ABSTRACT
Located in what is now northeastern Turkey, Erzurum was historically a frontier city on the Anatolian plateau. It was always a frontier city on all sides-first between the Byzantine Empire, Armenian landlords, and expanding Islamic influence in Iran, then between the Muslim Seljuks and the Christian kings of Armenia. Beginning in the mid-thirteenth century, it found itself between the Mongol Empire and the center of Anatolia, peripheral yet crucial to both. In this context, imperial architecture never had a chance to take hold, and local traditions became particularly ingrained, perhaps even more so than in Sivas, examined in Chapter 2.
