THE AREA

The Ottomans organized most of their new European possessions in one broad district known as the eyalet of Rumelia. This included smaller military-administrative districts and subdivisions such as vilayets, sanjaks, livas, kazas, nahiyes.

In the course of the centuries all of these jurisdictions were altered, divided, regrouped, attached to or incorporating other (non-'macedonian') regions, and so on.

Macedonia did not register and in no sense constituted a particular geographical administrative or political entity. (And there is no entry on something absent.)

In the course of the 19th and this century, however, at least two geographical concepts have emerged and been employed. The two which I have encountered, are termed as

• the 'historical' Macedonia, which corresponds to what the original Macedonians themselves used to call Macedonia.
• the 'geographical' Macedonia, which refers to a broad region in the Balkan peninsula, an arbitrary -perhaps- result of 19th century political onomatology.