"At the end of the High Middle Ages in Europe, with buying power and economic sophistication at a high, an itinerary detailing the toll stations along a commercial artery carrying eastern goods (from China, India and Iran) towards Europe was compiled, and later incorporated in t…
Adıyaman is a town in present-day southeastern Turkey, in the Euphrates basin south of and beneath the Taurus range, located on the site of the ancient settlement of Pordonnium (Lat.), which probably betrays a local name from which Adıyaman is also derived. In the ʿAbbāsid perio…
Erzurum (Arm. Karin, Karnoy Kʿałakʿ; Gr. Theodosioupolis; Ar. Qālīqalā, Arzan al-Rūm, Arzarūm) is a city towards the north-eastern borders of present-day Turkey, on rising ground at the southeast corner of an extensive plain that is traversed by the Upper Euphrates (Turk. Kara S…
Erzincan (Armn. Erznkay; Pers. Erznka; Ar. Arzinjān) is a city on a plain in the northeast of Anatolia (present-day Turkey); through the plain flows the upper Euphrates or (Turk.) Kara Su. The city’s walled area took the form of a rectangle some 250 metres long and oriented nort…
Artvin is a town in the northeast of present-day Turkey, in a mountainous area near the border with the Republic of Georgia, on the Çoruh River. During the Middle Ages, its district, Nigali (Armen. Nigal), belonged to the region of Tao-Klardjet‘i (Georgian). From the mid-fourtee…
The Armenians in the period 1100–1895 lived—except for the period of Mongol domination and under the minor aristocrats of northeastern Armenia—under Turkish rule before the Ottoman expansion into Armenia (during the first half of the tenth/sixteenth century). 1. 494/1100 to the …
Armenia , grosso modo , is a high tableland which in general character consists of a series of plains separated by wide mountain or hill ridges. However, it is defined essentially by the geographical spread of its native population. It occupied a large part of present-day Turkey…
Ardahan is a town in the northeast of present-day Turkey, near the border with the Republic of Armenia. It lies on a rolling plain, at an altitude of about 1,900 metres. The town was the centre of an area known as Artani, within the territory of Tao-Klardjet‘i (Georgian). During…
Arapkir (Ott. ʿArapkīr, ʿArapgīr) is a town in present-day eastern Turkey, west of the Upper Euphrates gorge in the Anti-Taurus mountains. From the late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, the original town lay on the slopes of a valley running north-eastwards towards the …
Ağrı is a province (il) in present-day eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran and south of the plain of Kars. It consists primarily of a fertile plain (alt. c. 1,800 metres) surrounded by mountain slopes. In the Islamic period, the region's chief settlements were Alashkert an…
Bitlis (Ott. Bidlīs; Arm. Baghesh or Baghaghesh) is a city in present-day Turkey, to the southwest of Lake Van, and at the top of the long Bitlis valley. From a height of circa 1,800 metres at Bitlis, the valley drops about 1,000 metres to the upper Tigris basin. The kernel of t…
Illustration 1. Birecik, citadel rock, from south-east. Photograph courtesy of Thomas A. Sinclair (1978). Birecik (Ar. al-Bīra) is a town on the east bank of the Euphrates River, in present-day Turkey, approximately 21 kilometres north of the Syrian border. An important route fr…
Hasankeyf (Ar. Ḥiṣn Kayfā, Ḥiṣn; Ott. Ḥıṣn-ı Keyf) is a town on the upper Tigris east of Āmid/Diyarbakır, in present-day southeastern Turkey. The bulk of the early settlement lay on easy ground south of the Tigris, and in the fourth/tenth century, it appears to have spread to th…
Harput (Arm. Kharberd; Ott. Kharbird, Khartabirt; Arab. Ḥiṣn Ziyād, Khartabirt) is a small city on top of a rock on an upland plain east of the Euphrates, now in the Republic of Turkey. It has always functioned as a transport node, connected in particular with Malatya and many o…