Kilis

Kilis stands north of Aleppo in a district of orchards and villages between the Anatolian highlands and the Syrian plain. Its fortunes rose under the Ottoman governor Canbolad Bey, whose family held the area as a hereditary lordship in the sixteenth century. A mosque, Sufi lodge, baths, caravanserais and covered market gave the town a new civic and commercial centre.

The Ottoman victory over the Mamluks at Marj Dabiq in 1516 brought the region into the empire. Canbolad's building works transformed Kilis during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, and development continued under his son Hüseyin Pasha. By 1590 the town was recorded as the centre of its own sancak, with 576 households in five quarters. Its markets and inns served a growing settlement connected to the much larger trading city of Aleppo.