Arguvan

Arguvan lies in the dry uplands north of Malatya, a country of ridges and small valleys where villages are scattered across the hills. It sits between two older centres. At Arapgir to the north-west, the Armenian Arabkir, Senekerim-Hovhannes Artsruni founded a town in 1021 after giving up his kingdom of Vaspurakan for estates in Byzantine Lesser Armenia. At Divriği to the north, once the Paulician stronghold of Tephrike, the Mengujekid rulers raised the Great Mosque and hospital in the thirteenth century under the Seljuk sultans of Rum.