Baghdad Eyalet (Arabic: إِيَالَةُ بَغْدَاد, Ottoman Turkish: ایالت بغداد, romanized: Eyālet-i Baġdād) was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire, with Baghdad serving as the administrative capital of Ottoman Iraq (Kürsi-i Hıtta-i Irakiyye). Its reported area in the 19th century was 62,208 square miles (161,120 km).
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👉 Baghdad Eyalet in the context of Ottoman Iraq
Ottoman Iraq or Hıtta-i Irakiyye (Ottoman Turkish: خطهٔ عراقیه, romanized: Hıṭṭa-i ʿIrāqiyye, lit. the Iraq region) was the Ottoman name for the region of Iraq that was under their control. Historians often divide its history into five main periods. The first began with Sultan Süleyman I's conquest in 1534 and ended with the Safavid capture of Baghdad in 1623. The second lasted from the Ottoman reconquest in 1638 to the start of Mamluk self-rule in 1749. The third period, from 1749 to 1831, was marked by the Georgian Mamluk dynasty’s semi-autonomous governance. The fourth stretched from the Ottoman removal of the Mamluks in 1831 to 1869, when reformist governor Midhat Pasha took office. The fifth and final phase ran from 1869 until 1917, when British forces occupied Baghdad during the First World War.
Administratively, during the first period in the 16th century, Baghdad Eyalet encompassed much of the territory of modern Iraq. In the 17th century, the Ottomans had reorganized Iraq into four eyalets (Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, and Shahrizor). However, from the late 17th century, a trend of administrative unification began, with Basra coming under Baghdad's control from around 1705 and Mosul and Shahrizor following after 1780 during the semi-autonomous Mamluk period. Following this unification, Mamluk rulers such as Sulayman the Great were described as governing “all of Iraq”, and the Ottomans themselves began referring to the region unofficially as “the land of Iraq”. By 1830, and possibly earlier, these were being collectively referred to in official Ottoman correspondence as the region of Iraq, as attested in a letter from Sultan Mahmud II. The four eyalets were later consolidated in the 19th century into the vilayets of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra, collectively referred to in official Ottoman documents as the Iraq Region (Hıtta-i Irakiyye).
In this Dossier
Baghdad Eyalet in the context of Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital and largest city in Iraq. It is located on the banks of the Tigris in central Iraq. The city has an estimated population of 8 million. It ranks among the most populous and largest cities in the Middle East and the Arab world and constitutes 22% of the country's population. Baghdad is a primary financial and commercial center in the region.
Founded in 762 AD by Al-Mansur, Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and became its most notable development project. The city evolved into an intellectual and cultural center. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". For much of the Abbasid era, during the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad was one of the largest cities in the world and rivaled Chang'an, as the population peaked at more than one million. It was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues, shift in power and multiple successive empires. Later, Baghdad served as the administrative center of Ottoman Iraq, exercising authority over the provinces of Basra, Mosul, and Shahrizor.
Baghdad Eyalet in the context of Ali Janbulad
Ali Janbulad Pasha (transliterated in Turkish as Canbolatoğlu Ali Paşa; died 1 March 1610) was a Kurdish tribal chief from Kilis and a rebel Ottoman governor of Aleppo who wielded practical supremacy over Syria in c. 1606–1607. His rebellion, launched to avenge the execution of his uncle Huseyn ibn Janbulad by the commander Jigalazade Sinan Pasha in 1605, gained currency among northern Syria's Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab tribes and expanded to include local Syrian governors and chiefs, most prominently Fakhr al-Din Ma'n of Mount Lebanon and his erstwhile enemy Yusuf Sayfa Pasha of Tripoli. Ali formed a secret military alliance with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand I, with the explicit aim of jointly destroying the Ottoman Empire and establishing the Janbulad family as the sovereigns of Syria.
Ali's burgeoning ties with several Celali revolt leaders, whose influence spanned central Anatolia, Cilicia and part of Mesopotamia, posed a major threat to the Empire at a time in which it was at war with Austria-Hungary in the west and Safavid Iran in the east. The prospect of a foreign-backed, wide-scale rebellion in the Ottoman heartland prompted Grand Vizier Kuyucu Murad Pasha to launch an expedition against Ali. The latter publicly maintained his loyalty to Sultan Ahmed I throughout his rebellion and his practical control of Aleppo was formalized with his appointment as beylerbey in September 1606. Murad Pasha's campaign against Ali was ostensibly directed against the Safavids to avoid Ali's mobilization; the latter realized he was the grand vizier's target only when Murad Pasha's army routed his Celali allies in Cilicia and approached his north Syrian domains. The grand vizier's army of Rumeli and Anatolian troops routed and mass executed Ali's rebel sekbans (musketeers) at the Amik Valley in October 1607, but Ali escaped, first to Aleppo then to the Euphrates valley. Through the mediation of his uncle Haydar ibn Janbulad and other representatives, he was pardoned by the sultan in 1608 and appointed beylerbey of Temeşvar several months later. Machinations against him by the local elites and Janissaries there compelled him to seek refuge in Belgrade in April 1609. Murad Pasha ordered his arrest there in the summer and he was executed in March 1610.
Baghdad Eyalet in the context of Mohammad Shah Qajar
Mohammad Shah Qajar (Persian: محمدشاه قاجار; born Mohammad Mirza; 5 January 1808 – 5 September 1848) was the third Qajar shah of Iran from 1834 to 1848, inheriting the throne from his grandfather, Fath-Ali Shah. From a young age, Mohammad Mirza was under the tutelage of Haji Mirza Aqasi, a local dervish from Tabriz whose teachings influenced the young prince to become a Sufi-king later in his life. After his father Abbas Mirza died in 1833, Mohammad Mirza became the crown prince of Iran and was assigned with the governorship of Azarbaijan. After the death of Fath-Ali Shah in 1834, some of his sons including Hossein Ali Mirza and Ali Mirza Zel as-Soltan rose up as claimants to the throne. Mohammad Shah soon suppressed the rebellious princes and asserted his authority.
Mohammad Shah dismissed and executed his tactful premier, Abol-Qasem Qa'em-Maqam, and appointed his favourite, Haji Mirza Aqasi, as the grand vizier. The new shah's main goal was to reestablish the rule of the Iranian government in the rebellious city of Herat. In 1837 he marched to Herat and laid a futile siege on the city, which was eventually withdrawn when the British government threatened to invade Iran. On his return, Mohammad suppressed a revolt in Isfahan led by the major clergy figure Mohammad Bagher Shafti. Through British-Russian mediation, he concluded the Second Treaty of Erzurum with the Ottoman Empire, after initially wanting retaliation for the sack of Khorramshahr by the Ottoman governor of Baghdad.