Gaziantep has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age. The city is a mutilated mirror image of the Age today. The 2,000-year-old Gaziantep Castle is destroyed to the extent that it seems it was never built by the Romans and the Byzantine Empire. Just a few yards from the Gaziantep Castle stands the 17th-century Sirvani Mosque with its dome shattered completely. Malatya, known for its apricots, can be anything– a cold desert, haunted wreckage or a barren, desolate land. The Yeni Mosque in Malatya, which was also the subject of Kemal Tahir’s 1974 novel Namuscular, has collapsed too. The 17th-century mosque had suffered damage from earthquakes in 1894 and 1964. The historic Diyarbakır Fortress, built in the 6th century BC by King Tigranes of the Orontid Dynasty, located in Diyarbakir province, has collapsed too. The fortress had the longest defensive walls in the world, second only to the Great Wall of China. Sanliurfa, popularly known as Urfa, is the site of the world’s oldest and most mysterious stone temples, the Göbekli Tepe, of the pre-pottery Neolithic Age (9,000–8,500 BCE). Though Urfa is one of the worst-affected provinces, the temple has miraculously survived the ravages of the earthquake as has the Arslantepe Mound in Malatya. In the ancient city of Aleppo, Syria, the famous Aleppo Citadel that was partly damaged in the 2012 Battle of Aleppo during the Syrian civil war, has suffered severe damage. The citadel, which showcases Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, lies in ruins. Besides Aleppo, on the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger, several buildings at the World Heritage sites of Diyarbakır Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape, an important centre of the Roman, Sassanid, Byzantine, Islamic and Ottoman periods, have collapsed.