Cilicia remained in Egyptian possession until the 16th century when the country fell in the to the Ottoman Turks.
This fertile country, in which the Armenians until 1921 (the end of the 1915 Genocide) constituted the majority of the population, was doomed to the same fate as the rest of the Ottoman Empire: it fell to ruins and its population became servants of the sultan.
Tournebize writes: "It is true that after all the losses and the miseries, some independence always remains. The Armenians, who took shelter in the areas of Hajin and Zeytoun, kept alive their active spirit and courage and sustained their features and characteristics as small stones which have escaped the wrath of the ocean on waves. But further down in the mountainous areas a savage hand has appeared which has managed well its destruction and devastation. Of all the churches, of all the monasteries, of all the beautiful palaces and the fortresses and the cities which had been built by dint of the generosity of the Armenian princes, there are now only ruins among which one can find some few coins." 105
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