page_title: North Macedonia under the Ottoman Empire
section_title: Rumelia Eyalet
hierarchical_section_title: North Macedonia under the Ottoman Empire / History / Rumelia Eyalet
caption_attribution_description: English: Monastir Eyalet in 1850s. Tributary states of the Ottoman Empire are shown in pink. According to the information of this map: [1]
context_page_description: Vardar Macedonia, the area that now makes up North Macedonia, was part of the Ottoman Empire for over five hundred years, from the mid-14th century to 1912. However, the Ottomans themselves did not keep any "Macedonia" as an administrative unit. Instead Vardar Macedonia was part of the Ottoman province or Eyalet of Rumelia. The name Rumelia means "Land of the Romans" in Turkish, referring to the lands conquered by the Ottoman Turks from the Byzantine Empire.
context_section_description: From its foundation, the province of Rumelia encompassed the entirety of the Ottoman Empire's European possessions. The first capital of Rumelia was probably Edirne (Adrianople), which was also, until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans' capital city. In the 18th century, Monastir (present day Bitola) emerged as an alternate residence of the governor, and in 1836, it officially became the capital of the eyalet. At about the same time, the Tanzimat reforms, aimed at modernizing the Empire, split off the new eyalets of Üsküb, Yanya and Selanik and reduced the Rumelia Eyalet to a few provinces around Monastir. The rump eyalet survived until 1867, when, as part of the transition to the more uniform vilayet system, it became part of the Salonica Vilayet.
  The reduced Rumelia Eyalet, centred at Manastir, encompassed also the sanjaks of Iskenderiyye (Scutari), Ohri (Ohrid) and Kesrye (Kastoria). In 1855, according to the French traveller A. Viquesnel, it comprised the sanjaks of Iskenderiyye, with 7 kazas or sub-provinces, Ohri with 8 kazas, Kesrye with 8 kazas and the pasha-sanjak of Manastir with 11 kazas.
caption: The reduced eyalet in the 1850s
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