Wilaya

• 1. Introduction

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  In Arabic, the United States of America is called al-Wilāyāt al-Muttaḥida l-Amrīkiyya, which literally means the American United States. The word at the center of that name is wilaya, also spelled wilayah and written وِلَايَة in Arabic script. Wilaya names an administrative division, and English usually renders it as state, province, or occasionally governorate. Yet no single English word fits it everywhere. Where does the word come from? Why do translators keep disagreeing about what it should become? And how did one Arabic term end up in so many languages, from East Africa to Central Asia to the Malay world?

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• 2. Root of Governing

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  Three Arabic letters, w-l-y, carry the idea of governing, and every form of wilaya grows from them. A wāli is a governor. A wilāya is, quite literally, that which is governed. The plural in Arabic is wilāyāt, while Persian writes the word ولایت and pronounces it vilāyat. Turkish uses the form vilayet. Under the Caliphate, the term did not mean a modest district. It referred to any constituent state that held near-sovereign status. Modern governments later applied the word to very different levels of rule, and that variety is what makes it so hard to translate.

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• 3. Lost in Translation

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  Morocco is divided into both provinces and wilāyas, so translating wilāya as province would erase a distinction the country itself draws. Other countries solve the problem differently. Sudan uses the term state, and Mauritania uses the term region. Algeria and Oman have provinces, while Tunisia has governorates. Iraq adds a further wrinkle. Its governorates, called muhafazah, are sometimes translated as provinces, which goes against official Iraqi documents and the usual practice for other Arab countries. That choice clashes with the general pairing of muḥāfaẓa as governorate and wilāya as province. Farther north and west, the Ottoman Empire gave the word a new Turkish pronunciation.

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• 4. Ottoman Vilayets

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  In 1864, the Ottoman Empire began gradually reshaping its provinces. For a long time they had been known as eyâlets. The reform restructured them into smaller units called vilâyets, which is simply the Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic wilāya. The word did not survive in modern Turkey, where the current provinces are called il. Within the Ottoman system, most vilâyets were themselves divided further into units called sanjaks.

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• 5. Persian Echoes

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  Afghanistan writes its word for province as ولايت, pronounced wilāyat, with the plural wilāyatuna. The form descends from the Classical Persian word for province, and similar versions survive across Central Asia. Afghan provinces are subdivided into districts called wuləswāləi in Pashto, or wolaswālī in Persian. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan both use viloyat for their regions, with the plurals viloyatho and viloyatlar. Turkmenistan says welaýat, plural welaýatlar. Their districts are called nohiya or raion in Tajikistan, etrap in Turkmenistan, and tuman in Uzbekistan. During the Soviet period, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan used the Russian terms oblasts and raions instead. In the Caucasus, speakers of the Tsez language call the districts of Dagestan вилайат, with the plural вилайатйоби. They also use the Russian-derived район, plural районйаби.

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• 6. Xinjiang's Seven

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  Xinjiang, in Northwest China, counts seven undifferentiated prefectures proper. These are the ordinary prefectures, not the prefecture-level cities or autonomous prefectures. The Uyghur language translates this one type as wilayet. For the region's other, more numerous kinds of administrative division, Uyghur turns instead to Russian loanwords such as oblasti and rayoni. Kazakh and other languages of the region do the same. Far to the south, in East Africa, the word works at a much lower level of government.

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• 7. Swahili and Malay Worlds

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  In Kenya and Tanzania, wilaya is a Swahili word for the administrative districts into which provinces are divided. In the Malay world, the word is broader. Both Malaysian and Indonesian standard Malay, along with the Tausug language, use wilayah or wilāya to mean territory, area, or region. In Thailand, the standard Malay term for a province is wilayah. Malaysia gives the word its most specific official use. Wilayah Persekutuan, often shortened to Wilayah in everyday speech, covers the three federal territories under direct federal control: Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya. A separate usage, Wilayah Ekonomi Pantai Timur, is translated as the East Coast Economic Region. In the Philippines, the Tausug phrase Wilāya sin Lupa' Sūg refers to the province of Sulu.

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• 8. Borrowed by Militants

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  Islamic State - Khorasan Province and Islamic State - West Africa Province are two examples of how the Islamic State names its territory. The group describes its lands as officially divided into wilayah, which English usually translates as province. Al-Shabaab, officially the Islamic Emirate of Somalia, also divides the territory it controls into wilayas or local administrations. The word appears again in the Caucasus Emirate. This self-proclaimed successor state to the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is divided into vilayats.

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