Gaza Sanjak (
Arabic: سنجق غزة), known in Arabic as Bilād Ghazza (the Land of Gaza), was a
sanjak of the
Damascus Eyalet,
Ottoman Empire centered in
Gaza, northwards up to the Nahr al-‘Awja/the
Yarkon River. In the 16th century it was divided into nawahi (singular: nahiya; third-level subdivisions): Gaza in the south and
Ramla in the north along the Nahr Rūbīn/Wādī al-Ṣarār.[1]
Gaza Sanjak "formed a passageway connecting
Egypt and the
Levant, precipitating bi-directional
trade, conquest and
population movements". Situated in the southern part of the Levantine coastal plain, Gaza Sanjak received less
precipitation and was more prone to
drought and
nomadic incursion than more northerly regions.[2]
Marom and
Taxel have shown that during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, nomadic economic and security pressures led to settlement abandonment around Majdal ‘Asqalān, and the southern coastal plain in general. The population of abandoned villages moved to surviving settlements, while the lands of abandoned settlements continued to be cultivated by neighboring villages.[2]
List of settlements (1596)
In the 1596-
daftar, the sanjak contained the following
nahiyah and villages/town
Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter; Abdulfattah, Kamal (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft.