feature of the eyalet's governance during this period is that its governor was often authorized to cross into other provinces to subjugate tribes.[6]: 262  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.[6]: 262 

Administrative divisions

Sanjaks of Rakka Eyalet in the 17th century:[7]

  1. Sanjak of Jemasa
  2. Sanjak of Kharpud (Harput)
  3. Sanjak of Deir Rahba
  4. Sanjak of Beni Rebia
  5. Sanjak of Saruj
  6. Sanjak of Harran
  7. Sanjak of Rika (Raqqa)
  8. Sanjak of Ana ve Hit (Anah & Hit in Al-Anbar)
  9. Sanjak of Roha or Urfa, the seat of the Pasha

See also

References

  1. ^ Commercial statistics: A digest of the productive resources, commercial... By John Macgregor, p. 12, at Google Books
  2. ^ a b The Popular encyclopedia: or, conversations lexicon, Volume 6, p. 698, at Google Books
  3. ^ "Some Provinces of the Ottoman Empire". Geonames.de. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
  4. ^ The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman rule, 1516-1788, p. 38, at Google Books By Stefan Winter
  5. ^ Stefan Winter, "The Province of Raqqa under Ottoman Rule, 1535-1800" in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 68 (2009), 253-67.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag Winter, Stefan (2009). "The Province of Raqqa under Ottoman Rule, 1535-1800". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 68: 253–67. doi:10.1086/649610. S2CID 163430587. Retrieved 16 November 2022.
  7. ^ Narrative of travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the ..., Volume 1, p. 90, at Google Books By Evliya Çelebi, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall


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