GEORGIAN LANDS IN THE REGIONS OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE (SECOND HALF OF THE 16TH CENTURY-UNTIL 1878)

Abstract

     During the 16th century, at the height of its power, the Ottoman Empire succeeded in occupying parts of Georgia.

       The socio-political organization of the medieval Ottoman Empire was based on a military-feudal system. This system was integrated with the administrative-territorial structure of the empire.This paper presents a general explanation of the military-feudal regime, based on the knowledge of a British subject, Ryko (17th century), who studied the system in the Ottoman Empire.

By the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries, there is no comprehensive data on the number of provinces and dominions within the Ottoman Empire, nor on their borders and periods of existence. Our study provides a source in which several Ottoman provinces are listed for the second half of the 16th century and early 17th century, up to the year 1609. Among them were also historical Georgian territories. Not all dates are precisely defined.

Historical southwestern Georgia was incorporated into four Ottoman eyalets: Childir and Trabzon (entirely), and Erzurum and Kars (partially). This paper outlines how the Georgian lands were divided into sanjaks (districts) within these eyalets.

We also aim to clarify why the Acharistskali River basin does not appear in the 1595 “Great Register of the Vilayet of Gurjistan,” i.e., the Childir Eyalet, and to trace where this basin was administratively placed in the period leading up to the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878.

      The decree issued in 1595 by Sultan Mehmed III, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, addressed to the governor of Adjara, provides grounds for certain historical conclusions.

      We attempt to clarify the timeline of the Ottoman conquest of Batumi and its surrounding territories, as well as the question of their subordination to the Trabzon Eyalet during the 15th–16th centuries. In addition, we investigate which administrative-territorial unit the Kobuleti district belonged to during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Keywords: Ottoman Empire, Georgia, administrative-territorial organization, eyalet, sanjak, Adjara.