112 | Becoming Ottoman in Sixteenth-Century Aintab
the Mamluks, this ribbon became a frontier. As a fortified city—its citadel was
a landmark first built by the Romans—Aintab had been subject to destructive
sieges (see figure 8.2). It was also frequently the object of deal making, traded
back and forth among contending powers. In 1516, for the first time, Aintab found
itself in the middle of an empire.
By 1500 Aintab had amassed a century’s worth of experience balancing
loyalties between the Mamluks, with their northern capital in Aleppo, and the
powerful Dulkadir tribal principality centered in Maraş and Elbistan. From 1500
onward the stakes in the region multiplied as two more powers moved in—the
Ottomans from the west and the upstart Safavids from the east. Aintab now lay
in the epicenter of a four-way rivalry. The response of some rural residents was
to abandon their villages and seek shelter in nearby towns and cities with walls
or citadels. But by 1540 or so, the province had begun to enjoy the fruits of the
Pax Ottomanica. The rise in prosperity of the wider Mediterranean basin was an
extra dividend.
But in 1540 who could predict that the Ottoman sultanate would hold on to
Aintab for almost four hundred years? Selim’s and then Süleyman’s control of
the region was undermined by numerous challenges—from Mamluk loyalists,
from the military and religious ambitions of Safavid Iran, and from the kinds
Figure 8.2 The citadel of Aintab. (Chesney, The Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphra-
tes and Tigris, 1:350.)