Damascus_Eyalet
Damascus Eyalet
Administrative division of the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1865
Damascus Eyalet (Arabic: إيالة دمشق; Ottoman Turkish: ایالت شام, romanized: Eyālet-i Šām)[2] was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. Its reported area in the 19th century was 51,900 square kilometres (20,020 sq mi).[3] It became an eyalet after the Ottomans took it from the Mamluks following the 1516–1517 Ottoman–Mamluk War.[4] Janbirdi al-Ghazali, a Mamluk traitor, was made the first beylerbey of Damascus.[5] The Damascus Eyalet 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 Syria Vilayet.[6]