Native Name: | Eyālet-i Kefe |
Common Name: | Kefe Eyalet |
Subdivision: | Eyalet |
Nation: | the Ottoman Empire |
Year Start: | 1568 |
Year End: | 1774 |
Date End: | 21 July 1774 |
Event End: | Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca |
P1: | Rumelia Eyalet |
S1: | Crimean Khanate |
Flag S1: | Flag of the Crimean Khanate (15th century).svg |
Image Map Caption: | The Kefe Eyalet in 1609 |
Capital: | Caffa |
Today: | (De jure) |
The Eyalet of Kefe or Caffa (Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928);: ایالت كفه; Eyālet-i Kefê)[1] was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. The eyalet stretched across the northern coast of the Black Sea with the main sanjak (Pasha sanjak) being located in the southern coast of Crimea. The eyalet was under direct Ottoman rule, completely separate from the Khanate of Crimea. Its capital was at Kefe, the Turkish name for Caffa (modern Feodosiya in Crimea).
See also: Gazaria (Genoese colonies). The city of Caffa and its surroundings were first made an Ottoman dominion after the Turks overran the Genoese in 1475, after which a sanjak centred on Caffa was created. The Eyalet of Kefe was formed in 1568 as a beylerbeylik.[2] By the 17th-century accounts of Evliya Çelebi, its sanjaks were "ruled by Voivodas immediately appointed by the Ottoman Sultan and not by the Khans".[3] The eyalet was annexed to a briefly independent Khanate of Crimea as a result of the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774. The Khanate itself would be annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783.
The administrative divisions of the beylerbeylik of Kefe between 1700 and 1730 were as follows:[4]
Initial subdivisions[5]