page_title: Hejaz Vilayet
section_title: Vilayet period
hierarchical_section_title: Hejaz Vilayet / History / Vilayet period
caption_attribution_description: English: Political borders of the Arabian Peninsula in 1914. Source: Collapse of Empire: Ottoman Turks and the Arabs in the First World War, itself from King Husain and the Kingdom of Hejaz By Randall Baker .
context_page_description: The Vilayet of the Hejaz refers to the Hejaz region of Arabia when it was administered as a first-level province of the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century, it reportedly had an area of 96,500 square miles. The Hejaz included all land from the southern border of the Vilayet of Syria, south of the city of Ma‛an, to the northern border of the Vilayet of Yemen, north of the city of Al Lith.
  Despite its lack of natural resources, the region had great political importance as the cradle of Islam and was a source of legitimacy for the Ottomans' rule. Subsidies provided by the state and zakat were the main source of income for the population of the two holy cities, but trade generated by the hajj was also an important source of revenue.
  The Ottoman regular force in Hejaz was constituted as a fırka, attached to the Seventh Army in Yemen. Outside of cities and towns, Ottoman authority was weak. Only Medina and Jeddah had permanent garrisons.
context_section_description: In the late 1860s, a commission was sent to the Hejaz to reorganize the province, and the following decades saw the introduction of administrative reforms. Hejaz was reorganized as a vilayet in 1872 according to the Vilayet Law of 1864. The province was divided into sanjaks, kazas and nahiyes. Mecca became the center of the vilayet, with Medina and Jeddah as sanjaks. The administrative structure of the Hejaz was reformed, but some changes enacted in the rest of the Empire were not implemented here.
  The towns of Mecca and Medina were exempted from paying taxes and in fact, were given subsidies, called surre, from the Ottoman treasury that was to be distributed to the poor in Mecca and Medina. The Hejaz region first received subvention in the reign of the Abbasid caliph Al-Muqtadir in the tenth century, afterwards it became customary for other caliphs and sultans to send these subsidies. However, aside from residents of Mecca and Medina, the inhabitants of other towns and villages did not benefit as much. Subsidies were also paid to notable nomadic shaikhs, who had the potential to disrupt the passage of pilgrims in the region. The entire province was also exempted from military service; attempts to overturn this exemption were blocked by the Sharif of Mecca.
  The Ottomans maintained a garrison force of 7,000 soldiers under the command of officers, in addition to the Sharif's own personal guard of 500. Proper garrisons were stationed at the towns of Mecca and Medina whereas pocket garrisons were kept in Jeddah, Yanbu and Ta'if- all of which were alongside the strategic Hejaz Railway. Besides these settlements, roads and other infrastructure were not under Ottoman control - the roads to Yanbu from Medina required strong escorts and the Mecca-Medina railway route was regularly closed by tribesmen who demanded payment for passage - highway robbery and murder were common on these roads.
  The Ottomans completed the Hejaz Railway, linking Damascus to Medina, in 1908, but the railway was severely damaged during World War I and later abandoned. In 1916, as a result of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali declared himself King of the Hejaz.
caption: The Arabian peninsula in 1914
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