Aidin vilayet

The Vilayet of Aidin or Aydin (Ottoman Turkish: ولايت ايدين, romanized: Vilâyet-i Aidin, French: vilayet d'Aïdin) also known as Vilayet of Smyrna or İzmir after its administrative centre, was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire in the south-west of Asia Minor, including the ancient regions of Lydia, Ionia, Caria and western Lycia. It was described by the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica as the "richest and most productive province of Asiatic Turkey". At the beginning of the 20th century, Aidin Vilayet reportedly had an area of 17,370 square miles (45,000 km2), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) gave the population as 1,390,783. The stated accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered. As of 1920, the vilayet had an "exceptionally large" Christian population.