Kefe Eyalet


The Eyalet of Kefe or Caffa was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. The eyalet stretched across the northern coast of the Black Sea with the main 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.

History

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. 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". 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.

Administrative divisions

According to Evliya Çelebi, the province of Kaffa had six sanjaks in the 17th century:
  1. Sanjak of Balıklağa
  2. Sanjak of Kerç
  3. Sanjak of Taman
  4. Sanjak of Çerkez Şagake
  5. Sanjak of Balısıra
  6. Sanjak of Azak
The administrative divisions of the beylerbeylik of Kefe between 1700 and 1730 were as follows:
  1. Sanjak of Pasha
  2. Sanjak of Akkerman
  3. Sanjak of Bender
  4. Sanjak of Atshu Castle
  5. Sanjak of Zane
  6. Sanjak of Kinburn

Kefe Sanjak

Initial subdivisions
  1. Kaza of Mengub
  2. Kaza of Suğdak
  3. Kaza of Kerç
  4. Kaza of Azak
  5. Kaza of Taman
  • Special status cities: Balıklagu and İnkerman