Niksar
| Niksar | ||||
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| Basic data | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Province (il) : | Tokat | |||
| Coordinates : | 40 ° 35 ′ N , 36 ° 58 ′ E | |||
| Height : | 350 m | |||
| Residents : | 33,610 (2018) | |||
| Telephone code : | (+90) 356 | |||
| Postal code : | 60 600 | |||
| License plate : | 60 | |||
| Structure and administration (as of 2019) | ||||
| Structure : | 25 malls | |||
| Mayor : | Özdilek Özcan ( AKP ) | |||
| Postal address : | Yusufşah Mahallesi, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Cd. No: 151 60600 Niksar |
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| Website: | ||||
| Niksar County | ||||
| Residents : | 64,119 (2018) | |||
| Surface: | 889 km² | |||
| Population density : | 72 inhabitants per km² | |||
| Kaymakam : | Mehmet Gödekmerdan | |||
| Website (Kaymakam): | ||||
Niksar is a city in the Turkish province of Tokat and the capital of the district of the same name. The city of Niksar is the fourth largest city in the province. From the ancient fortress of Kabeira , which was built around 300 BC. Belonged to the kingdom of Pontos , and the city called Neokaisareia in Roman times has not survived . Some smaller Seljuk tombs ( Türben ) date from the 12th century.
location
The city lies on the northern edge of a wide valley plain ( Niksar Ovası ), through which the Kelkit Çayı flows in a north-westerly direction. It is a tributary of the Yeşilırmak , which reaches the Black Sea near Samsun . The Niksar Su stream flows through the middle of the old town and flows into the Kelkit about two kilometers further down the plain. Other tributaries mainly from the mountains in the north irrigate the valley. There the Canik Dağları , a mountain region belonging to the Pontic Mountains, rise to altitudes between 1500 and 1800 meters. From Tokat, 43 kilometers southwest, a road leads to Niksar and from here over a 1365 meter high pass in the Canik Mountains in 135 kilometers to Ünye on the Black Sea. The intersection with trunk road 100 / E 80 between Amasya and Erzincan, which runs in an east-west direction, is nine kilometers south of Niksar in the plain.
district
Niksar County is the seventh largest area in the province. It is bordered by Erbaa County in the northwest, central Tokat County in the southwest, Almus County in the south, Başçiftlik and Reşadiye counties in the south-east, and Akkuş and Kumru counties in the north ( Ordu Province ).
Forests cover a large part of the mountainous area. 14 kilometers northeast on the road towards Ünye, a high plateau with pine forests begins near the village of Çamiçi at an altitude of over 1000 meters. Hotels are ideal as quarters for hiking. In the mountains north of Niksar, the warm thermal spring of Ayvaz is an excursion destination. The mineral water, which has long been valued, is bottled and exported abroad.
The fertile plains are primarily used for agriculture, where not only grain but also vegetables and fruit trees thrive. Poplars and willows grow along the rivers, and beech , pine and spruce trees at higher altitudes north of Niksar . Ferrets , hares , wolves , foxes , lynxes , bears and wild boars live in the mountain forests . Partridges , quail, and ducks are wild birds.
Niksar is located at the transition between the relatively mild winter climate on the Black Sea and the continental climate of Central Anatolia. Generally it is rainy in winter and hot in summer. The average rainfall is 475.2 mm and the average annual temperature is 14.7 ° C.
Niksar County consists of:
- 83 villages (Köy) with an average of 204 inhabitants - Mahmudiye (936 inhabitants) is the largest village
- 5 municipalities (Belediye) with a total of 47,182 inhabitants:
- Niksar (33,610)
- Yazıcık (2,963)
- Serenli (2,923)
- Yolkonak (2,890)
- Gurçeşme (2,556)
- Gökçeli (2,240 pop.)
The villages Boğazbaşı , Haydarbey and Kumçiftlik became Mahalles of the district town Niksar in 2018, the village Buz became a Mahalles of the city Gürçeşme.
The district with its population density of 72.1 inh. Per km² is above the provincial value of 61.0 and has an urban population of 73.59 percent.
history
Around 302 BC In BC Mithridates I founded the Greek kingdom of Pontos, which initially consisted of the Amasya area, the plains of Taşova , Niksar and Tokat and possibly extended south to Sivas . Under his successor in the classical Roman period, Mithridates Eupator (ruled around 120–63 BC), Amasya served as the capital and the richly irrigated plain of Niksar was the main cultivation area of this empire. The city called Kabeira or Cabeira at that time had a royal palace and was the market place for the agricultural products of the area. 71 BC The Roman general Lucullus advanced into the kingdom of Pontus. A year later it came to the battle between the Romans and Mithridates in the third Mithridatic war , Niksar passed into possession of the Romans.
Under the Roman general Pompey , the Black Sea region was founded in 64 BC. Renamed to the Roman province of Bithynia et Pontus and Kabeira in Diospolis, then in Sebaste and finally in Neokaisareia (other spelling Neocäsarea). The population of the cities remained the same as before, increased by some of Pompey's soldiers who settled here. Mithridates son Pharnakes II (ruled 63-47 BC) conquered the Pontus, whose rulers changed several times before the turn of the century and which left the cities a certain autonomy. 37 to 8 BC BC, Polemon I was a Pontic king who came to terms with a neighboring Roman province. His residence was probably Niksar (Kabeira). What is certain is that his widow Pythodoris , who was born to him from 8 BC. Succeeded on the throne until 23 AD, resided in Niksar.
The small empire around Neokaisareia ended with the death of Polemon II in 64 AD and was incorporated into the Roman province of Galatia . The cities within this province were again allocated areas for their own administration. By the year 71 or 72 the Romans had extended their power eastwards to Lesser Armenia , the only major city of which was Nicopolis . There, Roman legionaries built the border fortress Satala (today's village Sadak ), in the year 76 they connected Neokaisareia with Satala by a military road.
The early bishopric of Niksar goes back to the theologian Gregory of Neocäsarea (around 210 - around 270), the area of which included the Kelkit plain far east to Koyulhisar and in the north the northern slopes of the Pontic Mountains. This resulted in the titular Archdiocese of Neocaesarea in Ponto of the Roman Catholic Church. In 314 there was a council . Under the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I , the cities were redistributed into provinces between 378 and 386. Neokaisareia and Komana Pontika together with Polemonion (near Fatsa ), Kerasous (today Giresun ) and Trapezous (today Trabzon ) on the Black Sea formed the province of Pontus Polemoniacus . Emperor Justinian I had this province enlarged in 535 to include the small Armenian cities of Nikopolis, Satala and Koloneia (today Şebinkarahisar ).
After the Arab conquest of Eastern Anatolia from the middle of the 7th century, the border between the Arab and Byzantine spheres of influence lay south of the upper Kızılırmak . Niksar belonged to a military district called Armeniakon in the 8th and 9th centuries ( subject ). Individual districts ( Kleisourarchiai ) within this theme became independent in the middle of the 9th century and became themes themselves. In the 10th century, Neokaisareia very likely had a large fortress and an urban settlement to the southeast, surrounded by a defensive wall. The Black Sea coast between Oinaion (Ünye) and Kotyora ( Ordu ) belonged to the archbishopric of the city .
When people of Turkic origin arrived in Anatolia in 1067, Afşin Bey, one of the commanders of the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan , conquered the city. The Byzantines regained it in 1068. After the Battle of Manzikert , Artuk Bey captured Niksar, which in 1073 again became Byzantine. Gümüştekin Ahmet Ghazi († 1104), founder of the Danischmenden dynasty and later known as Danischmend Ghazi , took the city around 1077 and made it his headquarters, presumably because it was the largest and best defensible city in the region and Tokat at the beginning of the 12th century obviously had little importance. Even Sivas was not surrounded by defensive walls at the time. When the crusaders wanted to march through the area during the First Crusade , Danischmend Ghazi was able to capture the leader Bohemond of Taranto (1051–1111) in the year 1000 and lock him up in the fortress of Niksar.
Niksar became a cultural center, but was in distress due to the siege of Byzantine troops, especially in the winter of 1139/40. Danischmend Ghazi's next but one successor, Malik Mehmet Ghazi (r. 1134–1142), therefore relocated his capital from Niksar further south to Kayseri . When Yağibasan (Yaghıbasan, † 1164) came to power, the Danischmenden empire was divided by family disputes, Yağibasan's power was limited to the area of the cities of Niksar, which he soon declared his capital, Tokat, where he had a large madrasah built, and Amasya . The Danischmenden have slipped the Roman name of the city Neokaisareia to today's Niksar .
In 1175 Niksar became a vassal of the Sultanate of the Rum Seljuks under Kılıç Arslan II. After the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, the importance of Niksar gradually disappeared while Sivas and Tokat began to develop. Niksar was administered by Beylik Eretna , named after the founder of the dynasty of the same name († 1352), and later by Beylik Tacettinoğulları, whose headquarters became the city.
At least 1387 there was a small and probably weak emirate in Niksar. After Kadi Burhan al-Din , who captured Niksar in 1387, was killed in a battle, the residents of Niksar asked the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II for help. His son Süleyman Çelebi took the city for the Ottomans around 1392 . Niksar later became part of Tokat Province. Mehmet II (ruled from 1444 with interruption to 1481) started a campaign against Trabzon from Niksar, Selim I (ruled 1512–1520) and Suleyman the Great (ruled 1520–1566) invaded the east from here .
The Ottoman writer and traveler Evliya Çelebi (1611–1683) visited the city in 1672 and reported a little exuberantly about 70 schools, seven Sufi monasteries, 500 shops - including many shoemakers - and pomegranates the size of a head on the market. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Niksar was probably a simple market town and the residence of an emir. The population was predominantly Muslim in the middle of the 17th century.
Before the First World War , around 4,000 people lived in Niksar, around a quarter of whom were Armenian Christians, who, like everywhere else, were predominantly engaged in trade. In 1915 the Armenians were deported .
On March 26, 1972, Mahir Çayan, along with nine other revolutionaries, activists from the People's Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO) and Dev-Genç, as well as civilians from Fatsa, kidnapped two British and one Canadian technicians from a radar station in Ünye. The intention was to expose Deniz Gezmiş , Hüseyin İnan and Yusuf Aslan , who had been sentenced to death as leaders of the THKO. Four days later, on March 30, 1972, Çayan and his friends were caught and killed by a special unit in the village of Kızıldere, Niksar County.
Cityscape
The city center is embedded between the slopes of a side valley south of the fortress hill that widens to the west. The Niksar Su forces its way through the valley together with a road through the dense development with a few remaining Ottoman timber-framed houses in the old town. The main road to Ünye runs roughly parallel 100 meters north. At the vegetable and clothing market, an Ottoman stone arch bridge spans the river, a few meters away are one of several dome mosques in the Ottoman style and the inner-city bus stop for buses to the surrounding area. The bus station for long-distance buses is further down on the outskirts on the arterial road towards Tokat. The city expansion encircled the fortress hill in the plain and from a flat valley basin in the north, i.e. from three sides. To the east, the upstream hill merges in a narrow ridge between the two valleys into the rising, wooded mountainous country.
The formerly fortified city area stretched up the south-eastern steep slope to just below the fortress. The mausoleum Danischmend Ghazis is located in the northeast above the city in a large cemetery to the left of the road towards Tokat. The cemetery could previously have been located within the city wall, of which no remains have been preserved.
fortress
There are practically no original remains of the castle walls. The visible walls were restored along the external dimensions, which date from the Danishmenid period, probably by Yağibasan († 1164). The Yağibasan Medresesi at the western end of the one kilometer long hill goes back to him very likely. It was restored in a similar style during the Ottoman period. Parts of the wall show the course in an arc around the southwestern hilltop. The entrance gate was probably located on the western south side near a medrese, on the east side of which a police building, which has now been destroyed, was erected, probably in the 19th century.
To the northeast, a three-meter-thick wall running across the hill with square watchtowers at every corner bordered the courtyard. One of the towers was solidly masonry with sides five to six meters long, the other was a gate. In between stood another tower with a chamber, over whose vault the battlement led away. The city wall leading up to the cemetery on the ridge of the hill began here, the course of which can be reconstructed in places.
The Yağibasan Medresesi , built in 1157/58, protruded with its north wall partially over the northern defensive wall. A series of chambers of the roughly rectangular building surrounded on all sides a central courtyard, which was vaulted by a dome. Together with the medrese in Tokat, built between 1151 and 1157, it was the earliest domed medrese in Anatolia. Two ivans on the north and east side opened onto the inner courtyard. The stones of the walls still preserved in the 1970s were unworked, only hewn cuboids were used for the outside of the dome. According to local tradition and confirmed by a piece of plaster on which a figure with a halo can be seen, the building was used as a church for a certain time. The current building is only partially original.
Buildings in the city
The Great Mosque ( Ulu Cami ) was probably built under the Danishmenids in the 12th century and subsequently restored and rebuilt several times. An almost square inner courtyard is offset to the north in a rectangular prayer hall. Six pillars in four rows are connected to each other by pointed arches with cross vaults . The mihrab alcove with Muqarnas could have come from an early time, the portal in the north wall and other construction details are Ottoman changes. A minaret is built in the middle of the west wall . After 1970 the mosque was completely modernized and covered with a flat hipped roof.
In the upper part of the old town stood the Çöreği Büyük Tekkesi from the 13th or early 14th century. According to the name, the building was the meeting house of a Sufi order ( Tekke ), but it could have been used as a medrese in the beginning. Çöreği Büyük was possibly the name of a sheikh (something like "man with the high bun") who settled here with his followers. The building, as it was preserved in 1930, enclosed a central courtyard from which Iwane projected to the north, west and east. The entrance led through the slightly shorter east divan into the courtyard, the two corner rooms on the north wall could only be entered through doors in the north divan. With the exception of the east portal, the walls were made of uncut field stones. Only the portal facade on the street has been preserved to this day, the rest of the single-storey building was changed or replaced by a conversion or new building with a flat hipped roof. The portal is surrounded by a double-staggered floral braided ribbon frame. The corners between the triangular muqarnas niche are filled by two large round medallions containing a six-pointed star with a rosette in the center. The relief of a lying deer in the tympanum above the door is unusual . This motif does not otherwise appear in Seljuk architectural ornamentation. The muqarnas niche is optically supported by quarter columns with geometric braided ribbons on both sides of the portal.
A few meters further up on the same street is the Kırk Kızlar Türbesi (" Türbe of 40 Girls") on the left . How the grave building from the beginning of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century got its name is unclear, it should have nothing to do with such a number of girls. The Türbe has an octagonal base made of hewn stone blocks on which a brick tower rises almost without recession. A few steps lead up to the prayer room above the crypt . The entrance is in the north-east wall, the room receives light through two windows in the south-east and south-west directly above the base. The outer walls are structured by flat corner pilasters that meet at the top in pointed arches. Arched areas above the windows and the door were decorated with a geometric pattern of blue-green faience , of which only small remnants remain. The original, strict triangular pattern can be seen above a window, while the tympanum above the door is designed with lively pentagons.
The Malik Ghazi Türbesi for the founder of the Danischmend dynasty on the hill northeast of the city center has been rebuilt several times. A simple square room is surmounted by a dome, the transition to the square via a Seljuk shape of pendentives called the “ Turkish triangle ”. Uncut stones can be seen on the outside of the roof. The Türbe has a walled cemetery on which some gravestones of Sufi saints have been preserved.
sons and daughters of the town
- Gregory the miracle worker (around 210 - around 270), theologian and bishop of the early church
literature
- F. Babinger: Nīksār. In: CE Bosworth et al. a. (Ed.): The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition , Vol. 9, Brill, Leiden 1995, p. 36
- Volker Eid : East Turkey. Peoples and cultures between Taurus and Ararat . DuMont, Cologne 1990, p. 113, ISBN 3-7701-1455-8
- Thomas Alexander Sinclair: Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey. Vol. II. The Pindar Press, London 1989, pp. 345-353
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Türkiye Nüfusu İl ilçe Mahalle Köy Nüfusları , accessed on July 27, 2019
- ↑ Sinclair, pp. 366-370
- ^ Sinclair, p. 373
- ↑ Sinclair, pp. 376-378
- ↑ a b Babinger, EI (2), p. 36
- ^ Sinclair, pp. 376-379, 387, 389
- ↑ Oktay Aslanapa: Turkish Art and Architecture. Faber and Faber, London 1971, p. 124
- ↑ Oath, p. 113
- ↑ Eid, p. 113, dated after the signature of the artist Ahmet from Marand ( East Azerbaijan ), who designed a similar Türbe in the hospital complex of Sivas ( Izzeddin Keykavus Darüssifasi ) completed in 1217 .
- ^ Sinclair, p. 353
