Erzurum vilayet

ولايت ارضروم Vilâyet-i Erzurum
Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire
1867–1923
The Erzurum Vilayet in 1890
Capital	Erzurum
History
• Vilayet Law	1867
• Declaration of the Republic of Turkey	1923
Preceded by Succeeded by Erzurum Eyalet Bitlis Vilayet Kars Oblast
Today part of	Ağrı, Ardahan, Erzurum, Iğdır, Kars, Van

The Vilayet of Erzurum (Armenian: Էրզրումի նահանգ, Ottoman Turkish: ولايت ارضروم, Vilâyet-i Erzurum)^[2] was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire.

The vilayet of Erzurum shared borders with the Persian and Russian empires in the east and north-east, in the north with the Trebizond Vilayet, in the west with the vilayet of Sivas, and in the south with the vilayets of Bitlis, Mamuret-ül Aziz and Van.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Erzurum Vilayet reportedly had an area of 29,614 square miles (76,700 km²), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) gave the population as 645,702.^[3] The accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered.^[3] It was one of the six Armenian vilayets in the eastern part of Anatolia, and, prior to World War I, many Armenians lived there. Also there lived small communities of Georgians, Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks, and other ethnic groups, both Muslim and Christian (mainly Armenian Apostolic).