Afyon (Afyonkarahisar)

Afyon, formerly Kara Hisar-i Sahib, is a town in western Anatolia. It took the name Afyon Kara Hisar from the opium grown in the district.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), unsigned, describes the town as lying at about 1007 m on the Akarcay, at the foot of an isolated trachyte cone. Kara Hisar-i Sahib was the capital of a sanjak of the eyalet of Anatolia and, from 1281/1864, of the Khudavendigar sanjak. It is identified with the Byzantine fortress of Akroinos, near which the Arabs were defeated in 740. Taken by the Turks early in the 13th century, it passed to the Sahib 'Ata family, then to the Germiyan, and in 832/1428–9 to the Ottomans, when it became a sanjak. It was a base in the wars with Uzun Hasan and the Karamanids, and in 895/1489–90 for Hersek-zade Ahmed Pasha's operations against the Egyptians. It was occupied by the Greeks in 1921 and again in 1921–1922, and was rebuilt under the republic. The town's landmark, the Byzantine fortress that the Germiyan had restored, was called Bek Baran Kale in Niebuhr's time. ¹