Some of its area was separated from the Baghdad Vilayet.

[5] The capital was Deir ez-Zor, a town on the right (i.e., south) bank of the Euphrates, which was also the only considerable town of the sanjak.

[1] At the beginning of the 20th century, the sanjak had an area of 38,600 square miles (100,000 km2),[6] and an estimated population of 100,000, mostly Arab nomads.

[1] After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Ottoman forces withdrew from the area leaving a no man's land.

The region was subsequently occupied by Iraqi nationalists representing the Arab Kingdom of Syria in Damascus, and after the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement in 1923, it became part of the French Mandate for Syria.