Abstract text.This paper explores the impact of the Ottoman conquest of 1516-1517 on the city and province of Aintab (Gaziantep). It examines dynamics in the city a generation after Aintab’s incorporation into the empire. At this point in time, it becomes possible to observe individuals adapting to the growing presence of the Ottoman regime in this provincial setting. Some were successful, some were less adept at collaboration with the new imperial overlord. My paper focuses on the three notable families in the city in 1540, recognizable by their lineage designations: the Sikkakzade, the Demircizade and the Boyac?zade (the Turkish suffix –o?lu—“sons of” or “house of”—appears in the sources as often as the Persian –zade). The latter two lineages survived into the 20th century, while the first appears to have declined by the 17th century. In 1540, however, all three were families with land, and all three can be described as entrepreneurial. But there are signs in the Aintab court records and land-census surveys (tahrir) that suggest why the Boyacis and the Demircis thrived under the Ottomans and why the Sikkaks did not. The argument of the paper is that the two successful families can be described as “Ottoman” because of their ability to cooperate with and, more importantly, exploit the opportunities offered by the new regime. Studied adaptation was critical in the formation of a provincial Ottoman in the era of conquest. Aintab had been a frontier province before the advent of the Ottomans, traded back and forth among powers competing for hegemony in the northern Syrian region. Thus urban leaders had become used to a certain degree of autonomy, especially in the decades immediately preceding the Ottoman conquest. The conquest certainly meant subordination to imperial policies and networks of control, but it did not mean wholesale domination by Istanbul. If fiscal and legal networks were designed in and directed from Istanbul, it was local actors who made them locally effective. The Boyacis and the Demircis did not directly serve the state, but they helped it profit locally while they in turn profited