Rumelia or Roumelia (both: rūmē'lēə), region of S Bulgaria, between the Balkan and Rhodope mts. Historically, Rumelia denoted the Balkan possessions (particularly Thrace and Macedonia, and excluding Bosnia) of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman province of Rumelia comprised much of present-day Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, European Turkey, N Greece, and part of Albania. Sofia was the seat of the governors of Rumelia until 1878. In that year the Treaty of San Stefano, ending a war between Russia and Turkey, created a huge Bulgarian state; but the European powers, fearing that Bulgaria would become a Russian dependency, agreed (see Berlin, Congress of) to make N Bulgaria an autonomous principality owing nominal allegiance to the Turkish sultan and to create an autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia. This province, with its capital at Plovdiv, comprised, roughly, the part of present Bulgaria situated S of the Balkan Mts. It remained under Turkish sovereignty but enjoyed considerable autonomy and was ruled by a governor appointed by the Ottoman Empire with the approval of the European powers. Resentment at the partition of Bulgaria sparked a revolution at Plovdiv in 1885, and Prince Alexander of Bulgaria annexed Eastern Rumelia, thus incurring the wrath of Russia and Serbia. The Serbians, who also claimed the area, declared war on Bulgaria but were forced to make peace (1886) on the basis of the status quo, while the sultan agreed to name Alexander governor of Eastern Rumelia. This arrangement amounted to a tacit Turkish surrender of the province, which henceforth remained part of Bulgaria, although it was nominally under Ottoman rule until Bulgaria became officially independent in 1908.
Rumelia
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The European part of the Ottoman Empire, in particular the Balkan peninsula.
Formerly written as Rum-ili, the word Rumelia has its origins in the medieval Muslim practice of referring to the Byzantine as Rum and their territory as Bilad al-Rum. With the arrival of the Turks in Anatolia and, in particular, with the advancement of the Ottoman Empire, the use of Rum to designate Western Anatolia survived and evolved eventually into Rumelia or Rumeli.
During the reign of the Ottoman sultan Murat I (1362 - 1389), Rumelia emerged as a name to designate Ottoman territories in Europe, governed as a separate military-administrative region under the rule of a beylerbeyi, the first such governorate of its kind in the Ottoman Empire. It was around this time, too, that the empire was officially divided into two large administrative regions straddling the Sea of Marmara: Rumelia and Anadolu (Anatolia). At first, each successive territorial conquest in Europe, up to the Danube, was added to the beylerbeyi of Rumelia. After 1541, with the establishment of the governorate of Budin and Bosnia, the number of beylerbeyis began to proliferate. In the nineteenth century, during the Tanzimat, the administrative divisions of Rumelia underwent further changes. Finally, in 1894, Rumelia was officially subdivided into the vilayets (provinces) of Edirne, Selanik, Qoskova, Yanya, Ishqodra, and Manastir.
Currently the word is generally understood to refer to the triangular region between Istanbul and Edirne and the peninsula of Gallipoli - all that remains of Turkish Europe. The word is, however, no longer used in official documents or atlases; rather Trakya, a Turkish variant of Thrace, is used instead. The last official recorded use of Rumelia was during the Turkish War of Independence in 1919.
Today it is used most commonly by the residents of Istanbul to distinguish the European side of the city from the Anatolian. It forms an integral part of many a place name on the European side, such as Rumelihisari and Rumelifenerai.
Bibliography
Birnbaum, Henrik, and Vryonis, Speros, Jr., eds. Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.
Inalcik, Halil. The Middle East and the Balkans under the OttomanEmpire: Essays on Economy and Society. Bloomington: Indiana Turkish University Studies, 1993.
— KAREN PINTO
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Eastern Rumelia or Eastern Roumelia (Bulgarian: Източна Румелия, Iztochna Rumeliya; Ottoman Turkish: روم الى شرقى - Rumeli-i Şarkî; Modern Turkish: Doğu Rumeli, Greek: Ανατολική Ρωμυλία, Anatoliki Romylia) was an autonomous province (vilayet) in the Ottoman Empire from 1878 to 1908, however it was under Bulgarian control from 1885, when it de facto annexed by the Principality of Bulgaria. Bulgaria itself at the time was nominally within the Ottoman Empire, but had been self-governing since 1878. Ethnic Bulgarians in turn composed the absolute demographic majority within Eastern Rumelia. Its capital was Plovdiv (Filibe). Today, Bulgaria continues to hold the whole of Eastern Rumelia (the largest part of Northern Thrace).
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History
Eastern Rumelia was created as an autonomous province within the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. It encompassed the territory between the Balkan Mountains, the Rhodope Mountains and Strandzha, a region known to all its inhabitants — Bulgarians, Greeks and Ottoman Turks — as Northern Thrace. The artificial name, Eastern Rumelia, was given to the province on the insistence of the British delegates to the Congress of Berlin: the Ottoman notion of Rumelia refers to all European regions of the empire, i.e. those that were in Antiquity under the Roman Empire. Some twenty Pomak (Bulgarian Muslim) villages in the Rhodope Mountains refused to recognize Eastern Rumelian authority and formed the so-called Republic of Tamrash.
According to the Treaty of Berlin, Eastern Rumelia was to remain under the political and military jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire with significant administrative autonomy (Article 13). The head of the province was a Christian Governor-General appointed by the Sublime Porte with the approval of the Great Powers. Eastern Rumelia consisted from the sanjaks of Plovdiv (Filibe), Pazardzhik (Tatarpazarcığı), Haskovo (Hasköy), Stara Zagora (Eski Zağra), Sliven (İslimye) and Burgas (Burgaz), in turn divided into 25 kazas.
The predominantly Bulgarian character of Eastern Rumelia is well evidenced by the outcome of the first Regional Assembly elections of 17 October 1879. Of the 36 elected deputies, 31 were Bulgarians (86.1%), 3 were Greeks (8.3%) and 2 were Turks (5.6%).[1]
The province is remembered today by philatelists for having issued postage stamps from 1880 on. See the main article, Postage stamps and postal history of Eastern Rumelia.
Governors-General
The first Governor-General was the Bulgarian prince Alexander Bogoridi (1879–1884) who was acceptable to both Bulgarians and Greeks in the province. The second Governor-General was Gavril Krastevich (1884–1885), a famous Bulgarian historian. Before the first Governor-General, Arkady Stolypin was the Russian Civil Administrator from 9 October 1878 to 18 May 1879.
During the period of Bulgarian annexation Georgi Stranski was appointed as a Commissioner for South Bugaria (9 September 1885 - 5 April 1886), and when the province was restored to nominal Ottoman sovereignty, but still under Bulgarian control, the Prince of Bulgaria was recognized by the Sublime Porte as the Governor-General.
- Alexander Bogoridi "Aleko Pasha" (18 May 1879 - 26 April 1884)
- Gavril Krastevich "Gavril Pasha" (26 April 1884 - 18 September 1885)
- The Prince of Bulgaria (17 April 1886 - 5 October 1908)
Unification with Bulgaria
After a bloodless revolution on 6 September 1885, the province was annexed by the tributary Principality of Bulgaria. After the Bulgarian victory in the subsequent Serbo-Bulgarian War, the status quo was recognized by the Porte with the Tophane Act of 24 March 1886. With the Tophane Act, Sultan Abdülhamid II appointed the Prince of Bulgaria (without mentioning the name of the incumbent prince Alexander of Bulgaria) as Governor-General of Eastern Rumelia. The Pomak Republic was reincorporated in the Ottoman Empire. The province was nominally under Ottoman suzerainty until Bulgaria became de jure independent in 1908. 6 September, Unification Day, is a national holiday in Bulgaria.
The Greek population of the region was largely exchanged in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and World War I. Several thousand Bulgarians of Greek descent still inhabit the region, as do the Sarakatsani transhumant shepherds.
References
- ^ Делев, "Княжество България и Източна Румелия", История и цивилизация за 11. клас.
- Делев, Петър; Валери Кацунов, Пламен Митев, Евгения Калинова, Искра Баева, Боян Добрев (2006) (in Bulgarian). История и цивилизация за 11. клас. Труд, Сирма.
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Mentioned in
- Alexander (prince of Bulgaria)
- Sivas Conference (1919)
- Kostas Demetriades (art)
- Greek War of Independence
- Plovdiv (city, Bulgaria)
- Memduh Şevket Esendal
- Congress of Berlin (historical event, Russia/England/Austro-Hungaria)
- Sofia (capital, Bulgaria)
- 1451 (chronology)
- Mahmut Şevket
- Thrace (region)
- Treaty of San Stefano
- Abdülhamit II
- Balkan Crises (1870s)
