A governorate is an administrative division of a country. It is headed by a governor. As English-speaking nations tend to call regions administered by governors either states, provinces, or colonies, the term governorate is often used in translation from non-English-speaking administrations.
The most common usage is as a translation of the Arabic Muhafazah. It may also refer to the guberniya and general-gubernatorstvo of Imperial Russia or the 34 gobernaciones of Imperial Spain.
The term governorate is widely used in Arab countries to describe an administrative unit. Some governorates combine more than one wilayah; others closely follow traditional boundaries inherited from the Ottoman Empire's vilayet system.
With the exception of Tunisia, all translations into the term governorate originate in the Arabic word muhafazah.
Governorates (Arabic: محافظات; muhafazat, sing. muhafazah) are the second level of regional administration within Saudi Arabia. Each of Saudi Arabia's 13 regions is sub-divided into governorates. Governorates are further sub-divided into sub-governorates (marakiz, sing. markaz), though some sub-governorates report directly to the provincial capital rather than to one of the governorates. Regional capitals themselves are not included within any governorate but are instead governed by "municipalities" (amanah), with each municipality being headed by a mayor (amin). Governorates in Saudi Arabia can be either "Category A" or "Category B", depending on population size.
The following lists of governorates by region include (in brackets) the populations at the Census held on 28 April 2010
A governorate, or a guberniya (Russian: губе́рния; IPA: [ɡʊˈbʲɛrnʲɪjə]; also romanized gubernia, guberniia, gubernya), was a major and principal administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire and the early Russian SFSR. The term is usually translated as government, governorate, or province. A governorate was ruled by a governor (губернатор, gubernator), a word borrowed from Latin gubernator, in turn from Greek kybernetes. Sometimes the term guberniya was informally used to refer to the office of a governor.
Selected governorates were united under an assigned Governor General such as Grand Duchy of Finland, Tsardom of Poland, Russian Turkestan and others. There also were military governors such as Kronshtadt, Vladivostok, and others. Aside of governorates, other types of divisions were oblasts (region) and okrugs (district).
This subdivision type was created by the edict (ukase) of Peter the Great on December 18, 1708 "On the establishment of the gubernias and cities assigned to them", which divided Russia into eight guberniyas.