Sivas

Ibn Battuta, passing through in the 1330s, called Sivas the largest city the Ilkhans held in Anatolia. When their rule there broke apart, the governor Eretna declared himself independent in 1345 and kept the city as his capital, and his state later passed to the judge-turned-ruler Kadı Burhan al-Din. After Kadı Burhan al-Din fell fighting the Aq Qoyunlu in 1398, the townspeople opened their gates to the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, and so stood first in Timur's path when he turned on Bayezid: in the summer of 1400 he took Sivas, put its defenders to the sword and pulled down its walls.

By 1408 the Ottomans were back for good and made Sivas the seat of their province of Rum, but the town that rose again was small, and more Christian than Muslim: the survey of 1454 counted 567 households, 340 of them Christian. Its place on the caravan roads brought it back to some 17,000 people by 1574, before the Celali revolts at the turn of the 17th century emptied it once more.