Ankara

As Seljuk power faded, the craftsmen and traders of the city, organised in the semi-religious Ahi brotherhoods, ran Ankara as their own city-state from 1290 until the Ottoman Orhan took it in 1356. The roads that met here also brought the decisive battle of the age to its walls: in July 1402 Timur routed Bayezid I on the plain outside the city and took the sultan captive, plunging the Ottoman state into a decade of civil war. The Ottomans were back within a year, and Murad II later repaired the ruined country around the town. The long-haired goats of its plateau were then the only source of mohair in the world, and from 1639 to 1768 the English Levant Company kept a factory here.