Mosul vilayet

The Mosul Vilayet^[1] (Arabic: ولاية الموصل; Ottoman Turkish: ولايت موصل, romanized: Vilâyet-i Musul) was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire. It was created from the northern sanjaks of the Baghdad Vilayet in 1878.^[3]

Arabic: ولاية الموصل Ottoman Turkish: ولايت موصل Vilâyet-i Musul
Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire
1878–1918
Flag
The Mosul Vilayet in 1892
Capital	Mosul[1]
Population
• 1897[2]	475,415
History
• Established	1878
• Armistice of Mudros	1918
Preceded by Succeeded by Baghdad Vilayet Mandatory Iraq
Today part of	Iraq

At the beginning of the 20th century, it reportedly had an area of 29,220 square miles (75,700 km²), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) gave the population as 300,280.^[4] The accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered.^[4]

The city of Mosul and the area south to the Little Zab was allocated to France in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement of the First World War, and later transferred to Mandatory Iraq following the Mosul Question.

Administrative divisions

A map showing the administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire in 1317 Hijri, 1899 Gregorian, Including the Vilayet of Mosul and its Sanjaks.

Map of subdivisions of Mosul Vilayet in 1907

Sanjaks of the vilayet and their capitals:^[5]

1. Sanjak of Mosul, Mosul
2. Sanjak of Shahrizor^[6] (later renamed Sanjak of Kirkuk),^[7]: 190 Kirkuk
3. Sanjak of Sulaymaniyah, Sulaymaniyah

Demographics

According to early 20th-century British intelligence, the vilayet had a Kurdish majority and a Turkoman minority.^[8]

Enumeration by the Government of Iraq (1922-24).^[9]

	Number	Percentage
Kurds	520,007	64.9%
Arabs	166,914	20.8%
Christians	61,336	7.7%
Turks	38,652	4.8%
Yezidis	26,257	3.3%
Jews	11,897	1.5%
Total	801,000	100%

See also

• Mosul Question
• Iraqi Kurdistan
• Kingdom of Kurdistan

Notes

1. Geographical Dictionary of the World. Concept Publishing Company. p. 1230. ISBN 978-81-7268-012-1. Retrieved 2013-06-01.
2. Mutlu, Servet. "Late Ottoman population and its ethnic distribution" (PDF). pp. 29–31. Corrected population for Mortality Level=8.
3. Peters, John Punnett (1911). "Bagdad" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 193.
4. Asia by A. H. Keane, page 460
5. Musul Vilayeti | Tarih ve Medeniyet
6. Ágoston, Gábor; Masters, Bruce Alan (2009). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-1025-7.
7. "Mosul vilayet in the Ottoman empire" (PDF). Orsam.com.
8. Great Britain. Naval Intelligence Division (1944). Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Wellcome Library. [Oxford?] : Naval Intelligence Division. p. 307.
9. "Iraq". 2017-04-17. Archived from the original on 2017-04-17. Retrieved 2023-07-25.

External links

• Media related to Mosul Vilayet at Wikimedia Commons