Malatya

The Malatya of the medieval world is Old Malatya, the walled city of Melitene beside the mound of Arslantepe, in what is now Battalgazi. It stood on the upper Euphrates frontier between Byzantium, the Arabs and the Turks, and was long a great commercial city and a seat of the West Syrian church. Danishmend and Seljuk Turks fought over it, and under their rule scholars from Persia and the Arab lands settled here.

After about fifty years under the Ilkhanids, the Muslim townspeople invited the Mamluk sultanate into Malatya in 1315, and the Mamluk army entered and then plundered the city. Mamluk control was secure only from 1338, and through the later 14th century the city swung between the Mamluks and the Dulkadirid beys, a neighbouring Turkmen dynasty. Selim I's campaigns against both brought Malatya under Ottoman rule in 1515–16. It lost its frontier role and, between the 16th and 18th centuries, suffered repeated rebellions.