Kars Eyalet

Eyālet-i Ḳarṣ
Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire
← 1580–1875 →
Kars Eyalet in 1609
Capital		Kars[1]
History
•	Established	1580
•	Disestablished	1875

The Eyalet of Kars^[2] (Ottoman Turkish: ایالت قارص; Eyālet-i Ḳarṣ‎)^[3] was an eyalet (province) of the Ottoman Empire. Its reported area in the 19th century was 6,212 square miles (16,090 km²).^[4]

The town of Kars, which had been levelled to the ground by the Timur in 1368, was rebuilt as an Ottoman fortress in 1579 (1580 according to other sources) by Lala Mustafa Pasha, and became capital of an eyalet of six sanjaks and also a place of pilgrimage.^[5] It was conquered by Shah Abbas in 1604 and rebuilt by the Turks in 1616.^[5]

The size of the Kars garrison in 1640s was 1,002 Janissaries and 301 local recruits. Total 1,303 garrison.^[6]

Administrative divisions

Sanjaks of Kars Eyalet in the 17th century:^[7]

1. Little Erdehan Sanjak (Göle)
2. Hujujan Sanjak (Çıldır)
3. Zarshad Sanjak (Arpaçay)
4. Kechran Sanjak
5. Kaghizman Sanjak (Kağızman)
6. Kars Sanjak, the seat of the Pasha

References

1. Commercial statistics: A digest of the productive resources, commercial... By John Macgregor, p. 12, at Google Books
2. The penny cyclopædia, p. 180, at Google Books By Society for the diffusion of useful knowledge
3. "Some Provinces of the Ottoman Empire". Geonames.de. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
4. The Popular encyclopedia: or, conversations lexicon, Volume 6, p. 698, at Google Books
5. E.J. Brill's first encyclopedia of Islam, 1913-1936, p. 774, at Google Books By M. Th. Houtsma
6. Ottoman Warfare 1500-1700, Rhoads Murphey, 1999, p.226
7. Narrative of travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the ..., Volume 1, p. 90, at Google Books By Evliya Çelebi, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall