Malatya
Malatya is a city in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and the capital of Malatya Province. The city has been a human settlement for thousands of years.
In Hittite, melid or milit means 'honey', offering a possible etymology for the name, which was mentioned in the contemporary sources of the time under several variations. Strabo says that the city was known "to the ancients" as Melitene, a name adopted by the Romans following Roman expansion into the east. According to Strabo, the inhabitants of Melitene shared the language and culture of the nearby Cappadocians and Cataonians.
The site of ancient Melitene lies a few kilometres from the modern city in what is now the village of Arslantepe and near the district center of Battalgazi. Present-day Battalgazi was the location of the city of Malatya until the 19th century, when a gradual move of the city to the present third location began. Battalgazi's official name was Eskimalatya ; until recently, it was a name used locally.
The city is a major centre of apricot production, with up to 80% of Turkey's output originating from the region. The city is nicknamed kayısı diyarı as a result.
History
Arslantepe
Arslantepe has been inhabited since the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, nearly 6,000 years ago. From the Bronze Age, the site became an administrative center of a larger region in the kingdom of Isuwa. The city was heavily fortified. The Hittites conquered the city in the fourteenth century B.C. In the Hittite language, melid or milit means "honey." The name was mentioned in the contemporary sources under several variations.After the end of the Hittite Empire, the city became the center of the Neo-Hittite state of Kammanu. The city continued old Hittite traditions and styles. Researchers have discovered a palace inside the city walls with statues and reliefs. A palace was erected with monumental stone sculptures of lions and the ruler. Kammanu was a vassal state of Urartu between 804 and 743.
According to Igor Diakonoff and John Greppin, there was likely an Armenian presence in Melid by 1200 BC.
The Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I forced the kingdom of Malidiya to pay tribute to Assyria. The Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II sacked the city in 712 BC. At the same time, the Cimmerians and Scythians invaded Anatolia and the city declined. Some occupation continued on the site into the Hellenistic and Roman periods—a smithy with four ovens has been excavated from the Roman period. There was a long gap in occupation between the mid-7th century and renewed use of the site in the late 12th or early 13th century.
Archeologists first began to excavate the site of Arslantepe in the 1930s, led by French archaeologist Louis Delaporte. Since 1961 an Italian team of archaeologists, led by Marcella Frangipane in the early 21st century, has been working at the site.
From the 6th century BC, Melid was ruled by the Armenian Orontid Dynasty, who were subjects of the Achaemenid Empire. After periods of Achaemenid and Macedonian rule, Melid was part of the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia.
Melitene during the Roman Empire
wrote that Ptolemaeus of Commagene attacked and captured Melitene from the Kingdom of Cappadocia, but couldn't keep it for long since Ariarathes V of Cappadocia marched against him with a strong army, and Ptolemaeus withdrew.The Kingdom of Cappadocia, ruled by the House of Ariobarzanes, became a Roman client in 63 BC. After the Kingdom's annexation by the Roman Empire in 17 AD, the settlement was re-established as Melitene in 72 AD on a different site, as the base camp of Legio XII Fulminata. The legionary base of Melitene controlled access to southern Armenia and the upper Tigris. It was the end point of the important highway running east from Caesarea. The camp attracted a civilian population and was probably granted city status by Trajan in the early 2nd century AD, with the rank of Municipium. It is known for being a prolific source of imperial coins minted from the 3rd to the early 5th centuries.
Procopius wrote admiringly of the temples, agoras and theatres of Melitene, but no evidence of them now remains. It was a major center in the province of Armenia Minor created by Diocletian from territory separated from the province of Cappadocia. In 392 A.D., emperor Theodosius I divided Armenia Minor into two new provinces: First Armenia, with its capital at Sebasteia ; and Second Armenia, with its capital at Melitene.
Melitene during the Middle Ages
During the reign of the Emperor Justinian I, administrative reforms were carried out in this region: The province of Second Armenia was renamed Third Armenia, with its territory unchanged and its capital still at Melitene. Melitene's city walls were constructed in the 6th century by the emperors Anastasius and Justinian. Those that still stand mostly date from the Arab period, perhaps of the 8th century, though retaining the layout of and some remnants from earlier building phases. The city was sacked by the Sassanids in 575, but it recovered and was made in 591 the capital of Armenia Prima by emperor Maurice. The town contained many shrines to martyrs, including that of the widely venerated local saint Polyeuctus.The city was captured by the Rashidun forces under Iyad ibn Ghanm, but the Byzantines quickly retook it until Mu'awiya I established a garrison in the town. The Arab colony was abandoned at some point during the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan until Hisham restored it, though it was destroyed by emperor Constantine V. The Abbasid al-Mansur then established it as a substantial outpost from which raids deep into the Byzantine Empire were conducted. Throughout the Dark Ages, the area between Melitene and Caeserea became a no-man's land of independent lords and villages. In the 9th century, under its semi-independent emir Umar al-Aqta, Malatya rose to become a major opponent of the Byzantine Empire until Umar was defeated and killed at the Battle of Lalakaon in 863. The Byzantines attacked the city many times, but did not finally take it until the campaigns of John Kourkouas in 927–934. After successively accepting and renouncing vassal status, the city was finally taken in May 934, its Muslim inhabitants driven out or forced to convert, and replaced by Greek and Armenian settlers.
The West Syrian diocese of Melitene has been established since the 6th century and was as well surrounded by other bishoprics belonging to nearby towns. In the 10th century the Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas convinced the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch to move the head of the patriarchate into the region of Melitene. In the early 11th century, Melitene continued to act as a large commercial city that grew in wealth and prestige. The 12th century historian Matthew of Edessa states that "its wealth was unlimited when it came to gold, silver, precious stones, pearls and brocades". The merchants of Melitene were so wealthy, that three sons of a Syrian Christian named Abu Imran were said to have built churches, nunneries, monasteries, and even struck the Byzantine imperial gold coinage for a year at their own expense. In addition, they are reported to have loaned emperor Basil II 100 centenaria of gold. Abu Salim, the eldest of the three brothers, is also stated to have ransomed 15,000 captured Christians from Turkish raiders at five dinars a head. The city was attacked and devastated by the Seljuks in 1058 and much of its population was either killed or sold into slavery. Matthew of Edessa states the following:
Melitene, from one end to the other, billowed with blood. Nor was there anyone to pity the old or the young. There one could see the bodies of glorious and distinguished fallen and drenched in blood; children cut to pieces in the arms of their mothers, with blood and milk flowing together. Who can put into writing the divine wrath which the city of Melitene bore on that day? All the green plants of the fields were covered with blood, instead of sweet dew. After so much shedding of blood and captive-taking, they led before them into slavery beautiful and distinguished women, boys and girls, with an inestimable amount of gold and silver.
Around 1061/62, Melitene was refortified, through the funding of its own inhabitants, during the reign of Constantine X Doukas and enclosed an area of 35 hectars. That means it could have been home to 10,000-12,000 people and could have had a territorial population of an additional 80,000.
File:Fountain_at_Yeni_Cami_Sq._Malatya_03.jpg|left|thumb|Yeni Cami is an example of Byzantine influence on Ottoman architecture. See Pammakaristos Church
In the period that followed the Turkish advance into the Byzantine Empire after the defeat at the Battle of Manzikert, Gabriel of Melitene, a Greek Orthodox Armenian who had risen from the ranks of the Byzantine army, governed the city. From 1086 to 1100 he preserved his independence with the aid of the Beylik of the Danishmends. After 1100, he sought to gain the favour of the commanders of the First Crusade, especially Bohemond I of Antioch and Baldwin of Boulogne.
The Danishmends took over Malatya one year later in 1101. The Danishmends then fought repeatedly with the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate about the possession of the city and were able to hold it until 1152, though the Seljuks did not gain full control until 1177. Under Danishmend and Seljuk rule, Malatya became a centre of knowledge as many Persian and Arabic scholars took residence in the city. The Seljuk Sultanate also undertook an extensive development of the city. After being ruled by the Ilkhanids for around 50 years at the end of the 13th century, the Muslim population of the city invited the Mamluk Sultanate to Malatya in 1315. On 28 April 1315, the Mamluk army entered the city; this was followed by the looting of the city by the army. The Eretna Dynasty gained sovereignty over the city for some time, but from 1338 onwards the Mamluks secured its control. However, for the latter part of the 14th century, the control of the city fluctuated between the Mamluks and the Dulkadirids. The city was captured by the Ottoman army led by Yavuz Sultan Selim on 28 July 1516 and remained under Ottoman rule until the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. Under the Ottomans, the city lost the quality of being on the frontiers, as well as the allure it held in the Middle Ages. It was plagued between the 16th and 18th centuries by successive rebellions.