page_title: Rumelia
section_title: Etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Rumelia / Etymology
caption_attribution_description: English: European Dominions of the Ottomans or Turkey in Europe . . . 1795. Large detailed Faden map of the region bounded by the Greece and the Ionian Sea, the Ukraine, the Gulf of Venice, Asia Minor and the northern coast of Cyprus. Extremely detailed. The map shows the Ottoman Empire, circa 1720 and includes and ornate decorative cartouche. This is the first state of the map.
context_page_description: Rumelia, etymologically "Land of the Romans", was the name of a historical region in Southeastern Europe that was administered by the Ottoman Empire, corresponding to the Balkans. In its wider sense, it was used to refer to all Ottoman possessions and vassals that would later be geopolitically classified as " the Balkans".
context_section_description: Rûm means "Roman" or "Greek", ėli means "land" and Rumelia (Ottoman Turkish: روم ايلى‎, Rūm-ėli; Turkish: Rumeli) means "Land of the Romans" in Ottoman Turkish. It refers to the lands conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, which formerly belonged to the Byzantine Empire, known by its contemporaries as the Roman Empire (German historian Hieronymus Wolf coined the neologism "Byzantine Empire" in 1557, more than a century after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, in his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ.) Although the term Byzantine Empire is used by modern historians, the empire's citizens and emperors called themselves Romans and embraced a Roman identity. Various languages in the Balkans have long used the descriptor "Roman" to refer to the lands of the former Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. Indeed, today the term survives in the region as Bosnian: Rumelija, Greek: Ρωμυλία, Romylía, or Ρούμελη, Roúmeli; Albanian: Rumelia; Macedonian and Serbian: Румелија, Rumelija and Bulgarian: Румелия, Rumeliya. The old Latin documents in Genoa use the term Romania, the common name for the Byzantine Empire during the Middle Ages.
  Originally, the Seljuks used the name "Land of the Rûm" (Romans) to define Anatolia, which the armies of the Seljuk Empire gradually conquered from the former Eastern Roman Empire after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate was called the Sultanate of Rum by its contemporaries, meaning the "Sultanate of the Roman Empire" or "Roman Sultanate", which mostly covered central Anatolia until the Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243. Afterwards, it was replaced by the Anatolian beyliks, among which the Ottoman Beylik rose to prominence in the 14th and 15th centuries and eventually became the Ottoman Empire.
  However, following the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Anatolia and the Balkans in the second half of the 14th century and after the conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453 by Mehmed II, the term Rumeli ("Land of the Romans") came to apply exclusively to the Balkan region of the Ottoman Empire. The region remained primarily populated by Christians; though gradually, the Albanians, Bosniaks and Pomaks, among others, converted to Islam.
  Many grand viziers, viziers, pashas and beylerbeyis were originally from Rumelia.
caption: Map of Rumelia in 1795
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