Malatya is a busy city situated on a fertile plain at the foot of the Anti – Taurus Mountains. The Archaeology Museum houses new finds from the Lower Firat region that date from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic ages. Next to the city museum, you can shop in at the bazaar where an entire passageway of shops is devoted to copperware. In Malatya, the apricot growing center of Turkey, it is possible to sample many delicious apricot confections as well as other fresh and dried fruit.

Now a busy industrial centre producing chiefly textiles, sugar, and cement, Malatya is also the regional market for agricultural goods including fruits, vegetables, cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar beets. The locality also has deposits of chrome, lead, and copper. Malatya is a rail and road junction in which the line between Aleppo (in Syria) and Samsun (on the Black Sea) meets the line east to Elazig and Diyarbakir. Inonu University was founded at Malatya in 1975.

Zengibar Castle City, east – central Turkey. It lies in a fertile plain watered by the Tohma River (a tributary of the Euphrates) and is surrounded by high ranges of the eastern Taurus Mountains. The modern town was founded in 1838 near the sites of two earlier settlements: the ancient Hittite city of Milid, on the site of the present – day Arslantepe, 4 miles (6 km) north, and its successor, the Roman and medieval city of Melitene, now called Eski (Old) Malatya (6 miles [10 km] northeast).

An important garrison town and road junction of the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, Melitene was granted city status by Emperor Trajan (reigned AD 98-117) and later served as the capital of Armenia Minor. It was occupied successively by the Persian Sasanids, the Arabs, and the Armenians, and it came under the Seljuq Turks in the 12th century. The Seljuq Ulu Cami (“Great Mosque”), built on an earlier Arab foundation, and the han (caravansary) both date from the 13th century. In 1515 the city was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim I.