Vilayet of Van

ولايت وان‎ Vilâyet-i Van
Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire
← 1875–1922 →
Van Vilayet in 1900
Capital		Van
History
•	Established	1875
•	Disestablished	1922
Population
•	Muslim, 1914	179,380
•	Armenian, 1914	67,792
•	Jewish, 1914	1,383
Today part of		Turkey

The Vilayet of Van (ولايت وان, Vilâyet-i Van; Armenian: Վանի վիլայեթ, Vani vilayet') was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century it reportedly had a population of about 400,000 and an area of 15,000 square miles (39,000 km²). It was one of the so-called six Armenian vilayets and held, prior to World War I, a large number of Armenians, as well as Assyrian and Azeri minorities.

In 1875 the eyalet of Erzurum 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.

The economic center of province was the city of Van. As the border province of the north-eastern frontier, towards both Russian and Persian territory, it contained a number of garrisons. It was divided into the Sanjak of Van and the Sanjak of Hakkari and covered the present-day provinces of Van, Hakkari and parts of Şırnak, Muş and Bingöl ones.

At the beginning of the 20th century it reportedly had an area of 15,440 square miles (40,000 km²), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) gave the population as 376,297. It should be noted that the accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered.

...
Wikipedia