Beirut Vilayet

The Vilayet of Beirut was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire. It was established from the coastal areas of the Syria Vilayet in 1888 as a recognition of the new-found importance of its then-booming capital, Beirut, which had experienced remarkable growth in the previous years — by 1907, Beirut handled 11 percent of the Ottoman Empire's international trade. It stretched from just north of Jaffa to the port city of Latakia. It was bounded by the Syria Vilayet to the east, the Aleppo Vilayet to the north, the autonomous Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem to the south and the Mediterranean Sea to the west.

Contents

• Beirut vilayet
• Administrative divisions
• References

At the beginning of the 20th century it reportedly had an area of 11,773 square miles (30,490 km²), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) gave the population as 533,500. The accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered.