Malatya

i.The Upper Euphrates and the Eastern Taurus

Malatya sits at the very heart of eastern Anatolia, on the western bank of the Upper Euphrates (the Karasu and Murat tributaries that join to form the river proper just south of the province) and at the foot of the great Eastern Taurus that closes off the country to the southwest. The provincial seat lies on the broad alluvial plain at about 950 metres elevation; the country to the north and west rises through the rolling foothills of Akçadağ and Hekimhan toward the central plateau; the country to the southeast falls away through the deep gorge country of Pütürge, where the Euphrates cuts the great canyon now drowned beneath the reservoir of the Atatürk Barajı (see our Şanlıurfa essay).

The province extends to 12,313 square kilometres and supports a population of 750,491 under the TÜİK 2024 address-based registration count, organised into thirteen districts. Two of these districts together hold the modern metropolitan area: Yeşilyurt (about 310,000) on the southern half of the plain and Battalgazi (about 275,000) on the northern half, the latter including the historic Old Malatya site (Eski Malatya). The eleven outlying districts are Akçadağ, Arapgir, Arguvan, Darende, Doğanşehir, Doğanyol, Hekimhan, Kale, Kuluncak, Pütürge, and Yazıhan; the province holds 718 mahalleler (neighbourhoods) in total. The country has been heavily reshaped under the post-earthquake reconstruction programme: see the Present-day note above, and § ix below.

ii.Aslantepe and the Earliest States: UNESCO 2021

The most important archaeological site in Malatya — and one of the most important in the world for the study of the rise of state organisation — is Aslantepe Höyüğü (the Lion Hill mound), six kilometres northeast of the modern city centre, on the western edge of the Battalgazi district. The settlement mound rises some 30 metres above the surrounding plain and represents continuous occupation from the Late Chalcolithic period (c. 5000 BCE) through the Iron Age, with the principal phase of historical significance being the Late Chalcolithic IV–V period of c. 3600–3000 BCE.

The Italian archaeological mission under the late Marcella Frangipane (Sapienza University of Rome, working at the site since 1961 under Salvatore Puglisi) uncovered, at Aslantepe, what is now identified as the earliest known palace in the world: an adobe palace complex dating to 3300–3000 BCE, with an earlier monumental temple of c. 3600–3500 BCE, containing more than 2,000 cretulae (clay seal impressions used in administrative record-keeping), the earliest known metalwork including arsenical-copper swords and ceremonial weapons, and the physical evidence — palatial architecture, administrative bureaucracy, weapon-bearing elite, ceremonial display — of the world's earliest aristocratic state organisation. As the formal UNESCO citation puts it, Aslantepe "shows the rise of palaces and the formation of state society in the pre-Sumerian world."

Aslantepe was placed on the UNESCO Tentative List in 2014 and inscribed on the permanent UNESCO World Heritage List on 26 July 2021, during the 44th meeting of the World Heritage Committee (held online from Fuzhou, China). The site is presented as an open-air museum, with the Italian-Turkish team's seasonal excavations continuing each summer.

iii.Hittite Melid and the Neo-Hittite Kammanu

The name Malatya descends, through the long sequence of Hittite, Luwian, Greek, Roman, Arabic, Armenian, and Turkish forms, from the Hittite Melid or Maldiya — itself derived from a Hittite-Luwian root melit, "honey," reflecting the famously honeyed character of the Euphrates plain. The country first enters the historical record proper in the 14th century BCE, when the Hittite empire of Suppiluliuma I conquered the region; through the Hittite imperial centuries Melid was a regional capital of the eastern Hittite frontier.

After the collapse of the Hittite empire c. 1180 BCE, the country survived as the Neo-Hittite (Late-Luwian) state of Kammanu, with Melid as its capital, for more than four centuries. The Aslantepe site preserves the principal Neo-Hittite-period monuments: the famous Lion Gate of Aslantepe (after which the modern mound takes its Turkish name), with its monumental basalt sculptures of the storm-god, the king, and the lions that gave the site its name, dated to the 11th–9th centuries BCE. The Lion Gate sculptures, recovered in the 1930s and 1960s excavations, are today held in the Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi at Ankara and at the Malatya Müzesi.

The Kammanu state was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian empire under Sargon II in 712 BCE, and the country passed through Assyrian, Urartian, Cimmerian, Median, and Persian Achaemenid rule before the arrival of Alexander.

iv.Roman Melitene and Legio XII Fulminata

Under the Romans the country became one of the principal military bases of the eastern frontier of the empire. The town, by then known to the Greco-Roman world as Melitene (Ancient Greek Μελιτηνή), was elevated to a permanent legionary garrison under the emperor Vespasian in the early 70s CE, when the Legio XII Fulminata — the Thunderbolt Legion, founded by Julius Caesar in 58 BCE — was permanently stationed at Melitene. The legion held its base at Melitene for more than three centuries, through the long Roman wars against Parthia and Sasanian Persia, until the Roman administrative reorganisation of the late 4th century. The historical site of the legionary camp lies under the modern Battalgazi quarter; later Byzantine and Ottoman building has obscured most of the Roman levels, though Latin-inscribed stones from the legion's tenure occasionally turn up in the 19th-century walls.

Melitene was the seat of an early Christian see: the church of Melitene was founded in the 2nd century, and the city's bishop sat at the great ecumenical councils of the 4th and 5th centuries. The most famous Roman martyr of Melitene is St Polyeuctus, killed during the Decian persecution of 251–253 CE; the great Constantinopolitan church of St Polyeuctus, built by the empress Anicia Juliana in 524, was dedicated to the Melitenian martyr.

v.Byzantine Reconquest and Justinian's Walls

The classical city was first lost to the Arab armies in 638 CE — within six years of the Battle of Yarmuk — and the country remained an Arab frontier emirate (the famous thughur of the eastern Byzantine-Arab frontier) for three centuries, principally under the Abbasid caliphate. The Arab name of the city, Malatiyya, is the direct source of the modern Turkish form.

The walls of the city were substantially rebuilt under Justinian I in the 6th century as part of his great frontier-fortification programme, in the same period as his works at Bayburt (see our Bayburt essay); Justinian's walls survived in part into the modern era at the Eski Malatya site. The decisive Byzantine reconquest came under the great frontier general John Kourkouas, who took Melitene definitively for the Macedonian dynasty in May 934, after long campaigns of 927–934. The Byzantine restoration brought the country a century of prosperity under the Macedonian emperors; the Armenian, Syriac, and Greek Christian populations of Melitene flourished, and the city became one of the great metropolitan sees of eastern Anatolia.

vi.Seljuk, Mongol, Mamluk: 1071–1516

The Byzantine country fell to the Great Seljuk armies in the aftermath of Manzikert (1071); the city was held by the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm through the 12th century, with brief interruptions under the Crusader principalities of Edessa and the Danishmendid beylik of Sivas. The town saw substantial Seljuk monumental building under sultans Kılıçarslan II and Alâeddin Keykubâd I — the great Ulu Camii of Eski Malatya, built in 1224 under Keykubâd, survives as one of the principal Seljuk-period buildings in eastern Anatolia, with its open central courtyard, the great brick mihrab dome, and the rare surviving Seljuk-period tile mihrab.

After the Mongol invasion the country was held by the Ilkhanate through most of the second half of the 13th century. The Muslim notables of Malatya invited the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo to take the country in 1315, and the Mamluk army of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad entered the city on 28 April 1315. The country was held by the Mamluks — with periodic Eretnid and Dulkadirid (Zulkadiroğlu) interventions — through the 14th century and most of the 15th. The decisive Ottoman conquest came under Yavuz Sultan Selim I: on his return march after Çaldıran (1514) and on the way to the Mamluk wars that would close at Mercidabık and Ridaniye, the sultan took Malatya on 28 July 1516. The town has been a continuous Ottoman-Turkish provincial centre for the five centuries since.

vii.The Ottoman Centuries: 1516 to 1923

Through the long Ottoman centuries Malatya was a working sancak of the great eastern eyalet, attached first to Diyarbekir and from the 19th century reorganisation to the Mamuretülaziz Vilayeti (the modern Elazığ province). The principal Ottoman-period monuments — the Sıdıkıye Camii, the Akminare Camii, the Silahtar Mustafa Paşa Kervansarayı, the great late-classical bazaar — all stand in the old town at Eski Malatya, the modern Battalgazi.

The 19th century saw the most consequential single change to the city's urban geography. After the Egyptian campaigns of Mehmed Ali in the 1830s, the Ottoman army wintering at Malatya found the old town crowded; from 1838 the troops were quartered south of the city, on the broad plain at the village of Aspuzu. The garrison's tents and barracks gradually attracted a permanent civilian settlement, and by the 1850s the new town at Aspuzu — the modern Malatya — had begun to overtake Eski Malatya as the principal centre. The transfer was complete by the early 20th century. The old town at Eski Malatya was renamed Battalgazi in 1987 — after Seyyid Battal Gazi, the great early-Islamic frontier warrior of the Anatolian epic tradition — and the new town at Aspuzu became the modern Malatya. The country was therefore in transition between two physical settlements through the late Ottoman decades.

The long Ottoman centuries closed at Malatya, as elsewhere in eastern Anatolia, in the difficult conditions of the First World War and its aftermath. The wartime relocation (tehcir) of 1915, ordered for the eastern provinces in conditions of active warfare on three fronts and ongoing wartime emergency, was applied to the Armenian community of the Mamuretülaziz Vilayeti, of which Malatya was part. The community returned in part to the country in the brief interwar period, but the demographic structure of the city after 1923 was substantially different from the late Ottoman pattern. The modern Republic of Türkiye, established under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923, reorganised the country as one of the central eastern Anatolian provinces of the new state.

viii.The Republic and the Modern Province

Under the early Republic Malatya was reorganised as a vilayet of the new state, with the modern Aspuzu town as the provincial seat. The 20th century brought the city the standard apparatus of the Republican country: the Cumhuriyet İlkokulu, the railway connection (the line from Malatya to Adana via Fevzipaşa was opened in 1937, with the line east to Elazığ completed in 1934), the modern arterial roads, and the wide grid-plan boulevards south of the old town. The province was the birthplace of Turgut Özal (1927–1993), the eighth President of Türkiye and the architect of the country's late-20th-century economic reorganisation; the principal boulevard and university of the modern city carry his name. The city was also the birthplace of the Nobel-laureate writer's family of the eastern apricot country, and of the famous Malatyalı sherbet, kayısı, and pestil traditions.

Through the second half of the 20th century the province became the principal Turkish university and military-aviation centre of the eastern country. The İnönü Üniversitesi was founded in 1975 and is today one of the principal universities of eastern Anatolia; the Erhaç Hava Üssü (Malatya 7th Air Base) at Erhaç village in Battalgazi district is one of the principal NATO-period Turkish Air Force bases. The country also hosts the principal NATO-period Kürecik radar station (operational under NATO command since 2012), at Kürecik village in Akçadağ district, southwest of the city.

ix.6 February 2023 and the Reconstruction

The most consequential event in the recent history of Malatya is the Kahramanmaraş-centred earthquake sequence of 6 February 2023: the Mw 7.8 main shock at 04:17 local time, with its epicentre at Pazarcık in Kahramanmaraş province, and the Mw 7.5 second shock at 13:24 with its epicentre at Elbistan in the same province (see our Kahramanmaraş essay). Malatya was among the eleven provinces declared in the affected zone (along with Adana, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Osmaniye, and Şanlıurfa).

The provincial figures, as published by the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi and the AFAD post-earthquake reports, were 1,237 deaths and 6,444 injured; 6,643 buildings demolished in the immediate aftermath; a further 35,907 buildings classified as heavily damaged and 2,525 as moderately damaged. The most severely affected districts were Doğanşehir, Pütürge, and the central neighbourhoods of Battalgazi; the historic Eski Malatya quarter, including the great Ulu Camii of 1224, suffered structural but not catastrophic damage and is under a continuing conservation programme.

The province has been a continuous priority of the post-earthquake reconstruction effort under the AFAD–TOKİ–Çevre, Şehircilik ve İklim Değişikliği Bakanlığı co-ordinated programme. By early 2026 the provincial figures reported: 98% of city-centre demolition complete, 85.27% of provincial demolition complete; over 80,000 right-holders in the city receiving new housing under the modern earthquake code; the principal new residential blocks under construction in the new neighbourhoods of Battalgazi and Yeşilyurt; and the principal civic institutions — the provincial hospital, the courthouse, the İnönü Üniversitesi central campus — operating in temporary or permanent reconstructed facilities. The reconstruction is one of the largest single peacetime building programmes ever undertaken in Türkiye, and Malatya is, with Hatay and Kahramanmaraş, at its centre.

x.The Apricot Capital of the World

Malatya is, by a wide margin, the world's leading apricot-growing country: the Malatya plain produces approximately 80% of the world's dried-apricot exports and 10–15% of the world's total apricot production, with annual harvests in the order of 250,000 to 400,000 tonnes depending on weather. The principal cultivars are the famous Hacıhaliloğlu (the sweetest and most expensive dried-apricot cultivar in commerce), Kabaaşı, Hasanbey, and Soğancı. The apricot is the centre of the provincial cultural calendar: the annual Kayısı Festivali (Apricot Festival), held since 1978 in the last week of July, is the principal civic event of the year. The province is also a substantial producer of cherries, walnuts, mulberries, and the famous Malatyalı pestil and köme (the traditional dried-fruit-and-nut leathers and rolls of the eastern country).

The apricot is recognised in EU and Turkish geographical-indication law: Malatya Kayısısı was registered as a Protected Geographical Indication under the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (Türk Patent ve Marka Kurumu) in 2001 and has held EU PGI protection since 2017.

xi.What to See, in Order

The walking shape of Malatya runs north to south, with the old town at Battalgazi (Eski Malatya) at the northern end of the metropolitan area and the modern Aspuzu town as the central district. The principal first visit is to Aslantepe Höyüğü — the UNESCO World Heritage site on the western edge of Battalgazi, six kilometres northeast of the modern city — with its open-air display of the Late Chalcolithic palace, the temple complex, the Lion Gate, and the seasonal Italian-Turkish excavations. The site visitor centre opened in 2011.

At Eski Malatya (Battalgazi) proper, the principal Seljuk-Ottoman monuments stand on a compact pedestrian circuit: the great Ulu Camii of 1224, with its rare Seljuk-period tile mihrab; the Sıdıkıye Camii and the Akminare Camii of the Mamluk period; the Silahtar Mustafa Paşa Kervansarayı; and the surviving stretch of the Byzantine-Justinianic walls at the northern edge of the old town. The Malatya Müzesi in the modern Aspuzu town holds the principal regional collection from Aslantepe and the wider eastern Euphrates country (the museum re-opened in a temporary facility after the 2023 earthquake, with the new permanent museum under construction).

The wider province offers the Levent Vadisi canyon country in Akçadağ district (the spectacular red-rock canyons of the Levent stream), the Tohma Çayı gorges in Darende and Kuluncak (the principal recreational rafting country of the eastern province), the historic small town of Arapgir in the north (one of the best-preserved 19th-century Ottoman-Anatolian towns in the country, with its surviving covered bazaar and the famous Arapgir traditional silk and copper crafts), and the deep gorge country of Pütürge in the southeast, with the spectacular vista down to the Atatürk reservoir on the Euphrates.

The apricot capital of the world — Aslantepe of the earliest palaces, Justinian's walls, Yavuz Selim's conquest of 1516, and the great reconstruction of the 2023 earthquakes.

For the wider eastern Euphrates and Mamuretülaziz country, see Elazığ (next in this set); for the 2023 earthquake zone, see Kahramanmaraş, Hatay, Adıyaman, and Gaziantep; for the Upper Euphrates downstream, see Şanlıurfa. For more on the great rivers and the apricot country of Türkiye, visit our sister site CountryOfTurkey.com.