Kağızman

Kağızman occupied a valley of the Aras south of Kars, within a highland region repeatedly contested by neighboring powers. In the late fifteenth century its Toprakkale district was associated with the Aq Qoyunlu; Hüseyin Bey, based there, counted among the emirs of Sultan Yaqub. Ottoman campaigns brought Kağızman into Süleyman's lands in 1534, and it became attached to the province of Kars in 1579.

That same year the Ottomans repaired Keçivan Castle and constructed a stone fortress in the market quarter of Kağızman. The administrative center moved there from Toprakkale, giving the town's political geography a new focus. Fortification did not guarantee permanence: the earthquake of 1664 destroyed the castle and the neighboring Süleyman Han mosque. Beneath the district's fields and settlements lay another resource coveted by rulers. Gold and silver mines were worked here, and silver extracted at Kağızman supplied coins struck at Kars in the name of Mahmud I. The valley's history consequently joined shifting provincial allegiances, the rebuilding of fortified centers and the extraction of precious metal.