The summer retreat to the mountains was a special time of the year for many communities in Ottoman Anatolia, so it is no wonder that Turkish folklore is replete with fond descriptions of it. One song, entitled “Yaylalar,” conjures the familiar feelings of longing for the mountains: “If only the summer months would come / Wouldn’t that breeze blow oh so gently / All the birds longing for home / Can you see the partridges of the yayla?” With references to gently blowing breeze, migrating birds, and longing for the yayla, this song bears all the linguistic markers of the poetic tradition associated with Turkic pastoralists in the work of folklorists. Yet this latter song was the composition of an Armenian bard from the town of Marash, preserved in Armeno-Turkish within a diasporic memorial volume as a testament to the region’s natural beauty.[4]

Cilicia’s ecology was not unchanging. Rather, the centrality of seasonal migration to the yayla was reaffirmed and strengthened over several centuries of change in the region. The pages that follow consider how the environment and politics of Cilicia had developed up until the eve of mid-nineteenth-century provincial reform. I examine both Ottoman and Western European views of the region, demonstrating that the frequent accounts of Cilicia as a malarial backwater reflected the prejudices of “epidemiological orientalism” but also represented a failure to account for local ways of being in the region’s environment. Then, I explain how Cilicia’s diverse communities shared in a rhythm of transhumance and why seasonal movement between the mountains and the lowlands as a conscious malaria avoidance strategy was integral to life there. Next, I briefly outline Cilicia’s long history as a borderland and discuss how during the high medieval period both Armenian “lords of the mountains” and the heads of Turkic pastoralist communities established political power in Cilicia through control of mountain spaces that were beyond the reach of imperial states. Finally, I explore how the early modern Ottoman government displayed flexibility in engaging with such forces of local autonomy as a feature of what Karen Barkey calls “segmented rule,” often attempting to settle mobile populations but never carrying out a systematic and sustained effort to sedentarize the population of Cilicia.[5]

Although different parts of the Cilicia region were home to very different environments and ways of life, they were connected by the movement of people between those environments. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a few hundred thousand people lived in Cilicia. The largest city was Adana, which contained about 30,000 people during the mid-nineteenth century. Marash and Tarsus were similar in size. İskenderun was the largest port, but its population was only in the thousands, and its commercial links to the cities of Cilicia were fairly limited. Mountain settlements in the region were comparatively dense. The predominantly Armenian towns of Hadjin and Zeytun in the Taurus Mountains boasted populations in the many thousands and were surrounded by clusters of villages.

Most of Cilicia’s inhabitants were rural, usually residing in highland villages or engaged in various patterns of seasonal migration. There were many groups identified as seasonally nomadic tribes, or aşirets, by the Ottoman government. They formed the majority of the region’s population, but they were far from being a monolithic segment. Some spoke dialects of Turkish and others Kurdish, and the boundary between these ethnic categories was not always well defined. In the center of Cilicia, the Avşars were the largest such group. They migrated between the lowlands of Çukurova and a large plateau called Uzunyayla beyond the Taurus Mountains in what became the vilayet of Sivas with the administrative reforms of the 1860s, while others moved upland toward Marash and Elbistan in the summer. Among the large tribes cited as wintering in Çukurova were the Cerid and Bozdoğan. In the eastern portion of Cilicia, similar groups moved on an east-west axis between the Amanus Mountains and the lowlands on their eastern and western flanks.[17] Groups wintering on the eastern side of the Amanus Mountains were the Delikanlı and Çelikanlı, consistently described as Kurdish in the sources of the period. Most pastoralists of the eastern portion of Cilicia were recorded as tent-dwelling nomads as of the mid-nineteenth century. In the western part, the population was also primarily pastoralist and identified as belonging to aşirets, but these communities tended to move between fixed villages and the summer yaylas in the mountains. The foremost among them were the Menemencizâdes based in Karaisalı, not far from the city of Tarsus.[18]

Epidemiological Orientalism

Cilicia has occupied a relatively minor place in the historiography of the pre-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire. It was sometimes characterized by outsiders as an insignificant backwater. Well into the twentieth century, the lowlands of Çukurova were known for the rampant spread of malaria during the summer months. Looking back, Turkish social scientist Mübeccel Kıray stated that Çukurova had been “no more than a badly drained, fever-ridden, thinly populated country” prior to modernization. This description has found its way into much of the subsequent anglophone scholarship on the region’s recent history.[26] However, Ottoman Cilicia’s inhabitants probably would not have described their region in this way. In fact, some of the features that made Cilicia seem wild or unproductive from one perspective were the very facets of daily life most cherished by its diverse communities.

Though the early modern authors quoted here did not understand the mechanisms of malaria’s transmission, they knew that people often fell violently ill and died in such “unhealthy” places, intuitively linking disease to the climate and the bad air of swamps that harbored mosquitos or (in one case) the frogs that might eat them. “The climate paralyzes every thing,” a mid-nineteenth-century British traveler wrote. “Our consul had about fifty attacks of fever before he became acclimated.” Likening İskenderun to the more familiar Southern Europe, he added that “the rest of the population has the sepulchral complexion of the specters that glide about the roadside inns in the Pontine marshes between Velletri and Terracinn.”[34] As İskenderun was a place of much greater importance to European merchants than to the general population of the region, their perspectives also found their way into the Ottoman archival record; the aforementioned consul repeatedly urged the Ottoman government to drain İskenderun’s marshes, resulting in a large but ultimately unsuccessful desiccation scheme during the 1840s.[35]

Even though most of the available early modern depictions of Cilicia in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic were also by travelers, they were not nearly so dominated by the disdain that pervades Western European sources. For example, Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi, a Sufi scholar from newly conquered Damascus, visited sixteenth-century Cilicia during the dead of summer, traveling through Syria into Anatolia and toward the Ottoman capital. Offering selections of Arabic poetry all the way, his descriptions of an idyllic countryside rendered in effortlessly rhyming prose were at times puzzling. In the heart of Çukurova near the Misis bridge, he described the air as “humid” and yet also likened it to “the fragrance of ambergris,” dedicating a poem to the banks of the mighty Ceyhan River.[39] He described Adana as a wondrous city, likening its fine courtyards, trees, gardens, and waterwheels to those of the city of Hama on the Orontes River in Syria.[40] Al-Ghazzi’s account was written for the Ottoman sultan with the goal of currying favor, which may explain the embellished grandeur and beauty of the empire’s new provinces in his narrative.[41] Yet there were a few points in his Cilicia travels that wavered into trepidation. Near the Gülek Pass, which serves as Syria’s gateway to Anatolia through the Taurus Mountains, the darkness and desolation provoked terror, as did the narrow, winding mountain paths, which al-Ghazzi found so sheer that “monkeys would not climb them and mice would not travel them except in a state of bewilderment and utmost fear and trembling.”[42] This uncharacteristically uncharitable description makes more sense if we consider that al-Ghazzi was a consummate scholarly gentleman, whose natural environment was in the lavish salons of exquisite Damascene homes.[43] More generally, we might conclude that al-Ghazzi was simply most comfortable in areas of Cilicia that resembled his native Syria, and his subjective impression of Cilicia’s environment differed from those of Western Europeans because of how he read the landscape.

Lack of local knowledge may have been another key factor in why Europeans depicted this corner of the Mediterranean in such miserable terms. The account of a Scottish clergyman and physician named Vere Monro offers a vivid illustration. Monro undertook virtually the same journey as al-Ghazzi, also in a newly conquered Cilicia—this time by Ibrahim Pasha’s armies from Egypt—some three centuries later. He described his travels in a two-volume work entitled A Summer Ramble in Syria. Apparently unaware of how ill conceived a “summer ramble” through the Cilician lowlands would be, he predictably depicted the area as a backwater. “The marsh, which entirely surrounds [İskenderun], renders it one of the most unhealthy spots in Syria,” he recalled. “And the scantiness of the population, together with their sallow complexions and swoln bodies, testify the vindictive influence of malaria.”[44] Moving toward Adana through the Çukurova plain, he found that traveling conditions became almost unbearable near the crossing of the Ceyhan River at Misis. “The heat, untempered by a breath of air, was very oppressive; and the flies, which swarmed about us like bees, made it more insupportable,” he wrote. “Their bite was so severe that the necks and chests of the horses were dripping with blood . . . Wherever they bit through my clothes, a swelling immediately followed.”[45]

By migrating between different elevations on a seasonal basis, pastoralists could take advantage of differentiated seasons of vegetative growth. For the “tent-dwelling [haymenişin]” pastoralist communities in Cilicia, such as the Avşars, the mountain yayla referred to a summer pasture. But if later studies were any indication of practices decades prior, the yaylak/kışlak binary was an oversimplification of practices. For herders in Cilicia who lived in tents and migrated hundreds of kilometers throughout the year, yayla was the name of just one of many different high elevations frequented during the summer.[56] With regard to their practices, yayla was shorthand for a summer place that probably comprised multiple stages of pasturing in the mountains.

A yaylak/kışlak framework for understanding transhumance is thus a simplified binary that was more legible to nonpastoralist communities, in part because it was more in line with their own movements. For example, during the early twentieth century, scholars began to connect the modes of pastoralism found in Anatolia to broader practices in the Mediterranean. Turkish geographer Cemal Arif Alagöz (more in chapter 5) translated transhumance as yaylacılık, which signified the practice of frequenting the yayla or the state of being a yaylacı, a person who goes to the yayla. This choice of words was significant in that a yaylacı was not necessarily a nomad in any sense, and the term usually described an urban person who vacationed at a mountain yayla during the summer. In fact, Alagöz singled out the Cilicia region as one in which “urban transhumance [şehir yaylacılık]” was commonly practiced.[57]

Why would nonpastoralist communities adhere to a seasonal rhythm of migration that served no clear economic benefit? The answer is that summering at the yayla was a matter of life and death. This ecology of transhumance, while typically associated with the demands of nomadic pastoralism, was arguably a malaria avoidance strategy first and foremost, as attested by the fact that nonpastoralists engaged in the same summer migrations to the mountain yaylas for health purposes.[58] Local communities in Cilicia saw the yayla as the antidote to what nineteenth-century Ottoman sources describe as “vahâmet-i hava.” This term referred to the heaviness, severity, or general bad quality of the climate. It was more or less equivalent to the Latinate word “malaria,” signifying bad or foul air.[59] In a miasmatic understanding of disease, bad air produced illness, and specifically, an ailment known in Turkish as sıtma, signifying fever and shivering—the chief symptoms of malaria. Long before scientific research demonstrated the Anopheles mosquito’s role as a vector in malaria transmission, people associated mosquito-friendly environments such as swamps (and their foul airs) with malaria. The perception of bad air and the fevers it gave rise to reflects an understanding of malaria as a “biophysical pathology of the environment.”[60] Seasonal migration worked well as a malaria avoidance strategy due to the nature of the mountain environment. In contrast to the lowlands, the mountains had few aquatic spaces for mosquitos to breed in. But the crucial fact was that most of the mosquitos that transmit malaria hibernate at around 10° Celsius, meaning that mountain elevations were much too cold for them during most of the year.[61]

Lived knowledge of the Cilician landscape dictated that the mountains were the more salubrious place to spend the summer and to escape the lowlands for “change of air,” or tebdil-i hava, when one was ill.[62] Almost every community in Cilicia shared in this practice within the same mountain spaces. In the summer of 1857, for example, the deputy governor of Adana sent a request to the Ottoman government for permission to spend the summer in the yayla of Namrun, stating that “most of the population both rich and poor needs to spend three or four months at the yayla, as Adana’s well-known vahâmet-i hava is unbearable during the warm seasons.”[63] William Burckhardt Barker, who lived around that time in Cilicia where his father served as British consul, declared in his extensive work on the region that “the poor man will sell any thing he may possess rather than fail to take his family to the mountain during the summer months.”[64]

As such, transhumant rhythms were integral to the communal life of urban communities such as the Cilician Armenians. A memory volume belonging to the Armenian community of Sis cited “change of air” as the common approach to dealing with malaria.[65] That volume also displayed a hand-drawn depiction of the Namrun yayla northwest of Tarsus (see figure 1.1). The diagram marked several locations at Namrun, including a “Turkish” quarter and an Armenian quarter separated by a stream, as well as a place called “cattle yayla” in Turkish, a few monasteries, and the old fortress of Lampron that guarded the Cilician Gates during the medieval period.[66] The small space of Namrun contained the summer quarters of both Christians and Muslims from Adana and Tarsus, a summer pasture for animals, and numerous sites of religious and historical importance. Armenian mountain settlements also played an important role in the seasonal rhythms. In another memory book about the mountain town of Hadjin, an Armenian doctor in California and former resident described his native village as “a marvelous summer place,” using the word amranots, which is a close synonym of the Turkish words yayla and sayfiye (coming from Arabic and also meaning “summer place”).[67] It was common for Armenians of Adana to summer in Hadjin with residents of Hadjin in turn descending to the city during the winter, thereby integrating the different Armenian settlements in Cilicia.[68]

The Greek Orthodox, or Rum, community of Cilicia was smaller than that of the Armenians. They were concentrated in the city of Tarsus (and later Mersin) and the villages and towns of the western coast. According to testimonies recorded in Greece following the post–World War I exchange of populations, the summer retreat to the yayla had played a critical role in their seasonal rhythms. One former resident of Tarsus stated that “during the summer, only few people remain in the city; the majority of the inhabitants move to the mountains, to avoid excessive heat and the fevers, which plague those who remain in the city.”[69] Another concurred: “The summer is very hot. Everybody goes out someplace, to the vineyards, the countryside, and spends the summer there.”[70] A former resident of a nearby village similarly recalled that “in the summer it was hot, and many people caught malaria. Whoever could leave left to avoid fevers.”[71] Former inhabitants of both the villages of the mountains and the coast to the west attested to the apparent centrality of summer fevers in transhumant temporalities. Of the small port of Taşucu, one said that “the brook nearby marshes up in the summers and creates a lot of stagnant water. And then there is the heat. For this reason, we move up to Gökbelen. Gökbelen is 23 km away from Taşucu, and it is higher up. One travels the whole day, from morning till night, by horse to get there. On the way there is Alakilise and [Silifke], and from there too, everyone who can afford to leave leaves.”[72] As for the mountain dwellers, they recalled the salubrious environments of their villages and their benefit to the inhabitants of the coast. One said, “The climate here was excellent. It was up in the mountains, with vineyards, plane trees, and below the plane trees there were springs. Those who didn’t have work in [Silifke] in the summers would come up here to spend the summer here.”[73] A former inhabitant of another village noted, “The summer was cool. The village was above sea level, surrounded by mountains and woods. They kept it cool. People from [Silifke] came here to spend the summer. It was too hot there, and there were lots of mosquitos.”[74]

The available sources on local medicine in Ottoman Cilicia demonstrate the centrality of malaria to concerns about health and well-being. It is the most commonly mentioned ailment. Beyond change of air, solutions to malarial fevers ranged from the practical to the supernatural. 

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Anatolian peasants and townsfolk were accustomed to alleviating the feverish symptoms of malaria with a trip to the bathhouse or consumption of alcohol.[75] An account from the Avşars of the Taurus Mountains cites a remedy for fever that involved wrapping the patient in a sheepskin to let them sweat it out.[76] A former Greek resident of a village near Tarsus noted that “Arabs who suffered from malaria” would tie strings around the branches of the wild pear tree at the Church of St. Paul in search of healing.[77] In Hadjin, locals engaged in a similar practice at the Saint Sarkis Sanctuary on the southeastern side of the town.[78] A Greek activist who worked on the population exchange oral history project noted the use of an incantation (in Turkish), and the Armenian memory volume of Sis referred to the same Turkish incantation that could be incorporated into a charm or amulet.[79] The same incantation of “Sıtma! Bu iti tutma” is also attested among Turkish communities of the region today.[80] Malaria did not respect confessional boundaries, and neither did its solutions, even when in the form of a prayer.

Though it appealed more to a modern scientific explanation of malaria avoidance, retreat to the yayla was in some way just as magical as a prayer or incantation. Movement to the yayla in late April and early May was a time of communal and spiritual significance. The celebration of Hıdırellez, which falls at the beginning of May, was one of the most important feasts in the agrarian calendar. For pastoralists, Hıdırellez was celebrated once the community had reached the yayla, meaning that the beginning of the yayla season was marked with ritual festivities.[81] Yet Hıdırellez was not a celebration exclusive to those communities; it coincided with the feast of St. George, one of the most important celebrations of the local Christian calendar. Both Muslims and Christians in the Cilicia region celebrated Hıdırellez as a sacred dimension of a shared temporality.[82] An aforementioned Greek man from a village near Tarsus noted that his village had a church of St. George where “Arabs and Turks” would come to participate in the festivities, bringing animal sacrifices and votive offerings.[83] For some inhabitants of Cilicia, the coming of summer, which was followed by retreat to the mountains for pasture and respite, was accompanied by rituals and celebrations that transcended religious boundaries.[84]

Cilicia as a Historical Borderland

Nineteenth-century diplomats, officials, merchants, and travelers wrongly cast Cilicia as inherently insalubrious, but they also often fixated on the themes of decline and ruin. There were indeed ruins of ancient and medieval settlements scattered throughout the region. While there had been seventeen cities in Roman Cilicia as of the fifth century, only seven of these were still significant settlements at all as of the early nineteenth century.[85] The ruins of Anazarbus (or Anavarza), located deep in Çukurova near the Ceyhan River, seemed the most poignant symbol of Cilicia’s fall. The site of a once impressive city was virtually uncultivated, though it was endowed with good soil, abundant water sources, and evidence of prior hydraulic sophistication.[86] In a mid-nineteenth century drawing featured in the journal Le Tour du Monde, which introduced readers to little-known corners of the world, horsemen with spears stand in the shadow of Anazarbus’s decaying fortifications, aqueducts, and columns (see figure 1.2). Such was the state of affairs in Cilicia when it first appeared before the Western gaze.

Impressive though they were, the once mighty settlements of the ancient world had been built upon a very different set of power relations. The nature of slavery in the Roman Empire is the subject of considerable scholarly debate, but it is clear that enslaved laborers were a critical component of Roman society. In fact, Rome’s expansion into Cilicia seems to have been a direct consequence of its reliance on the Mediterranean slave trade to sustain plantations in areas such as Sicily, where during the second century BCE, enslaved Cilicians participated in a revolt that lasted about seven years. Rome’s invasion of Cilicia to oust the so-called Cilician pirates allowed it to take control of the slave trade in the Eastern Mediterranean.[87] Settlements of the Roman era were inextricable from the practice of slavery in virtually every field, including building and agriculture. In fact, in a fifth- or sixth-century tariff from Anazarbus, slaves were listed as one of the major “items” taxed in the city, right above livestock.[88] That this fact was lost on observers from nineteenth-century empires, which were often no less built on the practice of slavery, is just one example of how Western views of the Ottoman Empire were informed by a rose-tinted view of the classical past.

Recent scholarship challenges the civilizational hierarchies and declensionist narratives that undergirded these perspectives and have implicitly informed much of modern historiography, going so far as to write “against the grain” of the normative assumption that intensive agriculture was simply a natural fact of human civilization.[89] 

Image

If we assume that the agricultural settlements and cities of Roman Cilicia were predicated on the coercive power of the state to perpetuate a set of economic relations that ultimately rested on slavery, the image of nomads frolicking in the ruins of civilization looks very different, and the question of malaria becomes all the more relevant. As Robert Sallares concludes in his study of malaria in the ancient Italian Peninsula, “Rome was a society with the potential for massive chattel slavery as the basis of the labour force and the slaves had no choice over where to live and die.” Roman agricultural expansion fueled the spread of malaria; enslavement was a means of keeping people on land they did not wish to work. This, Sallares notes, resembled the very dynamic that played out in the plantation societies of the Americas.[90]

The early period of Islamic rule in Cilicia saw increased settlement and economic activity around cities like Tarsus, Anazarbus, and Adana from the eighth century onward. The Abbasids invested in building lowland settlements, and in light of similarities between the Mesopotamian marshes and the marshy lowlands of the Cilicia region, they brought settlers from modern-day Iraq, which is perhaps how Cilicia’s distinctive species of water buffalo was first introduced.[92] On the Byzantine frontier, Christian pastoralists continued to move seasonally in a form of transhumance between the mountains and lowland regions, a practice that long pre-dated their being Christian and went back at least as far as the Hittite period roughly two millennia prior.[93]

Ottoman expansion into Cilicia was built on the foundations of the Anatolian beyliks. While Cilicia came under Ottoman rule during Selim I’s conquests of the early sixteenth century, some of the local autonomy of the medieval period remained in place. The Ramazanoğlus continued as hereditary governors of Adana until the early seventeenth century. As for the Dulkadiroğlus, their reign in Marash ended with Dulkadiroğlu Ali Bey, appointed as governor by Selim I, being executed under suspicion of treason during the bloody suppression of the Kizilbash movement that allied with the Safavids of Iran. But this was only after he had fought under the Ottomans and women of the Dulkadiroğlu dynasty had married into the Ottoman royal lineage. Sultan Selim I himself was supposedly born to Ayşe Hatun, the daughter of former Dulkadiroğlu ruler Alaüddevle.[104]

Aided by the acquisition of Egypt, a major center of agricultural production, the Ottoman Empire enjoyed a period of great military and economic strength during the sixteenth century. The Cilician lowlands shared in the agricultural expansion under the timar system of land grants to the military elite. Lowland settlements resurged to the extent that mountain fortifications like Namrun, which overlooked the Cilician plains, became redundant.[105] İslamoğlu and Faroqhi argue that Adana briefly switched from being a center of wheat production to a predominantly cotton-producing region by the late sixteenth century. Demand for cotton came from Istanbul, namely, the Ottoman palace. However, unlike in other parts of the empire, the population of the lowlands did not rise very significantly at the time, so it seems, because a commercial crop became dominant and therefore did not offer the same opportunities for the creation of small farms. Rice may also have been an ascendant commercial crop around Sis and Marash, as evidenced by an early seventeenth-century tax farm register.[106] İslamoğlu and Faroqhi hypothesized that labor took the form of “coerced cash-crop labor” mediated through the internal power relationships of the cemaats, or tribal communities.[107] Meanwhile, the mountain ecologies resembled a familiar Mediterranean blend of subsistence crops and pastoralism. The district of Zeytun reflected a crop distribution common to the highland settlements: most land was devoted to wheat and the rest to fruit trees and garden vegetables.[108]

[2] The collection of Ahmet Şükrü Esen edited by Pertev Naili Boratav contains a list of songs with references to the concept of sıla. Ahmet Sükrü Esen, Anadolu Türküleri, 333–34.

[3] Jérôme Cler notes the paradox of the symbolic importance of the yayla within the music of transhumant village communities in Western Anatolia today. Although these communities are permanently settled in the plains, their songs that feature transcendent or eternal time are for the yayla, whereas the songs of the plains are replete with the theme of exile. Jérôme Cler, Yayla: Musique et musiciens de villages en Turquie méridionale (Paris: Geuthner, 2011), 139.

[4] Grigor Galustean, Մարաշ կամ Գերմանիկ եւ հերոս Զէյթուն (New York: Marashi Hayrenaktsʻakan Miowtʻiwn, 1934), 550.

[5] Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 12–14.

[6] See Süha Göney, Adana Ovaları (Istanbul: Istanbul Üniversitesi, 1976).

[7] OA, HRT-h 486 (1287 [1870/1]).

[8] By the measures of Turkish studies from the 1970s, the city of Adana has on average 195 summer days (high of 25°C/77°F or greater) and over 136 tropical days (high of 30°C/86°F or greater) per year. The neighboring provinces of İçel and Hatay (Antakya) by contrast experience 61.5 and 89.5 tropical days per year, respectively. Çukurova Bölgesi: Bölgesel gelisme, Şehirleşme ve Yerleşme Düzeni (Ankara: Bölge Planlama Dairesi, 1970), 15–16.

[9] See OA, A-MKT-MHM 523/51, Mehmed Necib to Sadaret, Adana (16 Teşrinievvel 1319 [29 October 1903]). Ottoman agronomists sometimes placed Cilicia in its own clime (iklim), referred to as the Adana or “Taurus (Toros)” region, distinct from that of Syria or other parts of Anatolia. SYEK, Ziraat-ı Umumiye, 7793/630, Yazma Bağışlar, 2386, 8–9.

[10] Hüseyin, Memalik-i Osmaniye’nin Ziraat Coğrafyası (Istanbul: Mihran Matbaası, 1303 [1888]), part 2, 14–15.

[11] Կիլիկիա: փորձ աշխարհագրութեան արդի Կիլիկիոյ (St. Petersburg: I. Libermani, 1894), 35.

[12] TNA, FO 78/4938, Barnham to Salisbury, Aleppo (6 June 1898).

[13] Ziraat-ı Umumiye, 8–9.

[14] H. P. Poghosean, Հաճընի ընդհանուր պատմութիւնը եւ շրջակայ ԳօզանՏաղի հայ գիւղերը (Los Angeles: Bozart Press, 1942), 7.

[15] For example, one author described the Armenian communities within Cilicia as having completely different cultures and politics depending on their belonging to either the mountains or the plains. Krikor Koudoulian, Հայ լեռը: կարմիր դրուագներ Կիլիկիոյ աղէտէն (Constantinople: T. Toghramachean, 1912), 28–29.

[16] Paolo Desideri, “Strabo’s Cilicians,” Anatolia Antiqua 1, no. 1 (1991): 299–304.

[17] For visual representation of migration routes, see Andrew Gordon Gould, “Pashas and Brigands: Ottoman Provincial Reform and Its Impact on the Nomadic Tribes of Southern Anatolia, 1840–1885,” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1973, 31.

[18] See Victor Langlois, Voyage dans la Cilicie et dans les montagnes du Taurus: éxécuté pendant les années 1852–1853 (Paris: Duprat, 1861), 19–25.

[19] Andrew Gordon Gould, “Lords or Bandits? The Derebeys of Cilicia,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7, no. 4 (1976): 490–91.

[20] A population register from the 1860s counted just sixteen households in Çokmerzimen. OA, NFS-d 3703. See also Minas Gocayean, Պատմութիւն ՉորքՄարզպանի: (Տէօրթ-Եոլ); գիւղաքաղաք մը Կիլիկիոյ մէջ (Los Angeles: Los Ancelesi Cork-Marzpani Hayrenakcakan Miowtiwn, 2005).

[21] Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 124.

[22] This work will not deal extensively with the transformation of the Aintab region, which itself would merit an entire study. Ümit Kurt describes Aintab as being on the borders of Cilicia and Syria. Although the city’s overall links to Aleppo were more salient, the Armenians of Aintab were thoroughly integrated into the communal dynamics of the broader Cilician Armenian community. Kurt, The Armenians of Aintab, 30.

[23] See Işık Tamdoğan-Abel, “Les modalités de l’urbanité dans une ville ottomane: Les habitants d’Adana au XvIIIème siècle d’après les registres des cadis,” PhD diss., EHESS, Paris, 1999.

[24] Stefan Winter, A History of the ‘Alawis: From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 224.

[25] For an overview, see Gisela Procházka-Eisl and Stephan Procházka, The Plain of Saints and Prophets: The Nusayri-Alawi Community of Cilicia (Southern Turkey) and Its Sacred Places (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz verlag, 2010).

[26] Mübeccel Kıray, “Social Change in Çukurova: A Comparison of Four Villages,” in Turkey: Geographic and Social Perspectives, ed. Peter Benedict, Erol Tümertekin, and Fatma Mansur (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 179; cited in Toksöz, Nomads, Migrants, and Cotton, 19; Haim Gerber, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1987), 87; Faruk Tabak, The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550–1870: A Geohistorical Approach (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 220.

[27] Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition, vol. 1 (New York: Dover Publications, 1993), 41.

[28] Mary Momdjian, “Halabis and Foreigners in Aleppo’s Mediterranean Trade,” in Aleppo and Its Hinterland in the Ottoman Period, ed. Mafalda Ade and Stefan Winter (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 109–29; Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 47–80.

[29] In addition to what follows, see Aaron David Abraham Shakow, “Marks of Contagion: The Plague, the Bourse, the Word and the Law in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 1720–1762,” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2009, 258–62. See also Lori Jones, “The Diseased Landscape: Medieval and Early Modern Plaguescapes,” Landscapes 17, no. 2 (2016): 108–23.

[30] Sébastien Brémond, Viaggi fatti nell ’Egitto superiore et inferiore, trans. Giuseppe Corvo (Rome: P. Moneta, 1679), 269.

[31] Pedro Teixeira, Relaciones de Pedro Texeira (Amberes: Hieronymo verdussen, 1610), 194.

[32] William Biddulph, The travels of fovre English men and a preacher into Africa, Asia, Troy, Bythinia, Thracia, and to the Black Sea (London: Felix Kyngston, 1612), 39.

[33] Henry Teonge, The Diary of Henry Teonge (London: Routledge, 2005), 112.

[34] Andrew Archibald Paton, The Modern Syrians (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1844), 215.

[35] OA, İ-DH 244/14880, no. 1.

[36] Nükhet Varlık, “‘Oriental Plague’ or Epidemiological Orientalism? Revisiting the Plague Episteme of the Early Modern Mediterranean,” in Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean, ed. Nükhet Varlık (Kalamazoo, MI: Arc Humanities Press, 2017).

[37] Paton, The Modern Syrians, 215. See F. Harrison Rankin, The White Man’s Grave: A Visit to Sierra Leone in 1834 (London: R. Bentley, 1836).

[38] Aaron Shakow, “‘Oriental Plague’ in the Middle Eastern Landscape: A Cautionary Tale,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 4 (2010): 660–62.

[39] Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ghazzī, al-Maṭāliʿ al-Badriyya fi’l-Manāzil al- Rūmiyya (Abu Dhabi: Dar al-Suwaidi, 2004), 89.

[40] Al-Ghazzī, al-Maṭāliʿ, 93.

[41] Nir Shafir, “The Road from Damascus: Circulation and the Redefinition of Islam in the Ottoman Empire, 1620–1720,” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2016, 244. See also Helen Pfeifer, “Encounter after the Conquest: Scholarly Gatherings in 16th-Century Ottoman Damascus,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, no. 2 (2015): 219–39.

[42] Al-Ghazzī, al-Maṭāliʿ, 98.

[43] Helen Pfeifer, Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 97–132.

[44] Vere Monro, A Summer Ramble in Syria, with a Tartar trip from Aleppo to Stamboul, vol. 2 (London: R. Bentley, 1835), 147.

[45] Monro, A Summer Ramble in Syria, 158–59.

[46] Monro, A Summer Ramble in Syria, 263–64.

[47] Monro, A Summer Ramble in Syria, 268–70.

[48] It is spelled alif-ya-lam-mim-ta marbuta (aylah) in Leiden MS Or. 1602, fols. 11v–12r, and Belfour rendered it as “Eilat” in his translation. Bulus al-Halabi and Francis Cunningham Belfour, The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch Vol. 1 (London: valpy, 1836), 5. Thanks to Polina Ivanova for providing the relevant folios.

[49] Hafiz Mehmet Zilla Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi seyahatnamesi 3. kitap, Topkapi Sarayı Bagdat 305 yazmasinin transkripsiyonu, dizini (Istanbul: Yapi kredi, 1999), 29.

[50] Mehmed Edib, Itinéraire de Constantinople à la Mecque, trans. Thomas Xavier Bianchi (Paris: Everat, 1840), 19.

[51] BNF, Supplément Turc, 1276, Mehmed Adib, Bahjat al-Manazil, 9a.

[52] Edib, Itinéraire de Constantinople à la Mecque, 24.

[53] Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi seyahatnamesi 3. kitap, 32.

[54] See Cevdet Türkay, Başbakanlık arşivi belgeleriʼne göre Osmanlı İmparatorluğundaoymak, aşiret ve cemâatlar (Istanbul: İşaret Yayınları, 2012); Faruk Sümer, Oğuzlar, Türkmenler: tarihleri, boy teskilâtı, destanları (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Basimevi, 1967).

[55] The variant yaylak is not used in modern Turkish but is common in Ottoman texts. The words yayla and yaylak have different connotations; however, in Ottoman documentation from the nineteenth century, these terms appear to be interchangeable or overlapping, sometimes appearing with the same meaning even within the same document. For example, see OA, İ-MMS 60/2843, no. 3 (26 Şevval 1295 [23 October 1878]); see also accounts of Evliya Çelebi. For the yaylaq in Iran, see Daniel T. Potts, Nomadism in Iran: From Antiquity to the Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Arash Khazeni, Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010). Scholars who study the history of pastoralism and herding tend to classify transhumance as only one of many seasonally migratory patterns of raising livestock. Anatoly Khazanov distinguishes between the term “transhumance,” which arises from a European context, and “yaylag pastoralism,” that is, migration between a yaylak (summer pasture) and kışlak (winter pasture). Khazanov is correct in his assertion that the “yaylag pastoralism” practiced by herders in many parts of Central Asia or Iran are very different from the model of Alpine transhumance in that it entailed much longer distance migration, different sets of livestock, and often a lack of fixed villages. But in Ottoman Anatolia, the nature of pastoralism much more closely resembled European equivalents in terms of geographical similarities and relative distances of migration, commensurable with the notion of transhumance, even if its terminology resembles Khazanov’s “yaylag pastoralism.” Anatoly M. Khazanov and Julia Crookenden, Nomads and the Outside World, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 23–24. In the case of Cilicia, Suavi Aydın equates these practices with transhumance while acknowledging that different kinds of pastoralism have historically been practiced in the region. Suavi Aydın, “Toroslarda Yaylacılık ve Çukurova’nın Önemi,” Kebikeç 21 (2006): 111–34. Andrea Duffy’s label of “Mediterranean pastoralism” in this region is one framework that encompasses the diversity of herding strategies and avoids the fraught over-classification that typified much of the earlier scholarship. Nomad ’s Land: Pastoralism and French Environmental Policy in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), xxii. See also J. Malcolm Wagstaff, The Evolution of Middle Eastern Landscapes: An Outline to A.D. 1840 (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1985).

[56] Ali Riza Yalgın, Cenupta Türkmen Oymakları, vol. 1, ed. Sabahat Emir (Ankara: Kültür ve Türizm Bakanlığı, 1977), 51; Cemal Arif Alagöz, Anadoluda Yaylâcılık (An- kara: Ankara Halkevi, 1938), 18–19; Daniel G. Bates, Nomads and Farmers: A Study of the Yörük of Southeastern Turkey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1973), 8–20.

[57] Alagöz, Anadoluda Yaylâcılık, 23.

[58] On “avoidance,” see Webb, Humanity’s Burden, 14–15.

[59] Webb, Humanity’s Burden, 3.

[60] Alan Mikhail, “The Nature of Plague in Late Eighteenth-Century Egypt,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 2 (2008): 249. For views of miasma in the Ottoman context, see Miri Shefer-Mossensohn, Ottoman Medicine: Healing and Medical Institutions, 1500–1700 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009), 170–79.

[61] Ibrahim Atalay, Recep Efe, and Münir Öztürk, “Effects of Topography and Climate on the Ecology of Taurus Mountains in the Mediterranean Region of Turkey,” SBSPRO Procedia 120 (2014): 147.

[62] Change of air was not solely understood as a solution to malaria; it covered a range of ailments, especially fevers, and people did not necessarily differentiate between diseases when seeking summer respite in the mountains. Nükhet Varlık describes the “seasonal signature” of annual plagues that emerged in Ottoman cities and sometimes provided a powerful impetus for people to flee the city for the yayla during the warm months much as they did for malaria. Varlık, Plague and Empire, 18.

[63] OA, MvL 310/45 (9 Şevval 1273 [2 June 1857]).

[64] William Burckhardt Barker and William Ainsworth, Cilicia, Its Former History and Present State (London: R. Griffin, 1862), 115. See also Կիլիկիա: փորձ աշխարհագրութեան արդի Կիլիկիոյ, 34. Also, OA, İ-MvL 472/21365, no. 5/2; MvL 643/6, no.1; MvL 776/2.

[65] Misak Keleshean, Սիս-մատեան: պատմական, բանասիրական, տեղեկագրական, ազգագրական եւ Հարակից պարագաներ (Beirut: Hay Chemaran, 1949), 406. See also Galustean, Մարաշ կամ Գերմանիկ, 327.

[66] Keleshean, Սիս-մատեան, 81. See also H. Ter Ghazarean, Հայկական Կիլիկիա: տեղագրութիւն (Antelias: Kat’oghikosut’ean Hayots’ Metsi Tann Kilikioy, 2006), 311.

[67] Poghosean, Հաճընի ընդհանուր պատմութիւնը, 236–37.

[68] Buzand Yeghiayean, Ատանայի հայոց պատմութիւն (Antelias: Katoghikosutean Hayots Kilikioh, 1970), 741. American missionaries looking to expand their work in the Cilicia region established an Adana/Hadjin mission, with Hadjin as the summertime base of operations, upon realizing that few people stayed in Adana during the warm months. ABC 641/232, Coffing to Anderson (7 June 1860).

[69] KMS, Kilikia KL 5 (Tarsus), Mousis Christofidis. Research at KMS and translations by Polina Ivanova.

[70] KMS, Kilikia KL 5 (Tarsus), Kostas Rafoulis.

[71] KMS, Kilikia KL 7 (Hristiankioi), Georgos Dimitriadis.

[72] KMS, Kilikia KL 18 (Taşucu).

[73] KMS, Kilikia KL 9 (Alakilise).

[74] KMS, Kilikia KL 14 (Mara).

[75] Feyzullah İzmidi, Sıtma: Maraz-ı Merzagi (Istanbul: Tanin, 1329 [1911]); Tevfik Rüştü, Sıtma’ya Karşı Muharebe (Selanik: Rumeli Matbaası, 1326 [1910]).

[76] Özdemir, Öyküleriyle Ağıtlar, 129.

[77] KMS, Kilikia KL 6 (Iskilic), Mosises Christofides (26 February 1968).

[78] Poghosean, Հաճընի ընդհանուր պատմութիւնը, 224.

[79] KMS, KL 3A, Tsalikoglou, Emmanouil, Avtobiografia (Athens: typewritten manuscript, 1957), 80; Keleshean, Սիս-մատեան, 406. See the Houshamadyan website (houshamadyan.org) for articles about folk medicine for Hadjin, Sis, and Marash.

[80] Mustafa Ekmekçi, “Sıtma! Bu iti tutma,” Cumhuriyet, 21 April 1991.

[81] Kemal Özbayri and Hatice Gonnet, Tahtacılar ve Yörükler (Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1972), 30–31; Alagöz, Anadoluda Yaylâcılık, 18–19; Yaşar Kemal, Binboğalar Efsanesi (Istanbul: YKY, 1971; 2004), 17–18.

[82] See Ethel Sara Wolper, “Khidr and the Politics of Place,” in Muslims and Others in Sacred Space, ed. Margaret Cormack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Doumanis, Before the Nation, 76–78; Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, “The Vanished Kurban,” in Kurban in the Balkans, ed. Biljana Sikimic and Petko Hristov (Belgrade: Institut des études balkaniques, 2007).

[83] KMS, Kilikia KL 6 (Iskilic), Mosises Christofides.

[84] It is worth mentioning that the Nusayri Arab inhabitants of Cilicia did not celebrate Hıdırellez, though the figure of Hızır was an important aspect of their sacred geography, nor is it clear that they participated in the same rhythm of transhumance. For more on the Nusayris of Cilicia, see Procházka-Eisl and Procházka, The Plain of Saints and Prophets. In correspondence with Gisela Prochazka-Eisl, she confirmed that Hıdırellez was not an aspect of the Nusayri calendar in Cilicia.

[85] Tarsus, Anazarbus, Elaeussa, Corycus, Pompeiopolis (Soli), Adana, Augusta, Mallus, Zephyrium, Mopsuestia, Aegeae, Epiphaneia, Alexandria ad Issum, Rossos, Irenopolis, Flaviopolis, and Castabala Hierapolis. Jennifer Tobin, Black Cilicia: A Study of the Plain of Issus during the Roman and Late Roman Periods (Oxford: Hedges, 2004), 8. Remarkably, the cities of Adana and Tarsus have retained the same names and approximate locations (though their centers have shifted) since at least the Hittite period. Paolo Desideri and Anna Margherita Jasink, Cilicia: dall’età di Kizzuwatna alla conquista macedone (Florence: Le Lettere, 1990), 7.

[86] See Michael Gough, “Anazarbus,” Anatolian Studies 2 (1952): 85–150.

[87] John Julius Norwich, Sicily: A Short History, from the Greeks to Cosa Nostra (London: John Murray, 2016), 43; Aaron L. Beek, “The Pirate Connection: Roman Politics, Servile Wars, and the East,” TAPA 146, no. 1 (2016): 99–116.

[88] Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425: An Economic, Social, and Institutional Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 98.

[89] See James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the First Civilizations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); Davis, The Arid Lands.

[90] Robert Sallares, Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 251–52.

[91] A. Asa Eger, The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier: Interaction and Exchange among Muslim and Christian Communities (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2016), 2–3.

[92] Eger, The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier, 161–62.

[93] Eger, The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier, 259–61.

[94] Aurora E. Camaño, “Towards a Social Archaeology of Forced Migration: Comparing Memory, Myth and Place-Making in Medieval Armenian Cilicia,” in Homo Migrans: Modeling Mobility and Migration in Human History, ed. Meghan Daniels (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2022).

[95] See Angus Donal Stewart, The Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks: War and Diplomacy during the Reigns of Het’um II (1289–1307) (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Jacob G. Ghazarian, The Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia during the Crusades: The Integration of Cilician Armenians with the Latins, 1080–1393 (London: Routledge, 2014). Also Vahram, Vahram’s Chronicle of the Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia during the time of the Crusades, trans. Karl Friedrich Neumann (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1831).

[96] Smbat Sparapet, Դատաստանագիրք, ed. A. G. Galstian (Erevan: Aipetrat, 1958), 14.

[97] Nina G. Garsoïan, “The Early-Medieval Armenian City: An Alien Element?” JANES 16, no. 1 (1984).

[98] Krikor Koudoulian, Հայ լեռը, 14; Léon M. Alishan, Sissouan, ou l’Arméno-Cilicie: Description géographique et historique, avec cartes et illustrations (Venice: S. Lazare, 1899), 25.

[99] A. S. Ktsoyan, “Մալարիան Հայաստանում հնագույն ժամանակներից մինչեւ սովետական շրջանը,” PhD diss., Haykakan SSṚ Gitut’yunneri Akademia, 1949; Alishan, Sissouan, 25. See Mkhit’ar Herats’i, Մխիթարայ Բժշկապետի Հերացւոյ ջերմանց մխիթարութիւն (venetik: I. Tparani Srboyn Ghazaru, 1832), 90–132; in Russian translation: Mkhit’ar Herats’i, Утешение при лихорадках, trans. G. G. Harut’yunyan and L. A. Oganesov (Erevan: Tipografiia Ministerstva Kultury Arm. SSR, 1955), 162–98. Thanks again to Polina Ivanova. Studies have found higher degrees of Alpha-Thalassemia mutations, which are associated with genetic resistance to malaria, in the Province of Adana when compared with other regions of Turkey, suggesting a long presence of malaria in the region. Sevcan Tuğ Bozdoğan et al., “Alpha-Thalassemia Mutations in Adana Province, Southern Turkey: Genotype-Phenotype Correlation,” Indian Journal of Hematology and Blood Transfusion 31, no. 2 (2015): 223–28.

[100] See S. Peter Crowe, “Patterns of Armeno-Muslim Interchange on the Armenian Plateau in the Interstice between Byzantine and Ottoman Hegemony,” in Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia, ed. A. C. S. Peacock, Bruno De Nicola, and Sara Nur Yıldız (London: Routledge, 2019), 77–105.

[101] Smbat the Constable’s law code, written in 1265, for example, mentions Turkic pastoralists in a larger section about the possible damages of livestock to agricultural land. Smbat Sparapet, Դատաստանագիրք, 169–70.

[102] Enver Kartekin, Ramazanoğulları Beyliği tarihi (Istanbul: Doğuş Matbaasi, 1979), 40; Aydın, “Toroslarda Yaylacılık ve Çukurova’nın Önemi,” 116.

[103] Yılmaz Kurt and M. Akif Erdoğru, Adana Evkaf Defteri, vol. 4 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2000).

[104] İsmail Altınöz, Dulkadir Eyâletinin Kuruluşu ve Gelişimi (Kahramanmaraş: Ukde, 2009), 41–52; Refet Yinanç, Dulkadir Beyliği (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1989), 80–105.

[105] Tabak, The Waning of the Mediterranean, 124–25.

[106] Rhoads Murphey, Regional Structure in the Ottoman Economy: A Sultanic Memorandum of 1636 A.D. concerning the Sources and Uses of the Tax-Farm Revenues of Anatolia and the Coastal and Northern Portions of Syria (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1987), 7. See Halil İnalcik, “Rice Cultivation and the çeltükci-re’âyâ System in the Ottoman Empire,” Turcica 14 (1982): 69–141.

[107] See Huri İslamoğlu and Suraiya Faroqhi, “Crop Patterns and Agricultural Production Trends in Sixteenth-Century Anatolia,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 2, no. 3 (1979): 423–24.

[108] İslamoğlu and Faroqhi, “Crop Patterns and Agricultural Production Trends in Sixteenth-Century Anatolia,” 418–19.

[109] See Suraiya Faroqhi, “Ottoman Cotton Textiles: The Story of a Success That Did Not Last, 1500–1800,” in The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850, ed. Prasannan Parthasarathi and Giorgio Riello (Delhi: Primus Books, 2012), 89–104.

[110] See Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

[111] White, The Climate of Rebellion, 229–48. See also Oktay Özel, The Collapse of Rural Order in Ottoman Anatolia: Amasya, 1576–1643 (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

[112] Simeon, The Travel Accounts of Simeon of Poland, trans. George A. Bournoutian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2007), 271–72.

[113] Tabak, The Waning of the Mediterranean, 190–91.

[114] Shakow, “Marks of Contagion,” 262–64.

[115] John McNeill, The Mountains of the Mediterranean World: An Environmental History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 345.

[116] Tabak, The Waning of the Mediterranean, 14–16; McNeill, The Mountains of the Mediterranean, 86–92.

[117] For an overview, see Bruce McGowan, “The Age of the Ayans, 1699–1812,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, ed. Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 637–758. See also Cemal Kafadar, “The Question of Ottoman Decline,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 4, nos. 1–2 (1997–98).

[118] Barkey, Empire of Difference; Michael E. Meeker, A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 185.

[119] Ali Yaycioglu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016).

[120] Gould, “Lords or Bandits?” 485–506. See also Işık Tamdoğan, “La mobilité comme compétence dans la société ottomane: Nomades de la Çukurova et travailleurs migrants à Üsküdar au XvIIIè siècle,” in Le monde de l’itinérance en Méditerranée de l’Antiquité à l’époque moderne, ed. Claudia Moatti, Wolfgang Kaiser, and Christophe Pébarthe (Bordeaux: De Boccard, 2009), 192–97.

[121] Langlois, Voyage dans la Cilicie, 21–23.

[122] OA, A-MKT-MHM 437/34, no. 2 (19 Zilkade 1285 [3 March 1869]). See also Yılmaz Kurt, “Menemencioğulları ile ilgili Arşiv Belgeleri I,” Belgeler 21, no. 25 (2000).

[123] Menemencioğlu Ahmed, Menemencioğulları Tarihi, ed. Yılmaz Kurt (Ankara: Akçağ, 1997).

[124] The name Mustuk, a nickname in place of his given name Mustafa, is also found in the spelling of Mıstık in the region today. Foreign sources often spelled his name as “Mustook,” and Ottoman sources used variations that could be transliterated as Mustuk or Musdık.

[125] Ahmet Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. 3, ed. Cavid Baysun (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1986), 131; Mehmet Akif Terzi, Gâvurdağı’nın Bulanık tarihindeki sır perdesi (Istanbul: Doğu Kütüphanesi, 2010), 192.

[126] Gould, “Lords or Bandits?” 489.

[127] See Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript from Genocide to Justice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020), 79–115. Also Erdal İlter, Ermeni mes’elesinin perspektifi ve Zeytûn isyânlari (1780–1880) (Ankara: Türk Kültürünü Arastirma Enstitüsü, 1988).

[128] Gould, “Lords or Bandits?” 491.

[129] Gould, “Lords or Bandits?” 495.

[130] Poghosean, Հաճընի ընդհանուր պատմութիւնը, 146–50; Langlois, Voyage dans la Cilicie, 11, 19. Abdurrahman Münir Kozanoğlu depicts the family as a Turkish tribe that played an important role in the “Turkification (Türkleşme)” of Anatolia, in Kozanoğulları (Istanbul: Bakış Müessesesi, 1983). By contrast, the Armenian writer Aghasi argued that many of the tribal lineages in Cilicia descended from, had shared customs with, and therefore had close relations with Armenians in the Taurus Mountains. Aghasi and Arshag Chobanian, Zeïtoun: Depuis les origines jusqu’à l’insurrection de 1895 (Paris: Éditions du Mercure de France, 1897), 60.

[131] Kasaba, A Moveable Empire, 14–35.

[132] OA, C-AS 872/37389 (27 Zilkade 1225 [24 December 1810]). This is hardly surprising given that according to the estimates of Langlois, the tribes of Cilicia possessed more than 20,000 camels in the 1850s, with nomadic communities holding the largest camel concentrations. Langlois, Voyage dans la Cilicie, 21–23. Wheeled transport was not widely used in the region until the arrival of immigrants from the Caucasus. Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800–1914 (London: Methuen, 1981), 121.

[133] On the complex origins of the Ottoman state, and its relationship with both pastoral nomads and preexisting agrarian state structures, see Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Rudi Paul Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983).

[134] Rhoads Murphey, “Evolving versus Static Elements in Ottoman Geographical Writing between 1598 and 1729, Perspectives and Real-Life Experience of ‘the Northern Lands’ (Taraf al-Shimalli) over 130 Years,” in Ottoman Bosnia: A History in Peril, ed. Markus Koller and Kemal H. Karpat (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). Cited in White, The Climate of Rebellion, 46. See also Kemal H. Karpat and Robert W. Zens, Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes (Madison: Center for Turkish Studies, University of Wisconsin, 2003).

[135] White, The Climate of Rebellion, 48.

[136] Cengiz Orhonlu, Osmanlı imparatorluğunda aşiretlerin iskânı (Istanbul: Eren, 1987), 53–85.

[137] Mustafa Soysal, “Die Siedlungs und Landschaftsentwicklung der Çukurova: mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Yüregir-Ebene,” PhD diss., Fränkische Geogra- phische Gesellschaft, 1976, 38–39.

[138] Kasaba, A Moveable Empire, 86.

[139] Gould, “Pashas and Brigands,” 38.

[140] OA, A-MKT-UM 385/69, no. 2 (22 Cemaziyelevvel 1276 [5 December 1859]).

[141] Gould, “Pashas and Brigands,” 38.

[142] Toksöz, Nomads, Migrants, and Cotton, 20.

[143] Albert Hourani, Europe and the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 189.

[144] For an overview of Cilicia from the Hittite to Hellenic periods, see Desideri and Jasink, Cilicia (Florence: Le Lettere, 1990). For a study that covers the region “up until” the Ottoman period, see Ahmet Ünal and Serdar Girginer, Kilikya-Çukurova ilk çağlardan Osmanlar dönemi’ne kadar Kilikya’da tarihi coğrafya, tarih ve arkeoloji (Istanbul: Homer, 2007).