| Vilayet of Adrianople ولايت ادرنه Vilâyet-i Edirne | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire | |||||||||||||
| 1867–1922 | |||||||||||||
.svg) Flag | |||||||||||||
.png) The Adrianople Vilayet in 1900 | |||||||||||||
| Capital | Adrianople (Edirne)[1] | ||||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||||
| • Coordinates | 41°10′N 26°19′E / 41.16°N 26.32°E | ||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||
• Muslim, 1914[2] | 360,411 | ||||||||||||
• Greek, 1914[2] | 224,680 | ||||||||||||
• Armenian, 1914[2] | 19,773 | ||||||||||||
• Jewish, 1914[2] | 22,515 | ||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
| 1867 | |||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1922 | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Today part of |  Turkey Greece Bulgaria | ||||||||||||
The Vilayet of Adrianople or Vilayet of Edirne (Ottoman Turkish: ولايت ادرنه; Vilâyet-i Edirne)[3] was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire.
Prior to 1878, the vilayet had an area of 26,160 square miles (67,800 km2)[4][5] and extended all the way to the Balkan Mountains. However, by virtue of the Treaty of Berlin (1878), the Sanjak of İslimye, most of the Sanjak of Filibe and a small part of the Sanjak of Edirne (the Kızılağaç kaza and Monastır nahiya) were carved out of it to create the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia, with a total area of 32,978 km2.[6] The province unified peacefully with the Principality of Bulgaria in 1885.
The rest of the vilayet was split between Turkey and Greece in 1923, culminating in the formation of Western and Eastern Thrace after World War I as part of the Treaty of Lausanne. A smaller portion had already gone to Bulgaria by virtue of the Treaty of Bucharest (1913) following the Balkan wars. In the late 19th century, it bordered on the Istanbul Vilayet, the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara in the east, on the Salonica Vilayet in the west, on Eastern Rumelia (Bulgarian since 1885) in the north and on the Aegean Sea in the south. Sometimes the area is also described as Southern Thrace,[7] or Adrianopolitan Thrace.[8]
After the city of Adrianople (Edirne in Turkish; pop. in 1905 about 80,000), the principal towns were Rodosto (now Tekirdağ) (35,000), Gelibolu (25,000), Kırklareli (16,000), İskeçe (14,000), Çorlu (11,500), Dimetoka (10,000), Enez (8000), Gümülcine (8000) and Dedeağaç (3000).[1]
- ^ a b Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 217.
- ^ a b c d "1914 Census Statistics" (PDF). Turkish General Staff. pp. 605–606. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 October 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Salname-yi Vilâyet-i Edirne ("Yearbook of the Vilayet of Edirne"), Edirne vilâyet matbaası, Edirne, 1300 [1882]; on the website of Hathi Trust Digital Library.
- ^ Europe by Éliseé Reclus, page 152
- ^ "Adrianople Vilayet Borders".
- ^ Statelova, Elena (1999). История на България. Том 3 [History of Bulgaria. Volume 3]. София: Издателска къща „Анубис“. p. 16. ISBN 954-426-206-7.
- ^ Migration, Memory, Heritage: Socio-cultural Approaches to the Bulgarian-turkish Border, Magdalena Elchinova, Valentina Ganeva-Raycheva, Lina Gergova, Stoyka Penkova, Natalia Rashkova, Nikolai Vukov, Meglena Zlatkova, Lina Gergova, ISBN 954845842X, p. 30.
- ^ Europe and the Historical Legacies in the Balkans, Raymond Detrez, Barbara Segaert, Peter Lang, 2008, ISBN 9052013748, p. 58.