Tarsus

Tarsus lies on the fertile Cilician plain below the Taurus, at the southern end of the Cilician Gates, the pass that carries the road from Anatolia to Syria. In antiquity it was the capital of Roman Cilicia, the meeting place of Mark Antony and Cleopatra in 41 BC, and the birthplace of Paul the Apostle. In the ninth century it was a base for Abbasid raids against Byzantium, and the caliph al-Ma'mun died near the town in 833.

By 1337 Tarsus belonged to the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which was already collapsing under Mamluk raids. The Mamluks and the Ramadanid emirate captured the city around 1359, and the Ramadanids went on to rule the Cilician plain as Mamluk vassals. Selim I brought it into the Ottoman Empire in 1516. In 1832 Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt occupied the plain; under his rule marshes were drained, new canals dug and long-staple cotton planted, giving the plain a new agricultural base.