The Project to Develop Cultural Infrastructure and Promote Interregional Tourism in Gaziantep, Kilis and Aleppo

Archaeological sites identified during surveys reveal that Kilis has been settled since the Neolithic Period, when instead of living as hunter-gatherers, people settled in one place and became producers, founding the first villages and engaging in agriculture and animal husbandry. Findings from a Pre-Pottery Neolithic (the earliest phase of the period) settlement have been made at the Yeşiloba Höyük, a small tumulus in the Afrin Valley.

Many Palaeolithic flint stone tools and chips are found at Kuskunkıran, Katırtepe, Kurukastel and Çakmalı, which are on the high plateaus in the north of the Kilis region.

There were Semitic tribes in the region during the Bronze Age, along with the newer Amurru (Amorite) and Hurrian peoples.

Throughout the 1st and 2nd millenniums B.C., many kingdoms in the surrounding areas wanted to gain control of this region which had a wealth of raw materials and important trade routes. Tutmosis III, an Egyptian pharaoh of the18th Dynasty, launched 16 military campaigns against the region, which was known as Retunuya and also included Palestine.
   
Another important power in Asia Minor during the 2nd millennium B.C. was the Hittite kingdom centred in middle Anatolia. In the 1460's B.C., Kilis was under the rule of the Kingdom of Aleppo, but came under Hittite influence with the beginning of the Hittite Empire.  Leaving Macedonia in B.C. 356, Alexander the Great occupied all of Anatolia from the north-west to the south-east down to the Gulf of Iskenderun, where he founded the city of Iskenderun (Alexandretta) before going on to Egypt via Kilis.
   
Kilis and its environs came under the Seleucids in B.C. 323, remaining a part of the Seleucid Empire for 227 years.  Soon after this period, the region was annexed by the Romans.  Following the division of the Roman Empire it became part of the Syrian Thema (administrative unit) of the Byzantine Empire.

Kilis came under Moslem rule in the time of the Caliphate of Omer, and was one of the border towns of the domain. Kilis and the surrounding area lost importance after the 5th century, and constantly passed back and forth between Byzantine and Arab control. After a period of rule by the Artukids and Ayyubids, the Mamelukes took the region and made what is now the town of Kilis into a centre for trade. The Mamelukes held control for about three centuries before they were defeated by the Ottoman Sultan, Yavuz Sultan Selim, at Mercidabık in 1516, after which the region became part of the Ottoman Empire.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Mondros at the end of World War I, Kilis was occupied first by the British and later by the French. With the signing of the Treaty of Ankara, the area became a part of the Republic of Turkey. In 1927, it was a district of Gaziantep, and it became an independent province in 1995.