Mandalay Region (, ; formerly Mandalay Division) is an administrative division of Myanmar. It is located in the center of the country, bordering Sagaing Region and Magway Region to the west, Shan State to the east, and Pegu Region and Kayin State to the south. The regional capital is Mandalay. To the south of the region lies the national capital of Naypyidaw. The division consists of eleven districts, which are subdivided into 28 townships and 2,320 wards and village-tracts.

Mandalay Region is important in Myanmar's economy, accounting for 15% of the national economy. It is under the administration of the Mandalay Region Government.

History

The history of Mandalay Region is the same as that of much of Upper Myanmar except that for much of Burmese history, the political power emanated out of royal capitals located in Mandalay Region. The country's present capital, Naypyidaw, and most former royal capitals of the Burmese nation—Bagan, Ava, Amarapura, Mandalay—are all located here.

thumb|Mandalay Region and Naypyidaw Union Territory

The Tibeto-Burman speaking Pyu were the first historical people to dominate the Dry Zone in central Myanmar that includes Mandalay Region as early as the 1st century AD. By the early 9th century, the Pyu were decimated in a series of wars with the Nanzhao kingdom from Yunnan. The Burmans, who had been migrating into the region from Yunnan in the 9th century, founded a city of their own, Pagan, in 849. The Pagan dynasty gradually came to dominate the central zone over the next two centuries, and by the late 11th century, all of present-day Myanmar. The Burmese language and script came to prominence with royal patronage of Pagan kings.

After the fall of Pagan to the Mongols in 1287, parts of central Myanmar came to be controlled by a series of rulers: the Mongols (1287-c.1303), Myinsaing (1298–1313), Pinya (1313–1364), and Sagaing (1315–1364). In 1364, Ava kingdom led by Burmanized Shan kings reunified all of central Myanmar. Central Myanmar was under Ava's control until 1527, and under the Shans of Monhyin (1527–1555). Burmese literature and culture came into its own during this era. Central Myanmar was part of the Taungoo kingdom from 1555 to 1752. Parts of the region fell briefly to the Mons of Pegu (Bago) (1752–1753). Konbaung dynasty ruled the region until December 1885 when it lost all of Upper Myanmar in the Third Anglo-Burmese War.

The British administration organized seven divisions in Upper Myanmar: Mandalay, Meiktila, Minbu, Sagaing, and the Federated Shan States (North and South). Mandalay Division included what is now Kachin State. Circa 1940, Meiktila Division was merged with Mandalay Division. Much of Upper Myanmar, including Mandalay Division, was under Japanese rule during World War II between May 1942 and March 1945. When the country gained independence from the United Kingdom in January 1948, the Myikyina and Bhamo districts were carved out to form Kachin State.

Administrative divisions

Before 2010, Mandalay Region consisted of 8 districts. Later Pyinmana district was formed as Union Territory under the direct administration of president. So Mandalay Region remains 28 townships organized into eleven districts.

Districts

[[File:Mandalay region district map 2022.svg|thumb|

]]

Townships

{|class=wikitable

!Maha Aungmye District (မဟာအောင်မြေခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Maha Aungmye Township (မဟာအောင်မြေမြို့နယ်)Chanayethazan Township (ချမ်းအေးသာစံမြို့နယ်) Chanmyathazi Township (ချမ်းမြသာစည်မြို့နယ်) Pyigyidagun Township (ပြည်ကြီးတံခွန်မြို့နယ်)

|-

!Aungmyethazan District (အောင်မြေသာဇံခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Aungmyethazan Township (အောင်မြေသာဇံမြို့နယ်) Patheingyi Township (ပုသိမ်ကြီးမြို့နယ်) Madaya Township (မတ္တရာမြို့နယ်)

|-

!Amarapura District (အမရပူရခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Amarapura Township (အမရပူရမြို့နယ်)

|-

!Pyinoolwin District (ပြင်ဦးလွင်ခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Pyinoolwin Township (ပြင်ဦးလွင်မြို့နယ်)

|-

!Thabeikkyin District (သပိတ်ကျင်းခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Thabeikkyin Township (သပိတ်ကျင်းမြို့နယ်)Singu Township (စဉ့်ကူးမြို့နယ်)Mogok Township (မိုးကုတ်မြို့နယ်)

|-

!Kyaukse District (ကျောက်ဆည်ခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Kyaukse Township (ကျောက်ဆည်)Myittha Township (မြစ်သားမြို့နယ်)Sintgaing Township (စဥ့်ကိုင်မြို့နယ်)

|-

!Tada-U District (တံတားဦးခရိုင်)၊<br>150px

|Tada-U Township (တံတားဦးမြို့နယ်)Ngazun Township (ငါန်းဇွန်မြို့နယ်)

|-

!Meiktila District (မိတ္ထီလာခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Mahlaing Township (မလှိုင်မြို့နယ်)Meiktila Township (မိတ္ထီလာမြို့နယ်)Thazi Township(သာစည်မြို့နယ်) Wundwin Township (ဝမ်းတွင်းမြို့နယ်)

|-

!Myingyan District (မြင်းခြံခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Myingyan Township (မြင်းခြံမြို့နယ်)Natogyi Township (နွားထိုးကြီးမြို့နယ်)Taungtha Township (တောင်သာမြို့နယ်)

|-

!Nyaung-U District (ညောင်ဦးခရိုင်) <br>150px

|Nyaung-U Township (ညောင်ဦးမြို့နယ်)Kyaukpadaung Township (ကျောက်ပန်းတောင်းမြို့နယ်)

|-

!Yamethin District (ရမည်းသင်းခရိုင်)<br>150px

|Pyawbwe Township (ပျော်ဘွယ်မြို့နယ်) Yamethin Township (ရမည်းသင်းမြို့နယ်)

|}

Towns

[[File:Mandalay Region with Cities and Towns.svg|thumb|(30) cities and towns of Mandalay Region

]]

thumb|right|upright=1.1|alt=Map of Mandalay Region showing tree-cover loss years, with forest remaining since 2000 in green and loss years shaded yellow through purple.|Tree-cover loss year in Mandalay Region, 2001-2024, from the [[Global Forest Change dataset.]]

  • Mandalay
  • Amarapura
  • Pyinoolwin
  • Thabeikkyin
  • Tada-U
  • Kyaukse
  • Myingyan
  • Meiktila
  • Nyaung-U
  • Yamethin
  • Patheingyi
  • Madaya
  • Mogok
  • Singu
  • Ngazun
  • Myittha
  • Sintgaing
  • Natogyi
  • Taungtha
  • Thazi
  • Wundwin
  • Mahlaing
  • Kyaukpadaung
  • Pyawbwe
  • Myitnge
  • Tagaung
  • Kume
  • Bagan
  • Semekon
  • Ngathayout

Government

Executive

thumb|Regional Government Office

During the rule of the State Peace and Development Council, the divisional peace and development committee was the administrative body of Mandalay Region. In 2011, a new government form was introduced, and the Mandalay Region Government became the main administrative body of the region. The government is led by Chief Minister. The Government Office is located in Aungmyaythazan Township.

Legislature

thumb|Regional Hluttaw

In 2011, the State and Region Hluttaws were introduced in the new system. Each State and Region has a State Hluttaw or Regional Hluttaw made up of elected civilian members and unelected representatives of the Armed Forces. The number of seats in each State or Region Hluttaw depends on the number of townships (each township constituency has two MPs), as well as ethnic representatives. The Mandalay Region Hluttaw have 57 elected members (include one ethnic affairs minister) and 19 military representatives.

Judiciary

Under the Mandalay Region High Court there are eight district courts, Mandalay, Pyin Oo Lwin, Kyaukse, Meithtila, Myingyan, Nyaung Oo, Yamethin and Dakina (for Union Territory). There are 35 township courts including the townships of Union Territory and 5 special courts.

Demographics

thumb | Population density of Mandalay Region as of 2024.

According to the 2014 Myanmar census, Buddhists make up 95.7% of Mandalay Region's population, forming the largest religious community there. Minority religious communities include Christians (1.1%), Muslims (3%), and Hindus (0.2%) who collectively comprise the remainder of Mandalay Region's population. Mandalay Region is home to Myanmar's largest bhikkhu community. The majority of monks belong to the Thudhamma Nikaya (92.3%), followed by Shwegyin Nikaya (7.1%), with the remainder of monks belonging to other small monastic orders. Of the total, the vast majority, about 4,000, were primary schools. Only about 13% of primary school students make it to high school.

{| class="wikitable"

|-

!width="100"|AY 2002–2003

!width="100"|Primary

!width="100"|Middle

!width="100"|High

|-

| Schools

| 4,011

| 231

| 113

|-

| Teachers

| 19,000

| 7,200

| 2,500

|-

| Students

| 690,000

| 259,000

| 91,000

|}

The region has some of the best institutions of higher education in Myanmar. As medical, engineering and computer studies are the most sought after in Myanmar, the University of Medicine, Mandalay, the University of Dental Medicine, Mandalay, Mandalay Technological University, and the University of Computer Studies, Mandalay are among the most selective universities in Myanmar. Other highly selective schools are Myanmar Aerospace Engineering University and military academies in Pyinoolwin: Defence Services Academy and Defence Services Technological Academy.

Health care

The general state of health care in Myanmar is poor. The military government spends between 0.5% to 3% of the country's GDP on health care, consistently ranking among the lowest in the world. Although health care is nominally free, in reality patients have to pay for medicine and treatment even in public clinics and hospitals. Public hospitals lack many of the basic facilities and equipment. The following is a summary of the public health system in the division, in the fiscal year 2002–2003.

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|-

!width="300"|2002–2003

!width="100"|# Hospitals

!width="100"|# Beds

|-

| Specialist hospitals

| 7

| 1,725

|-

| General hospitals with specialist services

| 5

| 1,650

|-

| General hospitals

| 30

| 1,260

|-

| Health clinics

| 43

| 688

|- class="sortbottom"

| Total

| 85

| 5,323

|}

In 2005, Mandalay Region's public health care system had slightly over 1,000 doctors and about 2,000 nurses working in 44 hospitals and 44 health clinics. Over 30 of the hospitals had less than 100 beds. The wealthy routinely go abroad (usually Bangkok or Singapore) for treatment.

<gallery widths=180>

File:ThaungThaManInn.jpg|Thaungthaman Lake

File:MandalayHillSunset.jpg|Sunset from Mandalay Hill

File:YoungMonks.jpg|Monks at Buddhist Temple

File:UBeinBridgeDerFussi.jpg|Sunset from U Bain bridge

File:Mount Popa 13.jpg|Mt. Popa

File:Kings Palace Mandalay.jpg|Mandalay Hill, Moat

File:Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar (Burma) - panoramio.jpg|Pyin Oo Lwin National Kandawgyi Garden

File:MM-Bagan am Abend verkl.jpg|Bagan

</gallery>

See also

References

  • Official website