a walled city of the time of the Hittites. Discovered by archaeologists Halet Cambel and Helmuth Theodor Bossert. Relics found here date from a late Hittite kingdom (8th century BC) and include vast historic tablets, statues and ruins, even a monumental gate and pillars of lions and sphinxes. The ruins even gave us inscriptions in Hittite and Phoenician, which have been used to decipher the Hittite language. The Ala Cami is the oldest surviving monument in Kadirli. Its remains display over a millennium and a half of local history in several building phases. In the late 5th / early 6th century the site was artificially terraced for the construction of a large basilical church, built in at least two stages from a variety of reused architectural elements and incorporating the hypogeum as a crypt. It later seems to have fallen into disuse until the medieval period when it was converted into an Armenian church. This involved some modification to the original structure and the addition of a small church that sits inside the former nave of the church and reuses the original apse. This small church was converted into a mosque in the late 15th century, and a minaret was attached to the original Byzantine structure. See also Çukurova Osmaniye References External links Alacami survey and excavation reports District governor's official website District municipality's official website Karatepe (archaeological site) Photographic survey and description of the basilica at Flaviopolis / Kadirili Çukurova Archaeological sites in the Mediterranean Region, Turkey Cities in Turkey Roman sites in Turkey Populated places in Osmaniye Province Districts of Osmaniye Province