…Sayf al-Daula crosses the Euphrates into Anzitene, which his troops also raided extensively, and reenters the Muslim-held territory of Diyar Bakr.

Here, he is informed that in the meantime, the imperial army under Bardas Phokas has invaded northern Syria and raided as far as Antioch.

At once he turns his army south and west.

Riding at great speed, …

…Diyarbakir.

A Seljuq-Artuqid alliance, commanded by Mehmed I of Great Seljuq and Ilghazi, the Turkish Artuqid ruler of Mardin, had been defeated by Georgia at the Battle of Didgori in 1121.

Ilghazi had died in 1122, and although his nephew Balak nominally controlled Aleppo, the city was really controlled by Ibn al-Khashshab.

When Al-Kashshab was assassinated in 1125, Aleppo had fallen under the control of Zengi, atabeg of Mosul.

After the death of Balak, the Artuqids have been split between Diyarbakir, …

The Arab engineer al-Jazari, a prominent polymath, describes fifty mechanical devices in his book (title translated to English) The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, along with instructions on how to construct them.

He was named after the area in which he was born, Al-Jazira—the traditional Arabic name for what was northern Mesopotamia and what is now northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria, between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Like his father before him, he served as chief engineer at the Artuklu Palace, the residence of the Diyarbakir branch of the Turkish Artuqid dynasty which ruled across eastern Anatolia as vassals of the Zengid rulers of Mosul and later Ayyubid general Saladin.

While many of al-Jazari's inventions may now appear to be trivial, the most significant aspect of al-Jazari's machines are the mechanisms, components, ideas, methods, and design features which they employ.

A large Mongol force, dispatched in 1230 by Khakhan Ögödei to crush the Khwarezmian leader Jalal ad-Din in western Mesopotamia, surrounds him at Diyarbakr in 1231, but their quarry escapes, only to die in Kurdistan later in this year.

Kaykhusraw, with the support of the great emirs of Anatolia, had seized the throne of the Sultanate of Rûm upon the death of Kayqubad in 1237.

The architect of his early reign is a certain Sa'd al-Din Köpek, master of the hunt and minister of works under Kayqubad.

Köpek excels at political murder and seeks to protect his newfound influence at the court with a series of executions.

He captures Diyarbakir from the Ayyubids in 1241.

Control of the city of Diyarbakir and the much wider Eastern Anatolia region (comprising eastern and southeastern Anatolia) will long be heavily contested between the Persian Safavids and the Ottoman Turks.

When the city was initially conquered from the Safavids in 1515 by the Ottoman Turks through the campaigns of Bıyıklı Mehmet Paşa following the Battle of Chaldiran, they had established an eyelet with its center in Diyarbakır.

The Ottoman eyelet of Diyarbakır corresponds to modern Turkey's southeastern provinces, a rectangular area between Lake Urmia to Palu and from the southern shores of Lake Van to Cizre and the beginnings of the Syrian desert, although its borders will see some changes over time.

The relationship between the Ottomans and the Mamluks has been adversarial since the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453: both states vie for control of the spice trade, and the Ottomans aspire to eventually take control of the Holy Cities of Islam.

An earlier conflict, which lasted from 1485 to 1491, had led to a stalemate.

By 1516, the Ottomans are free from other concerns—Sultan Selim I had recently vanquished the Safavid Persians at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514—and turn their full might against the Mamluks, who rule in Syria and Egypt, to complete the Ottoman conquest of the Middle East.

The war will consist of several battles.

The Mamluk army is largely traditional, consisting mainly of cavalry using bows and arrows, whereas the Ottoman army, and especially the Janissary corps, is modern, using arquebuses.

The Mamluks, who remain proudly traditional, tend to disregard the use of firearms.

...Diyarbakir.