Erzurum vilayet

ولايت ارضروم Vilâyet-i Erzurum
Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire
← 1867–1923 →   →
Erzurum Vilayet in 1890
Capital		Erzurum
History
•	Established	1867
•	Declaration of the Republic of Turkey	1923
Today part of		Ardahan, Erzurum, Kars, Iğdır, Van

The Vilayet of Erzerum (Ottoman Turkish: ولايت ارضروم, Vilâyet-i Erzurum‎) was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire.

The vilayet of Erzurum shared borders with the Persian and Russian empires in the east and north-east, in the north with the Trebizond Vilayet, in the west with the vilayet of Sebastia, and in the south with the vilayets of Bitlis, Mamuret-ül Aziz and Van.

At the beginning of the 20th century it reportedly had an area of 29,614 square miles (76,700 km²), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) gave the population as 645,702. The accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered. It was one of the six Armenian vilayets in the eastern part of Anatolia, and, prior to World War I, had a large number of Armenians living there as well as Georgians, Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks, and other ethnic groups, both Muslim and Christian [mainly Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic (Orthodox/Gregorian)].

The eyalet of Erzurum was one of the first Ottoman provinces to become a vilayet after an administrative reform in 1865, and by 1867 it had been reformed into the Erzurum Vilayet.

In 1875 it was divided in six vilayets: Erzurum, Van, Hakkari, Bitlis, Hozat (Dersim) and Kars-Çildir. In 1888 by an imperial order Hakkari was joined to the vilayet of Van, and Hozat to Mamuret ul-Aziz.

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