Malatya

Malatya

Understand Clock tower in city centre This city is now on its third site. The first was at Aslantepe / Orduzu 7 km northeast. This was inhabited 6000 years ago in the Chalcolithic or Copper Age that followed the Late Stone Age and morphed into the Bronze Age. The Hittites ruled it from 1400 BC and called it Malidiya, possibly from their word for honey. It was repeatedly destroyed but rebuilt, and populated into modern times. However under the Romans from 72 AD it was outgrown by a second site called Melitene 4 km further north. This was centred on a military camp and is now the town of Battalgazi. In the 1830s Egypt was nominally an Ottoman vassal state, but vied for independence and to rule over Syria. This led to two wars, and in the first the Ottoman forces proved so useless that Egypt occupied large tracts of Turkey and almost captured Constantinople. The Ottomans patched themselves up and launched the second war to regain their losses, in preparation for which they occupied…

Source: Wikivoyage · CC BY-SA 4.0.