Editing Cilicia (section)

=== Early Islamic period ===
In the 7th century Cilicia was invaded by the Muslim Arabs.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kaegi |first=Walter Emil |year=1969 |title=Initial Byzantine Reactions to the Arab Conquest |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3162702 |journal=Church History |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=139–149 |doi=10.2307/3162702 |jstor=3162702 |s2cid=162340890 |issn=0009-6407}}</ref> The area was for some time an embattled no-man's land. The Arabs succeeded in conquering the area in the early 8th century. Under the [[Abbasid Caliphate]], Cilicia was resettled and transformed into a fortified frontier zone (''[[thughur]]''). Tarsus, re-built in 787/788, quickly became the largest settlement in the region and the Arabs' most important base in their raids across the [[Taurus Mountains]] into Byzantine-held Anatolia.

The Muslims held the country until it was reoccupied by the Emperor [[Nicephorus II]] in 965.<ref name=EB1911 /> From this period onward, the area increasingly came to be settled by Armenians, especially as Imperial rule pushed deeper into the Caucasus over the course of the 11th century.

In medieval [[Arabic]] Cilicia was known as ''Ath-Thugur As-Shamiyya'' meaning "Levantine outskirts".