A kaza (, "judgment" or "jurisdiction") was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. It is also discussed in English under the names district, subdistrict, and juridical district. Kazas continued to be used by some of the empire's successor states. At present, they are used by Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and in Arabic discussion of Israel. In these contexts, they are also known by the Arabic name qada, qadā, or qadaa (, ).
Former use Ottoman Empire In the Ottoman Empire, a kaza was originally equivalent to the kadiluk, the district subject to the legal and administrative jurisdiction of a kadi or judge of Islamic law. This usually corresponded to a major city of the empire with its surrounding villages. A small number of kazas made up each sanjak ("banner") under a sanjakbey. Each kaza was in turn made up of one or more nahiyes ("districts") under müdürs and mütesellims and several karyes ("villages") under muhtars.
With the first round of Tanzimat reforms in 1839, the administrative duties of each district's kadi were transferred to a kaymakam ("governor") appointed by the Ministry of the Interior and a treasurer, restricting the kadis solely to religious and judicial roles. Kazas were further refined and distinguished from the kadiluks under the 1864 Provincial Reform Law, which was implemented over the following decade as part of efforts by the Porte to establish uniform and rational administration across the empire. The 1871 revisions removed the kazas' responsibility for direct supervision of their villages, placing them all under nearby nahiyes instead.
Mandatory Palestine The subdistricts of Mandatory Palestine were known as kaza, qada, etc. () in Arabic but as nafa () in Hebrew. The same terms continue to be used in present-day Israel and Palestine.
Syria Syria used kazas, qadas, etc. as its second-level administrative division after independence but later renamed them mintaqahs.
Turkey The Republic of Turkey continued to use kazas until the late 1920s, when it renamed them subprovinces ().
Current use Kaza, qada, etc. is also used to refer to the following:
Districts of Iraq (second-level, below the governorates) Districts of Lebanon (second-level, below the governorates) Subdistricts of Israel (second-level, below the districts, in Arabic) Subdistricts of Jordan (third-level, below the governorates and the districts)
See also Alcalde Qadi
Notes
References Gökhan Çetinsaya. The Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890-1908. SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East. Routledge, 2006. p. 8-9. Suraiya Faroqhi. Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources. Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 88. Donald Quataert. The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922. 2nd Ed. Volume 34 of New Approaches to European History. Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 108. Eugene L. Rogan. Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921. Volume 12 of Cambridge Middle East Studies. Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 12. Selçuk Akşin Somel. "Kadı". The A to Z of the Ottoman Empire. Volume 152 of A to Z Guides. Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. p. 144-145. Selçuk Akşin Somel. "Kazâ". The A to Z of the Ottoman Empire. Volume 152 of A to Z Guides. Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. p. 151.