There is virtually no documentation of the architectural traces of medieval Amid for a period of over two hundred years, starting around 1250. This architectural "dark age" of the city abruptly ends, however, with the advent of Aqquyunlu rule in the mid-fifteenth century, when Amid became the capital of the rapidly rising Turkmen state under the rule of Uzun Hasan. It is this built environment that was inherited by the Ottomans when Amid was brought under Ottoman rule in the early sixteenth century. This paper proposes to survey how the Ottomans both appropriated Aqquyunlu architecture and further developed the city as a major regional capital. Incorporated into the Ottoman empire beginning in 1515, Amid and the surrounding territories were organized as a new administrative unit, with Amid serving as the regional center of one of the largest and most important ottoman vilayets, encompassing northern Mesopotamia, or the Jazira, as well as the major cities of Mosul, Urfa and Bitlis. Moreover, the proximity of the Persian border seems to have greatly influenced the city’s subsequent development. Amid emerged in fact as an important regional commercial center, directly connected with the cities to the north such as Erzincan, and check point for caravans coming from Iran. In early Ottoman times, Amid quickly recovered its prosperity and wealth, which translated into an architectural explosion. Many buildings of high quality have survived, such as mosques, madrasas, baths, and commercial buildings; some of the hans and caravanserais are of a monumental size. Besides new foundations, lots of older buildings dating from the Aqqoyunlu and earlier periods underwent renovation, as part of the Ottoman program of appropriation of the previous architectural landscape of the city. This paper explores the architectural and urban activity within the city walls of Amid during the Aqquyunlu and the early Ottoman periods, tracing its general characteristics as well as its continuities and changes. By raising the question as to how the Aqquyunlu period can be seen as the foundation for Ottoman architectural developments, I hope to shed light on how the Ottoman appropriation of the previous urban space should be seen in the context of the city's increasingly important commercial role in the sixteenth century.