The Vilayet of Syria (Arabic: ولاية سوريا; Ottoman Turkish: ولايت سوريه, romanized: Vilâyet-i Suriye), also known as Vilayet of Damascus, was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century, it reportedly had an area of 62,180 square kilometres (24,009 sq mi), while the preliminary results of the first Ottoman census of 1885 (published in 1908) gave the population as 1,000,000. The accuracy of the population figures ranges from "approximate" to "merely conjectural" depending on the region from which they were gathered.