Early in the seventeenth century a certain monk, Hagop Karnets’i (James of Karin) produced a geography of a region that he called “Upper Armenia” but which was actually a description of the vast Pashalik of Erzurum, an Ottoman military jurisdiction established after the Ottoman conquest of Eastern Anatolia ca. 1535. This relatively brief work has been translated into French by Frederic Macler (1869-1938), one-time holder of the Chair of Armenian at the Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes at the University of Paris, but the only publication of the original Armenian text is found in Volume II of the two-volume anthology “Manr Zhamanakutiun” (“Minor Chronicles“) published by the Armenian Academy of Sciences in the 1950s. On the surface a simple text, the fact is that Karnets’i’s opuscule is a rather sophisticated work compared to earlier geographical texts written in Armenia prior to his time such as the seventh-century “Geography” now attributed to Ananias of Shirak, or the thirteenth-century “Geography” of Vardan Arewelts‘i, and seems to suggest an acquaintance with examples of Western scholarship perhaps encountered through exposure to such works available in Armenia in his time. Not only does the author cite the various administrative divisions of the pashalik, but he also gives economic, ethnographic, and ecclesiastical data that greatly enrich our knowledge of the region, as well as a historical conclusion of considerable value for students of local history within the Ottoman Empire. Although we are uncertain as to what administrative changes took place within the pashalik of Erzurum over the first century of its existence, there is no doubt that, grosso modo, it remained relatively stable. Taken together, the data of Karnets’i provide a broad background for anyone studying the routes and cities of Eastern Anatolia in the first century of Ottoman rule, the main concern of this panel.

This paper provides the threads connecting the three cities which form the basis of the three other papers in the panel. The paper is in two parts, which will be brought together at the end: the first considers the west-east routes coming from Sivas, sometimes Tokat, to Erzurum, and the second the routes coming up from Amid and Harput which cross the Antitaurus range and intersect with the west-east ones at critical points. The study of the west-east routes is essentially a reworking of the Ottoman itineraries in Taeschner's Wegenetz, though other itineraries are considered. However the whole argument is based, unlike Taeschner's, on the scheme of the network of built Roman roads which extended as far east as Erzincan. Until the mid-17th century all traffic from Sivas came through Erzincan. All traffic, in the westerly stages of the routes, took an apparent detour to the north through the Sushehri plain; but this detour both gave access to excellent pastures and avoided the steep inclines required by the direct line. At the Refahiye plain the routes diverged. Commercial traffic tended to take more southerly alignments, most easily to Kemah and then upstream along the Upper Euphrates valley. But the Ottoman armies of the 16th century took more northerly alignments, at a greater height, through the Chimen Dagh. Each of these alignments followed Roman roads whose lines seem to have been chosen so as always to allow stops at pastures. The principal south-north route crossed the Taurus range from Amid to Harput, then continued over the plain and crossed the Lower Euphrates. It then took advantage of a Roman road which ascended the Antitaurus via Arapkir. This road rejoined the banks of the Upper Euphrates and arrived at Kemah. In the period the evidence is for commercial rather than military movement along this line.

The fortress of Kemah, Idris-i Bidlisi tells us, marked the border of Rum with Iran. "He who possesses Kemah, holds the key to the world," observes Ada'i, a contemporary of Bidlisi. As such, Kemah was long fought over by Anatolian states against powers based in Iran and Iraq (such as Byzantium with the Sasanids, and later, the Umayyads and Abbasids). Kemah likewise was a main bone of contention between Timur and Bayezid I when the latter seized it from its local lord in 1401, and set off the war between the "padishahs of Iran and Turan," as Bidlisi puts it. Selim I (1512-1520) 's incorporation of the northeastern provinces on the Ottoman-Safavid frontier after the Ottoman victory at Çaldiran in 1514 necessitated possession of Kemah. Possession of Kemah was not only the key to securing Erzincan and the road to Trabzon; situated on the bank of the upper Euphrates at a distance of a day's travel from Erzincan to the east, Kemah controlled passage from Anatolia to Iran and Mesopotamia along one of the most traveled caravan routes. This paper examines both the strategical and ideological significance of Kemah, primarily drawing from contemporary Ottoman sources. Of particular importance is Idris Bidlisi's Persian Salim Shahname, which imparts valuable insight into the Ottoman incorporation of the eastern frontier from the perspective of a native of the region. Bidlisi portrays the Ottoman reconquest of the fortress of Kemah in 1515 from the Kizilbash as an ideological triumph of Selim's policy of aggression against the Safavids, a policy signficantly thwarted by his father during his tenure as princely governor. While governor of Trabzon, sometime around 1502-1503, Selim had originally seized Kemah from Kizilbash supporters of Shah Ismail, along with other fortresses on the Georgian Trans-Caucasian frontier, including Ispiri, Kökez and Bayburt. In 1508, however, in an attempt to avoid war with the Safavids, Bayezid II ordered his son Selim to disband the garrisons and allow the Kizilbash to reoccupy the fortresses. The surrender of Kemah and surrounding fortresses significantly increased the tension between Selim and his father, a tension which culminated in warfare and Bayezid II's forced abdication of the throne in 1512. The Ottoman reconquest of the fortress thus represents also a triumph of Selim's original policy of aggression against the Kizilbash/Safavids rather than Bayezid II's ineffective attempt at accommodation.

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.