Palu

Palu's old town stood above a bend of the Murat River, beneath a fortified rock commanding the surrounding plain. In the Middle Ages it was a market town with Armenian and Syriac communities, linked by routes across eastern Anatolia.

In the late fifteenth century Hüseyin Bey captured the Akkoyunlu fortress and founded a local emirate. His successor Cemşid Bey pledged allegiance to the Ottomans in 1516, preserving a locally rooted ruling house within the imperial framework. The town continued after its citadel was abandoned in the seventeenth century.