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Marthinus JoubertMarthinus Joube
Dear Mevlut,Just to say that we are safely back in Oman and on the run again with work. Thank you very much for a well organized trip in Turkey. We enjoyed it tremendously thanks to the smooth organization. We had a fantastic time and feel that it was good value for money. Also thank you for you...
Marthinus Joubert
Antalya is a city on the Mediterranian coast of southwestern Turkey.
Antalya was a major city in the Byzantine Period. It was the capital of the  Byzantine Theme of Carabisiani, which occupied the southern coasts of  Anatolia and theAegean Islands. At the time of the accession of   John 2.Comnenusin 1118 it was an isolated outpost surrounded by Turkish beyliks, accessible only by sea.
The city and the surrounding region were conquered by the Seljuk Turks in the early 13th century. Antalya was the capital of the Turkish beylik of Teke (1321–1423) until its conquest by the Ottomans. The Arabic travelerIbni Batuta, who visited the city in 1335-1340, noted:
From Alanya I went to Antaliya [Adalia], a most beautiful city. It covers an immense area, and though of vast bulk is one of the most attractive towns to be seen anywhere, besides being exceedingly populous and well laid out. Each section of the inhabitants lives in a separate quarter. The Christian merchants live in a quarter of the town known as the Mina [the Port], and are surrounded by a wall, the gates of which are shut upon them from without at night and during the Friday service. The Greeks, who were its former inhabitants, live by themselves in another quarter, the Jews in another, and the king and his court and Mamluks in another, each of these quarters being walled off likewise. The rest of the Muslims live in the main city. Round the whole town and all the quarters mentioned there is another great wall. The town contains orchards and produces fine fruits, including an admirable kind of apricot, called by them Qamar ad-Din, which has a sweet almond in its kernel. This fruit is dried and exported to Egypt, where it is regarded as a great luxury.
In the second half of the 17th century Evliya Celebi wrote of a city of narrow streets containing 3,000 houses in 20 Turkish and four Greek neighborhoods. The town had grown beyond the city walls and the port was reported to hold up to 200 boats.