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A sanjak or sancak (, , "flag, banner") was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans also sometimes called the sanjak a liva (, ) from the name's calque in Arabic language and Persian language.
Banners were a common organization of nomadic groups on the Eurasian Steppe including the early Turkish people, Mongols, and Manchus and were used as the name for the initial first-level territorial divisions at the formation of the Ottoman Empire. Upon the empire's expansion and the establishment of as larger provinces, sanjaks were used as the second-level administrative divisions. They continued in this purpose after the eyalets were replaced by during the Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century.
Sanjaks were typically headed by a bey or sanjakbey. The Tanzimat reforms initially placed some sanjaks under and others under ; a sanjak under a mutasarrif was known as a mutasarriflik. The districts of each sanjak were known as . These were initially overseen by Islamic law qadi ( kadi) and thus identical to their . During the 1864 round of reforms, their administrative duties were given to instead. Under the timar system of the early empire, fiefs held by timariots sipahis were also an important feature of each sanjak.
Sanjaks were initially carried over into the Republic of Turkey before being reorganized as provinces () in the 1920s.
Sanjaks were also known as () from their name's calque in Arabic language (, ) and Persian language. In the other languages of the Ottoman Empire, they were known as (նահանգ, "province") in Armenian; as (окръг, "province") in Bulgarian; as (σαντζάκι), (λιβάς), dioikēsis (Διοίκησις, "diocese"), eparchy]] (επαρχία, "eparchy") in Greek language; and as sancak in Ladino language. ( info page on book at Martin Luther University) // CITED: p. 41-43 (PDF p. 43-45/338).
The districts which made up an eyalet were known as sanjaks, each under the command of a sanjak-bey. The number of sanjaks in each eyalet varied considerably. In 1609, Ayn Ali noted that Rumelia Eyalet had 24 sanjaks, but that six of these in the Peloponnesos had been detached to form the separate Morea Eyalet. Anatolia had 14 sanjaks and the Damascus Eyalet had 11. There were, in addition, several eyalets where there was no formal division into sanjaks. These, in Ayn Ali's list were Basra Eyalet and part of the Baghdad Eyalet, Al-Hasa Eyalet, Egypt Eyalet, Tripoli Eyalet, Tunis Eyalet and Algiers Eyalet. He adds to the list Yemen Eyalet, with the note that ‘at the moment the Imams have usurped control’. These eyalets were, however, exceptional: the typical pattern was the eyalet subdivided into sanjaks. By the 16th century, these presented a rational administrative pattern of territories, based usually around the town or settlement from which the sanjak took its name, and with a population of perhaps 100,000.
However, this had not always been the case. It seems more likely that before the mid-15th century, the most important factor in determining the pattern of sanjaks was the existence of former lordships and principalities, and of areas where marcher lords had acquired territories for themselves and their followers. Some sanjaks in fact preserved the names of the dynasties that had ruled there before the Ottoman conquest.
In 1609, Ayn Ali made a note on their formal status. In listing the sanjaks in the Diyarbekir Eyalet, he notes that it had ten ‘Ottoman districts’ and, in addition, eight ‘districts of the Kurdish lords’. In these cases, when a lord died, the governorship did not go to an outsider, but to his son. In other respects, however, they resembled normal Ottoman sanjaks, in that the revenues were registered and allocated to fief holders who went to war under their lord. In addition, however, Ayn Ali noted that there were five ‘sovereign sanjaks’, which their lords disposed of ‘as private property’, and which were outside the system of provincial government. Ayn Ali records similar independent or semi-independent districts in the Çıldır Eyalet in north-eastern Turkey and, most famously, in the Van Eyalet where the Khans of Bitlis ruled independently until the 19th century. There were other areas, too, which enjoyed autonomy or semi-autonomy. In the second half of the 16th century, Kilis came under the hereditary governorship of the Janbulad family, while Adana remained under the rule of the pre-Ottoman dynasty of Ramazanoghlu. In Lebanon, Ayn Ali refers to the Druze chieftains with the note: ‘there are non-Muslim lords in the mountains.’ There were other autonomous enclaves in the Empire, whether or not they received formal recognition as sanjaks but, by the 16th century, these were exceptional.
In the 1840s, the boundaries of sanjaks were redrawn to establish equal units of comparable population and wealth. Each of these sanjaks was headed by a muhassil.
A sanjak was typically divided into , each overseeing a major city and its surrounding hinterland. Initially, the civil administration was headed by an Islamic law judge ( kadi) and the area equivalent to his jurisdiction ( kadiluk). During the Tanzimat reforms, the kadis were eventually restricted to judicial functions and administration ceded to a kaymakam and treasurer. The kazas were further divided into subdistricts ( nahiyah) and villages, each overseen by an appointed official or local council.
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