Anatolia (Asia Minor)

Anatolia, called Anadolu in Turkish and Asia Minor in antiquity, is the mountainous peninsula at the western end of Asia, between about 36 and 42 degrees north and 26 and 45 degrees east. Together with the Balkans it has formed a bridge between Central Europe and Western Asia throughout its history. Arab geographers of the Middle Ages, and the Turks until well into Ottoman times, called the country Bilad al-Rum, 'the land of the Rum'. ¹

The Byzantines used the name Anatole, 'the rising of the sun', in the administrative sense of the lands east of Constantinople; the prefecture of the East created by Diocletian and Constantine comprised the dioceses of Egypt, the East, Pontus, Asia and Thrace. That administrative term disappeared with the division into themes in the early seventh century. The theme around Amorium and Iconium, much smaller, was called al-Natulus or similar by Ibn Khurradadhbih, and al-Natulik by Kudama; the name of the theme Anatolikon vanished again with the Turkish conquest. ¹

With the Turks the name became Anadolu. At first it meant only western Anatolia, the Ottoman province of that name embracing the former western Anatolian Turkish principalities. It ceased to be a province name in the reorganisation of the provinces during the Tanzimat in the mid-nineteenth century, and from then on 'Anatolia' meant the whole peninsula, roughly as far as the line Trebizond, Erzincan, Birecik and Alexandretta. In Turkish today Anadolu is the whole Asian part of modern Turkey, including areas that geographically belong to upper Mesopotamia and to Armenia. In 1950 Anatolia covered 743,634 square km of the 767,000 square km of Turkey, and the country had 20,934,670 inhabitants, 19,308,441 of them in Asia. ¹

Anatolia is a high plateau ringed by longitudinal mountain ranges, higher still, to the north and south. The northern border mountains, known in Europe as the Pontic mountains, are straight parallel ranges 1,200 to 1,500 metres high, often over 2,000, with the Zigana mountains above 3,000 metres and alpine formations. The southern side is the Taurus system. In the west the northern chains link through the mountains south of the Sea of Marmara with the inner Dinaric ranges of the Balkans; in the east the Armenian and Caucasian ranges lead on to the Iranian mountains, with the high plateau of Mount Ararat as an outpost. ²

The climate follows the geography. Winters on the coast are mild, with January averages above 5 degrees on the Black Sea coast and above 8 degrees on the south coast. Summers on the coasts are oppressively hot, and the Mediterranean dryness of the west and south coasts gives way on the northern coast to summer rain. The central plateau is cold in winter, below freezing in January, and very hot in summer, with a July-August average near 24 degrees; it is a steppe, with less rain than the coasts, but barley and wheat grow there without irrigation. Despite some maps, central Anatolia has no desert. ³

Vegetation followed the rainfall. On the south and west coasts the evergreen cover of Mediterranean lands survives in part, and much of it has been turned to arable land, the rest degraded into shrubs and sparse pasture. The border mountains carry dry forest of oak and conifers on their western, southern and eastern sides, much of it cleared for fields and grazing; on the northern mountains nearer the coast the damp forest of beech and pine prevails and resists human pressure better. ³

The main settlement lies in the long valleys between the northern ridges, where summers are hot and water makes farming possible: the basins of Bolu, Gerede, Cerkes and Ilgaz-Tosya in the eastern part of ancient Bithynia; the Safranbolu, Kastamonu and Boyabat basin in the centre of ancient Paphlagonia; the basins of the upper Yesil Irmak (Iris) around Amasya, Zile and Tokat in ancient Pontus; and, to the east, the Kelkit-Coruh furrow, over 500 km long. Grain, sheep, goats and, in the east, cattle form the basis of the economy there. ³

The north coast rises steeply out of the Black Sea, with few bays and a narrow, valley-cut strip, densely settled in the east, where maize, beans and above all hazelnuts are grown around Giresun, Trabzon and Rize. The only larger flats are the deltas of the Yesil Irmak and the Kizil Irmak (Halys), which are partly swamp, and the Kocaeli peninsula, the Thracian plain, and the Adapazari plains on the lower Sakarya (Sangarius). ³

Apart from the Bosporus, the only harbour on the Black Sea shore protected from the north-westerly gales is Sinop, which has little importance because its hinterland is poor. Samsun has the best rail and road access to central Anatolia. The coal and industrial areas of Zonguldak and Eregli (Heraclea Pontica) were being greatly developed, and the silver, lead and copper mines of the Zigana mountains, at Gumushhane and Murgul, were once of some importance. The subsidence of the land between the Aegean and the Balkans also affected the northern mountain ranges of the Marmara region, leaving hilly districts and plains around the Sea of Marmara, with a favourable Mediterranean climate. Silk is grown near Bursa, and wine around Tekirdag (Rodosto). ³

Because of its position Constantinople, Istanbul, grew up on the bridge between Anatolia and the Balkans and kept its importance for thousands of years; the most important periods were those in which it was the natural capital of an empire over both areas. Even today it is Turkey's gate to the world and its principal import harbour. The Straits are not a boundary of continents or cultures; such a boundary is rather found in the sparsely settled steppes and heathlands of the interior. ³

The Taurus system of southern Anatolia is considerably higher than the northern border ranges: long stretches rise above 2,000 metres and at times above 3,000, and the ice-covered Djilo Dagh south-east of Lake Van reaches 4,176 metres. The limestone ranges are often strongly bow-shaped. West of the Gulf of Antalya the Western Taurus, sometimes called the Lycian Taurus, points out towards the sea and the islands; between the Gulf of Antalya and the Adana plain the Central Taurus forms a great arc, whose eastern wing is known as the Cilician Taurus. East of the Gulf of Alexandretta the system continues in two parallel chains. The outer chain runs from the Amanus through the ranges south of Malatya and of the Murad river to the chains south of Lake Van; the inner chain, whose western section is called the Anti-Taurus, runs from the upper Seyhan north of Adana to the Urmia area, past the upper Euphrates (Kara Su) and the upper Aras. Between them lie basins such as Elbistan, Malatya-Elazig, Capakcur and Van. Together they form the Eastern Taurus, which curves northward and merges at its southern end into the Iranian border ranges. ³

Between the ranges of the Western and central Taurus lie longitudinal basins, several with lakes, the famous lakes of the old districts of Pisidia and Isauria, and these basins are the main centres of settlement; Isparta and Burdur have valuable special crops. The limestone uplands are thinly peopled for want of water, and their poor grazing, used by goats and sheep in summer, has largely replaced the former dry forest; settlement in the Central Taurus is confined to a few narrow valleys. The Eastern Taurus has wider basins that could support more people, and its thinly settled southern foothills can be farmed on rainfall alone, near the ancient centres of Diyarbakir, Urfa (Edessa), Gaziantep and Aleppo. The most favoured part of these foothills is Hatay, around Antioch, where the nearby Mediterranean allows citrus and other Mediterranean crops. ⁴

The coastal strip of the Taurus is narrow and offers few hills for settlement, with malaria a danger; the only really large arable area is the Cilician plain of Adana and Tarsus, formed by the deposits of the Seyhan (Saros) and Ceyhan (Pyramus), where cotton has greatly increased in recent years. The tufaceous plain of Antalya, with cliffs of 30 metres down to the sea, is less favourable. The southern coast has no sheltered anchorage for large ships; Iskenderun (Alexandretta) and Mersin serve the Adana plain and Hatay and ship the chromium ore of the Eastern Taurus, and the small harbour of Fethiye serves the western mountains. ⁵

Between the Marmara mountains in the north and the Western Taurus in the south lies Aegean Anatolia, the Turkish Ege region, which roughly corresponds to the area of Ionian Greek colonisation. The broad valleys of the Bakir Cay (Caicus), Gediz (Hermus) and the greater and lesser Menderes (Cayster, Maeander) penetrate some 200 km into the peninsula through crystalline rock between ridges 1,000 to 2,000 metres high. The region is densely settled, growing tobacco, olives, figs and grapes, largely dried as raisins, and more recently cotton. The coast runs at right angles to the mountains and has many harbours, but the large rivers carry so much sediment that the bays fill: Ephesus and Miletus, once ports, now lie several kilometres inland, and Izmir (Smyrna) survived only because the Gediz was diverted. Izmir is the economic centre of the region, linked by rail; Bergama (Pergamum), Afyon and Denizli are local centres. ⁵

To the east the valleys end at a high ridge between the Taurus and the southern border chains of the Marmara region, around Afyon, Kutahya and Usak. This western Anatolian ridge consists of plateaux at 1,200 to 1,500 metres, with massive ranges above them often exceeding 2,000 metres, falling gradually to about 1,100 metres towards the north-east and the upper Sakarya. Its plateaux are steppes of Tertiary clay and sand, and most of its woods have been cut down. Grain and sheep and goats are the livelihood of a scanty population. ⁵

Central Anatolia comprises large flat stretches at 800 to 1,200 metres, formed by recent sedimentation in the landlocked basins of Konya (Iconium), including the Tuz Golu (salt lake), a huge flat salt pan at 900 metres, often wrongly marked as a salt desert on maps. Similar flats occur on the upper Sakarya and in places on the Kizil Irmak, and there are other broad plateaux of horizontal Neogene deposits. ⁵

Isolated volcanic mountains rise 500 to 1,500 metres above the central plateaux. Among them are the recent volcanoes, not active now, Erciyes Dagi (3,916 m., the Argaeus of antiquity) above Kayseri and Hasan Dagi (3,258 m.) near Nigde. Settlement favours two positions: the highest plateaux, such as the bend of the Kizil Irmak, and the foot of the mountains, where fast streams come down. Most of the important towns, Ankara (Ancyra), Eskisehir, Konya (Iconium), Nigde, Kayseri (Caesarea) and Sivas (Sebastia), lie at the foot of the mountains, where land can easily be irrigated. The steppes support wheat, barley, sheep and Angora goats, and are least settled in the very dry basins of Tuz Golu and Konya, the Lycaonia of antiquity. Traffic moves more easily across the plateau than across the mountain borders, so the plateau, always the heart of Anatolia, gained importance when the capital moved to Ankara and the roads and railways were extended. ⁶

The eastern limit of Anatolia lies on the upper Euphrates, where the northern border ranges and the eastern Taurus join through new mountains. Peaks there generally exceed 2,500 metres, often 3,000; the scanty population lives in the valleys, along which the roads run to Azerbaijan and Iran, and the towns of Erzincan and Erzurum guard those roads. East of the meridian of Erzurum the two systems part again and enclose a highland at 1,500 to 1,700 metres, higher than the central plateau, with large recent volcanoes, Ararat (Agri Dagi, 5,172 m.), Alagoz (4,094 m.) and Suphan (4,434 m.), and dammed lakes such as Van. Its winters are cold and it is used mainly for grazing. It is generally called Armenia, although no Armenians had lived there for a generation, and its population speaks Turkish or Kurdish; the author suggests the neutral and geographically apt name Ararat Highlands for this eastern border region, which lies outside geographical Anatolia. ⁷

Most of Anatolia escaped the Arab conquests. The Byzantine frontier ran from the Christian states of Armenia and Georgia in the north-east, past the outposts of Kalikala (Theodosiopolis, later Arzan al-Rum, Erzurum) and at times Kamakh, to the Taurus, the 'land of the passes' (bilad al-durub), and so to the Mediterranean. The Arabs raided deep into Byzantine territory but never held the land. The border lands, the military zone of the protecting fortresses (al-awasim), centred on Manbij or Antioch, with the Syrian marches (thughur al-Sham) around Tarsus and the Mesopotamian marches (thughur al-Jazira) around Malatya (Melitene), suffered heavily in the wars, but mostly remained in Arab hands until Nicephorus II Phocas (963-969), John Tzimiskes (969-976) and Basil II (976-1025) recovered them. By the death of Basil II almost all of present-day Turkey was Byzantine, except Amida (Diyarbakir) and its surroundings. The rivalry between the military and civil aristocracies then weakened Byzantium. ⁸

The Turkish conquerors of the Saljuq house found the frontier weakened, and sent their warriors against it to wage holy war (jihad). They broke into Byzantine Anatolia: Ani fell in 456/1064 in the Byzantine-Armenian border country, Cilicia was laid waste, and Caesarea (Kayseriyya) was stormed. Romanus IV Diogenes, of the military aristocracy, was raised to the throne on the battlefield in January 1068, after the death of Constantine X, a champion of the civilian nobility. He at first fought the Turks successfully, so that the Saljuq sultan Alp Arslan had to come against him in person. At Manzikert (Malazgirt), near Lake Van, on 463/19 August 1071, the numerically larger Byzantine army was routed, through the indiscipline of its mercenaries and the treachery of the emperor's opponents. Romanus was captured but released under a lenient treaty. The defeat brought a revolution in Constantinople: Romanus lost his throne, was blinded, and died in the summer of 1072. ⁹

With Romanus gone, the treaties with Alp Arslan became void and the Turks renewed the holy war against Byzantium. It was waged less by regular Saljuq troops than by individual leaders, the most successful of whom was Malik Danishmend Ahmad Ghazi, who operated in north-eastern Anatolia. Bands of Turkish warriors roamed the countryside, cut the communications between towns and paralysed the Byzantine administration. Sultan Malikshah, Alp Arslan's successor from 465/1072, sent a member of the Saljuq house, Sulayman ibn Qutlumush, to lead the Turkish cavalry in Anatolia. The succession dispute in Byzantium helped him. The emperor Michael VII Ducas, and after his abdication in 1078 Nicephorus III Botaniates, won his help; in return they acknowledged his rights to the lands the Turks held and handed over the newly taken cities of Cyzicus and Nicaea in 1081. Sulayman made Nicaea (Turkish Iznik) his headquarters. Alexius I Comnenus, who began to reign in 1081, confirmed Sulayman's right to settle Turkish troops in the occupied territory while nominally keeping Byzantine suzerainty. ¹⁰

After Sulayman's death Anatolia was left to its own devices for some time. Other Turkish leaders settled with their followers and founded dominions: Malik Danishmand Ahmad Ghazi in the north-east, with Sebastia (Sivas) as his headquarters; Mengujek Ghazi with Tephrike (Divrigi) and Erzincan; and in the west, at Smyrna, an amir the Byzantines called Tzachas. The Saljuq amirs fought over Antioch, which was still Byzantine, and Tutush, brother of Malikshah, was beaten and killed in battle there in 1086. Turkish bands in Azerbaijan had conquered the Bagratid kingdom of Armenia in 473/1080; the Bagratid Ruben then founded a new state in Cilicia, the kingdom of Lesser Armenia, which lasted under the Rubenids until 1375. ¹⁰

After Malikshah's death in 1092 his successor Barkiyaruk let Sulayman's son Kilij Arslan return to Anatolia, where he found it hard to establish himself among the Turkish princes. At the start of the First Crusade the crusaders and the Byzantines together defeated the Turks under Kilij Arslan and Malik Danishmand, or his son Ghazi Gumushtegin, and took Nicaea on 20 June 1097. The crusaders' victory at Dorylaeum (near present-day Eskisehir) on 1 July 1097 decided the fate of western Anatolia and opened the road through the rest of the Turkish lands. They took Antioch after a long siege on 3 June 1098, founding there the principality of Antioch, the first crusader state under Byzantine suzerainty; the county of Edessa (Urfa) was founded the same year. The Emperor Alexius then drove the Turks out of western Anatolia and restored it to Byzantium, and reinforced the border across the middle of Anatolia, checking further Turkish conquest. ¹¹

For over a century the Turkish conquests were confined to central Anatolia. The whole west, roughly from Dorylaeum, and the Black Sea and Mediterranean coasts stayed Byzantine; Cilicia became the Lesser Armenian kingdom; Antioch and Edessa were crusader states; Amid (Diyarbakir) was the seat of the Artukid atabegs. Edessa fell to the atabeg Zengi of Mosul in 1144, and Antioch to the Mamluk sultan Baybars in 1268. Kilij Arslan and Malik Danishmand's successors shared the Turkish centre: Kilij Arslan kept the steppe of central Anatolia with Konya (Iconium) as capital, and the other kept the mountainous north-east with Sivas and Erzincan. The dispute over Melitene (Malatya) was settled in Kilij Arslan's favour around 1104-1106, but his attempt to advance on Mosul in Mesopotamia failed, and he died in the retreat from the Khabur in 1107. ¹²

The Rum Saljuq state, the sultanate of Iconium as the crusaders called it, remained a limited territory in the poorest part of Anatolia. Its sultan Mas'ud I defeated the crusaders of the Second Crusade in a second battle near Dorylaeum on 26 October 1147 and forced them to take the Byzantine rather than the Turkish road. The state grew when Kilij Arslan II absorbed the Danishmandid state in 1174, and beat the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus in the Phrygian passes near Myriocephalon in 1176. Frederick Barbarossa crossed Turkish Anatolia and took Konya on 18 May 1190, but this had no lasting result, for he drowned in the Saleph (Calycadnus, today Goksu) on 10 June 1190. ¹²

The crusaders of the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople in 1204 and set up a Latin empire there. The Byzantine Theodore Lascaris founded a Greek counter-empire in western Anatolia with Nicaea as its capital, while the Comneni brothers David and Alexius, with the help of Queen Tamar of Georgia, formed the empire of the Great Comneni at Trebizond. The Rum Saljuq sultan Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw I took Attalia (Antalya) in 1207, giving his kingdom access to the Mediterranean, but was beaten and killed by Laskaris near Honas in 1210. Laskaris and his successors protected the eastern border of Nicaea with fortifications that stopped the Turks for the time being. ¹²

In 1214 Kaykhusraw's son 'Izz al-Din Kaykaus I forced Trebizond to cede Sinope, giving the sultanate access to the Black Sea and bringing trade and great prosperity. His brother and successor 'Ala al-Din Kaykubad, the greatest of the Rum Saljuq sultans, extended the frontier on the Mediterranean: he took the fort of Alanya, which he enlarged into a harbour town and made his winter residence. In the east he took territory from the Artukids of Amid and Hisn Kayfa, annexed the Mengujek principality of Erzincan in 625/1228, and conquered Erzurum (1230), Akhlat (1231) and Kharput (1234). Under him the Rum Saljuq culture and power reached their peak. His son Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw II, acceding in 634/1237, took Amid, and by then the eastern border of the sultanate was roughly that of present-day Turkey. ¹²

Two developments in the mid-thirteenth century changed matters. The Mongol invasion reached Anatolia: the Rum Saljuq army was defeated by the Mongols under Baiju Noyan at Kose Dagh in eastern Anatolia on 26 June 1243, and the Mongols plundered Kayseriyya. The sultanate did not disappear but became a vassal of the Mongols, first of Batu, then of the Ilkhans of Persia. The Mongols brought a new stream of Turkmens into Anatolia, some as their followers, some driven from their homes, and these reinforced the partly nomadic Turkmen element already there. The most important were the hordes of Karaman ibn Nura Sufi, probably of a dervish family, who founded a state on the border of Lycaonia and Cilicia around Ermenek in the Taurus foothills. In 1277 Karaman's son Muhammad Beg tried to take the sultanate with a pretender, Jimri, and took Konya for him, but a Mongol expedition retook it and Muhammad had to withdraw to the mountains; Jimri was beaten on the Sakarya by Saljuq troops in June 1277 and executed. ¹³

The other development was the Byzantine restoration under Michael VIII Palaeologus, which came too late. The Palaeologi were increasingly engaged in the Balkans against the Latins and could not give Anatolia the attention it needed. Their defences decayed, which let the Turkmen hordes pour into Anatolia on the pretext of holy war and take hold of the western lands, which were richer than the interior and had long tempted them. The Palaeologi were thus forced to give up their Anatolian territories step by step, and the Turks met little resistance in the open country. By about 1300 most of western Anatolia was in Turkish hands. ¹⁴

By about 1300 a number of Turkish principalities (amirates) had emerged in the conquered districts, the Turkish hordes having acted largely independently under their leaders. The most powerful was Germiyan in Phrygia, with Kutahya (the ancient Cotyaeum) as capital; al-'Umari says the western amirs paid it tribute at times, and Ibn Battuta says they feared it. Its founders may have been Yazidi Kurds rather than Turkmens. Around it grew up a circle of principalities, some founded by men from Germiyan: Denizli in Paphlagonia with Kastamonu, which held Sinop; 'Osman in northern Phrygia, around Eskisehir and Sogut, which expanded quickly to the Sea of Marmara; Karasi in Mysia with Balikesir and Pergamum, controlling the Marmara coast as far as the Hellespont; Saruhan in northern Lydia with Manisa (Magnesia); Aydin in southern Lydia and the hinterland of Smyrna with Tire; Mentese in Caria with Milas and Mugla; Teke in Lycia and Pamphylia with Antalya; and Hamid in Pisidia with Isparta. ¹⁵

The Saljuq state of Rum ceased to exist at about the same time. The sultans had long been overshadowed by the Mongol governors resident at Sivas. After 'Ala al-Din Kaykubad III died in 707/1307 or 708/1308, the last of the shadow sultans, the sultanate became a province of the Mongol Ilkhanate of Persia. The Karamans took advantage, extending from the Taurus foothills and taking Laranda (now Karaman), which became their capital. They did not take Konya, held by the Ilkhanid governor Copan and his son Temurtash; in the 1320s unrest in the Ilkhanate spread to Anatolia, Temurtash fled to Egypt in 728/1328, and the Karamans captured Konya but kept Laranda as their capital. In the fourteenth century they extended their rule westwards in southern Anatolia and met the Turkish states developing in the west. ¹⁶

As the Ilkhanate decayed, the Mongol governors declared themselves independent amirs or sultans of Rum and sought Mamluk support. In 1375 the Mamluks brought the kingdom of Lesser Armenia to an end; a Turkmen dynasty, the Ramadanids, founded a state in its Cilician territory with Adana as capital under Egyptian overlordship, and the Dulgadir (Dhu'l-Qadr) settled in the eastern Taurus, including Elbistan, also under Egyptian overlordship. ¹⁶

In the west the principality of Ghazi 'Osman and his descendants, the Ottomans, extended at the expense of the Byzantine territory. Once northern Phrygia and the territory as far as the Sea of Marmara had become Ottoman, Prusa (Bursa, 6 April 1326), Nicaea (Iznik, 2 March 1331) and Nicomedia (Izmit, 1337) fell to Orhan, son of 'Osman, and Bursa became his capital. The quarrels over succession in the neighbouring principality of Karasi brought the whole southern coast of the Marmara under Ottoman rule in 736/1336, with access to the Dardanelles. The Anatolian acquisitions, mostly peaceful, coincided with conquests in the Balkans. ¹⁶

Murad I, after his accession in 761/1360, took Ankara, which had been nominally under the Mongol governors and their successors the amirs of Rum at Sivas, but was in fact run by the heads of the guilds of the akhi brotherhood and virtually independent. Later he obtained the principality of Hamid (783/1381), extending Ottoman territory to the east and south. His son Bayezid I annexed all the Anatolian Turkmen principalities soon after his accession in 792/1389, including Karaman and the territory of the Mongol governors. This brought the attack of Timur; Bayezid was beaten in the battle near Ankara on 19 Dhu'l-Hijja 804 (20 July 1402). Timur reinstated the deposed Anatolian rulers, and only the original Ottoman lands and the Mongol lands of the north-east stayed in Ottoman hands. From there Mehmed I reunited the empire, and under Murad II the western principalities gradually merged into it; Karaman was the only rival left. Mehmed II completed the Anatolian territory after giving the empire a natural centre by taking Constantinople on 29 May 1453. He ended the empire of Trebizond in 1461 and the principality of Karaman in 1467, incorporating both. The attempt of the Turkmen ruler Uzun Hasan of the Ak Koyunlu to make Mehmed cede the annexed provinces failed at Terdiyan, east of Erzincan, in 878/1473. ¹⁷

Ottoman rule in Anatolia was completed in the east under Selim I, who in 921/1515 annexed Dulgadir and conquered Diyarbakir, reduced the Ramadanids of Cilicia to vassalage, and won the allegiance of the Sunni Kurdish chiefs. Under Suleyman (940/1534 and 955-56/1548-49), under the serasker Mustafa Pasha (986/1578) against Georgia, and under Murad IV (1045/1634) against Erivan, campaigns against Persia pushed the frontier north-east into the Caucasian foothills. From then on all Anatolia was undisputedly Ottoman, and it passed to the Turkish Republic. ¹⁸

Only later changes affected the border. Kars, Ardahan and Batum went to Russia under the Berlin Treaty of 13 July 1878, which confirmed the Treaty of San Stefano of 3 March 1878; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) returned them to Turkey, and the Treaty of Moscow (16 March 1921) and the Treaty of Kars (13 October 1921) confirmed this, except for the town of Batum and a small hinterland, now Adjaristan. In the Franco-Turkish treaty of 23 June 1939 Syria ceded the sanjak of Iskenderun, which was incorporated into Turkey as the Hatay province. ¹⁸

As the Ottoman state grew, it had to be divided into regions. At first these were sanjaks, districts under a sanjak-bey. Under the second Ottoman ruler there were four: Sultanonu, the original Ottoman lands around Eskisehir and Sogut; Hudavendigar, the ruler's own land, administered directly, with Bursa and Iznik; Kocaeli, the fief Orhan gave to his general Akce Koca, the Bithynian peninsula with Izmit; and Karasi, the former principality with Balikesir and Pergamum. Under Murad I, when the conquests in the Balkans and in Anatolia had grown, the Ottoman lands were united into two provinces, one on each side of the Straits, each under a pasha with the title beglerbegi: Anatolia (Anadolu) and Rumelia (Rum-eli). Each was divided into districts of the feudal militia. ¹⁸

The Ottoman political divisions followed its growth. When the Turkish principalities were absorbed they became sanjaks under their old names, and the areas taken under Bayezid I, Mehmed II and Selim I became provinces in their own right rather than sanjaks of the Anatolian eyalet. Separately there were judicial districts (kaza), each under a kadi, and domains (hukumet) held by local dynasties as direct vassals of the Porte. Under Suleyman I Kanuni, the eyalets of Anatolia were: Adana; Anadolu; part of Cildir; Diyarbakir; Erzurum; Karaman (Konya); Kars; Dulkadiriyye (Marash); Raqqa (Urfa); Sivas (also called Rum); Trabzon; Van; and, from the eyalet of Aleppo, the sanjaks of Antakya (Hatay), Birecik and Kilis; and in the west the sanjaks of Bigha, Karasi and Sultanonu (Izmir), together with Icel and Alaiyya on the south coast and Cyprus under the Kapudan Pasha. ¹⁹

Until the early nineteenth century this system held, but in periods of weak central government local pashas rose and founded dynasties of their own, the 'Princes of the Valleys' (dere beyi). They were vassals of the Porte, and though they reluctantly sent troops to the sultan, their rule was generally beneficial, as they cared for the prosperity of their regions, while the governors from Istanbul changed often and sought to enrich themselves quickly. The eighteenth century saw several such dominions, among them the Kara Osman in the Aegean region and the Capan in the middle Kizil Irmak. Mahmud II abolished the derebey dominions. ²⁰

The reforms of the Tanzimat divided the empire on European lines by the law of 8 November 1864: provinces (vilayet), sanjaks and districts (kaza). Many old sanjaks of the Anatolian eyalet, and from 1875 those of the Erzurum eyalet, became vilayets, which were then subdivided. According to Cuinet (1890) Anatolia then consisted of the vilayets of Adana, Ankara, Aydin (Smyrna), Bitlis, Diyarbakir, Erzurum, Mar'ash and Urfa (from Aleppo), parts of Istanbul, Kastamonu, Hudavendigar (Bursa), Konya, Mamuret al-Aziz (Kharput, from 1880), Sivas, Trabzon, Van, and the independent sanjaks of Bigha and Izmit. This arrangement lasted, with some changes, until after the First World War. ²⁰

Under the Turkish Republic the vilayets were abolished and the sanjaks raised to vilayets, which in the language reform were called il. There were only 57 in October 1935; further provinces were formed from districts of neighbouring ones; Hatay became the sixty-third in 1939, and Usak was added in 1953 as the sixty-fourth. In 1954 Turkey had 64 provinces, only four of them in Europe (with Canakkale partly on European soil), and 523 districts. For geographical purposes the provinces are grouped into eight zones: the Black Sea coast; the coasts of the Marmara and the Aegean; the Mediterranean coast; European Turkey; western Anatolia; central Anatolia; south-eastern Anatolia; and eastern Anatolia. ²¹

At the time of the Turkish conquest Anatolia had long been Hellenised. The older peoples of Anatolia were absorbed through Greek and Roman times and Christianisation completed the process; remnants such as the Lazes survived only in the mountains near the Caucasus, where old religious communities also survived as sects. Anatolia was mostly Greek-speaking and Byzantine Orthodox, and only the Armenians in the east, Monophysites of the Gregorian church, stayed apart and not Hellenised; as merchants they had reached as far west as the capital even before the Turks. ²²

The Turks brought Islam, a new religion, with them. At first Muslims were probably a minority among the Greeks, but as the ruling class in the conquered lands they spread the faith. Many of the old population, cut off from their spiritual centre in Constantinople, turned to Islam and were assimilated; the process was slow at first. When Marco Polo passed through Anatolia in 1272 the inhabitants do not seem to have been Turkicised. The documents of the Patriarchate of Constantinople show that in the fourteenth century, as more Turks settled, Orthodox Christianity receded and the land lost its Greek character, through emigration and through assimilation. The western coastal regions, long Greek and Christian, and Trebizond held to Greek culture with great tenacity, while the interior, only superficially Hellenised, changed more. Timur bore hard on the Christians wherever he went. ²²

After the conquest of Constantinople Mehmed II gave the Greek Orthodox Church a secure place in the Ottoman state for political reasons, making it a pillar of the empire beside Islam. The Greek and Armenian communities were thus freed from spiritual isolation and have held their place to this day. The millet system, under which non-Muslim communities enjoyed considerable autonomy, saved them from further shrinking, and a modus vivendi developed between the communities. ²²

From the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was a revival of Anatolian Hellenism, and in the nineteenth century the Armenians were still called the 'faithful nation' (millet-i sadika). Language and religion mostly coincided, except in central Anatolia around Konya and Kayseri, where Greeks adopted Turkish as the everyday language, and Armenians, while using Turkish in society, kept Armenian at home. Besides the settled Turks there were nomadic and semi-nomadic groups of Muslims of different languages and races: Turks, Kurds and Circassians. The Turkish nomads, the Yuruks and Turkmens, are of uncertain origin and are mostly Alawites or have Shiite leanings. Most Kurds are Sunni and occupy a closed area in the south-east; most Circassians had come from the Caucasus after the Russian conquest. Returned Muslim emigrants from the Balkans, the muhajirun, settled across Turkey and were absorbed into the local population. ²³

Relations between Muslims and non-Muslims deteriorated in the nineteenth century as the western powers meddled in Turkish affairs. Under the treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca (1774) Russia claimed a protectorate over the Orthodox Christians of Turkey and stirred anti-Turkish feeling among them, and nationalism spread among the Christians from western Europe. The Turkish reaction was a dislike that soon became hatred, felt most strongly by the Armenians, who as neighbours of Russia were suspected of serving Russia. Pressure for the reforms of the Berlin Treaty (1878) led to bloody clashes with the Kurds in 1894-1896. ²⁴

In the First World War, after a Russian Caucasian army invaded the Van region, the entry reports that the Armenian population was moved by force to Mesopotamia, and that many of them perished, in what Turkish opinion held to be a response to disloyalty; the remainder emigrated after the war. In 1919 the Greeks, supported by Britain, occupied Smyrna and advanced to the Sakarya by 1921; the Turks under Mustafa Kemal defeated the Greek army, and most of the Greek population left with it. By treaty of 30 January 1923 the remainder were exchanged for the Muslims of Greece, except the Turks of western Thrace and the Greeks of Istanbul. Anatolia thus became about 90 per cent Turkish and 99 per cent Muslim, and the small non-Turkish Muslim groups, apart from the Arabs on the Syrian border, were expected to be drawn into Turkish life, the Kurds through military service and schools. ²⁴

The entry gives the religious composition of Anatolia in the last decade of the nineteenth century from V. Cuinet, who worked from the imperial and provincial yearbooks, since there was no official census. The figures are rough: the principle of counting was not consistent across the provinces, and some give detail by sex while others give only totals. On Cuinet's figures the population was 12,254,459, of whom 9,676,714 (78.9 per cent) were Muslims and 2,577,745 (21.1 per cent) non-Muslims; 2,410,272 of the non-Muslims were Christians of various churches. Armenians (Gregorian, Catholic and Protestant together) numbered about 1,142,775, concentrated in the eastern provinces of Erzurum, Bitlis and Sivas, and a minority everywhere against the Muslims. The Orthodox numbered about 1,042,612, of whom about 25,890 were Syrian Orthodox, and the Greeks, with the Uniates, were concentrated in the district of Istanbul and the provinces of Hudavendigar, Aydin and Trabzon. Among the Muslims the Sunni Kurds, the Arabs, the Circassians and the Turks are given in part, and about 533,677 Muslims of sects, mostly Shiites and Yazidis, are listed separately. ²⁵

The Republic held official censuses in 1927, 1935, 1940, 1945 and 1950, the last described as provisional. The 1945 total was 18,790,174 (1,496,612 in European Turkey and 17,293,562 in Anatolia); the 1950 total was 20,934,670 (1,598,255 in European Turkey and 19,336,415 in Anatolia). By 1950 Istanbul and Ankara had over 100,000 inhabitants, and Eskisehir, Gaziantep, Kayseri, Konya, Erzurum and Sivas had between 50,000 and 100,000. Settlement was densest in the western coastal strips with the Hatay and the plain towards the Euphrates, which geographically belongs to northern Syria, and thinnest in the central steppes and the mountainous north-east. The entry notes that towns were defined by the 1930 law as places with municipal government, which in practice included kaza centres of only a few hundred people. ²⁵

The 1945 census gives languages and religions. Turkish was the mother tongue of 16,598,037 people (88.34 per cent) and a non-Turkish language of 2,192,006 (11.66 per cent). Kurdish speakers numbered 1,469,570 and Arabic speakers 235,668; Circassian, Armenian, Greek, Laz, Georgian, Albanian, Bosnian and Judaeo-Spanish speakers made up the rest. Islam was the religion of 18,497,801 (98.45 per cent), and 292,152 (about 1.55 per cent) were non-Muslim, of whom 202,044 were Christians of various kinds, 76,965 Jews and some 12,000 without religion. Kurds are concentrated in the south-eastern provinces, where they form the great majority in Agri, Bingol, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, Hakkari, Mardin, Mus, Siirt and Van; Arabs were a majority over Turks only in some southern places, and most Arabs lived in Hatay, where there were about 100,000 against about 150,000 Turks. Greeks, Armenians and Jews lived almost only in Istanbul, with about 7,000 Greeks in Canakkale and about 12,000 Jews in Izmir. The entry remarks that the change since Cuinet's figures of the 1890s is enormous, caused by the First World War and the events just after it. ²⁶

Traffic in Anatolia was largely local. Long-distance trade from Istanbul to the east preferred the sea route to Trabzon, and in earlier times the harbours of Ayas at the mouth of the Ceyhan, Payas in the Gulf of Issus and, in recent times, Iskenderun, from which the main caravan tracks led into the interior of Asia. Through-roads always led to or from Istanbul, which remained the metropolis even when Anatolia had another political capital. The Turkish-period roads were of three kinds: military roads, caravan routes and postal routes. All three kept to the inner side of the border mountains, avoided the interior steppe, and ran along its edges, where animals could graze and towns stood. ²⁷

The main military road, used by the sultans' armies against Persia and the Caucasus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, described a great arc south of the central steppe: from Uskudar through Izmit, Eskisehir and Aksehir to Konya, then through Eregli, Nigde and Kayseri to Sivas, and on through Erzincan and Erzurum to the east. Selim I, marching on Syria, also went by Kayseri and then through the Anti-Taurus to Elbistan and Marash. The route from Eregli through the Cilician Gate (Gulek Bogazi) to Adana and Syria was normally avoided, especially for heavy transport, since the Gulek pass was easy to block; in 1638 Murad IV sent the artillery for the capture of Baghdad by sea to Payas and carried it overland from there. ²⁷

Besides the military road, the main caravan route ran diagonally from Uskudar through Gebze and across the Gulf of Izmit to Iznik, followed the military road through Eskisehir to Konya and Eregli, passed the Cilician Gates (Gulek Bogazi) to Adana, and went on to Syria or Mesopotamia. The route from Antioch into Syria was also the route pilgrims took, via Damascus, to Mecca and Medina. A northern caravan route ran from Uskudar through Izmit, Bolu and Tosya to Amasya, then through Tokat and Sivas to Erzurum and east, and through Diyarbakir to Mosul and Baghdad, the 'Baghdad road' from Uskudar. A central route left the diagonal road at Konya and crossed the steppe past Aksaray to Kayseri and Sivas, and in Karaman and Ottoman times it ran from Laranda or Ulukisla via Nigde to Kayseri. Postal routes ran in three arms, the middle one the diagonal road with its branches to Damascus, the right the western Anatolian network, and the left the northern route to Erzurum. These were tracks, not built roads, lined with caravanserais, wells and bridges built by benefactors. ²⁸

Railway building began with a concession to a British company in 1856 for the line from Smyrna (Izmir) to Aydin, opened ten years later. In the last decades of the Ottoman Empire a British company opened lines from Izmir to Aydin, Dinar, Odemis and Egirdir; a Franco-Belgian company built Izmir to Manisa, Afyon and Balikesir, and a narrow-gauge line from Mudanya to Bursa; and a German company, the Anatolian Railway, opened Haydarpasa to Izmit, Eskisehir, Ankara and Konya, and the Baghdad Railway took the line through Adana to Aleppo and Nusaybin. Mersin-Adana was British. The network was thus based on Izmir, opening western agriculture, and a diagonal line linking the capital to the Arab provinces. Plans for railways on the Black Sea coast and in the north-east broke down because of Russian opposition. The railways were nationalised at the start of the Republic in 1920, and the network was built out from Ankara after 1922: Ankara to Kayseri, Sivas, Erzincan and Erzurum by 1939, and lines in the south and east to Malatya, Diyarbakir, Kurtalan, Zonguldak and Gaziantep, several completed in the 1930s and 1940s. ²⁹

The increase in motor transport has closed some local lines, and the road network, partly built with American aid, has grown and now has many bus lines. The Anatolian rivers are not navigable, except the greater rivers near their mouths and the rafts of inflated skins on the Tigris, and there are no canals; a canal linking Lake Sapanca with the Sakarya and the Gulf of Izmit was considered in 999/1590-91 and 1064/1653 but never passed the preliminary stage. ³⁰

Sea shipping is not easy either. The north and south coasts have few natural harbours, and the bays of the west coast silt up at the river mouths. Apart from Izmir, the most important harbour, the west coast has minor ports used only for coastal shipping, such as Foca (Phocaea, which was a serious rival to Smyrna in antiquity and the Middle Ages), Bodrum (Halicarnassus) and Fethiye (Makri). On the north coast Sinop, hard to reach because of its mountainous hinterland, and Samsun were of some importance. ³¹

Samsun, in the plain between the mouths of the Kizil and Yesil Irmaks, has grown more important than Sinop, particularly in the nineteenth century, and has trade with the Crimea opposite. On the south coast Antalya (ancient Attaleia, Satalia of the Crusaders) and Alanya (Galonoros in Byzantine times, Candelor to the European merchants of the Middle Ages) have been important since the Middle Ages, and Mersin has been since its harbour was built in 1832. The only landing points linking Anatolia with trade across the continent lay at the base of the peninsula: Trebizond on the Black Sea, and on the Mediterranean Ayas (Laiazzo of the crusaders), Payas and Iskenderun. Caravans from Trebizond went to Azerbaijan and Persia, and from the Mediterranean ports to northern Syria, Mesopotamia and Iraq. ³¹

Anatolia has always been an agricultural country and, despite some early industrialisation, largely remains one. Wherever the land is fit for more than grazing the main crop is grain; fruit and vegetables are grown on the coasts and near rivers, where gardens are watered by water-wheels. The Black Sea districts are known for fruit, Amasya apples being famous across the country, and Giresun (Cerasus) is supposed to be the original home of the cherry; hazelnuts grow in many areas. On the Aegean coast figs, olives, melons, mulberries and vines are grown. The forests of the Black Sea area, notably the 'Wood Sea' (aghach denizi) near Sapanca, supplied local timber and charcoal and part of Istanbul's need. The central steppes suit cattle, sheep and Angora goats, whose mohair is in great demand; Anatolian horses were famous from the Middle Ages, and the 'Aziziyye stud in Phrygia bred horses for the Ottoman cavalry. Silkworms are a speciality of the north-west, where Bursa is the centre of silk and silk-weaving. ³²

The silver mines of Gumushhane between Trabzon and Erzurum and at Hadidji Koy near Amasya were the oldest, and the mints for silver coins were there. Copper was mined at Kure, between Inebolu and Kastamonu, and at Ergani Maden near Diyarbakir. Near Eskisehir is the only area in the world where meerschaum is found, much in demand in the nineteenth century for pipes, but now much reduced. Ceramics, introduced from Persia already in the Saljuq period, reached their height in the Rum Saljuq buildings of Konya. Under Selim I craftsmen were brought back from Tabriz after the Persian campaign of 1514 and settled in Istanbul and Iznik, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Iznik made the classic Ottoman pottery, blue and green with a bright bole-red, for the mosques and the Topkapi Palace; the 'Rhodes plates' were the best known export. Potteries were founded under Ahmed III in Istanbul and elsewhere. Carpets and rugs were the most characteristic textiles, made in Usak, Kula, Gordes and elsewhere, partly in the Persian tradition; the nineteenth-century Smyrna rugs were actually made in the Usak area. Brocades with gold and silver thread were made in Bursa for the court. Kilim weaving and mats for mosque floors were also important. ³³

Trades were organised in guilds (esnaf), fraternities with something of the character of a dervish order, which kept traditions and quality, protected their members in misfortune, and could compel even governments. They were supervised by the market inspector (muhtasib), subordinate to the kadi. The guilds began to break up in the nineteenth century, when the Tanzimat opened the way to commercial reform on western lines and to western legal codes. They were formally dissolved in 1910 and 1913; modern organisations, grouped into trade unions in 1943, took their place. Agriculture improved, for example by the irrigation that brought water to the Konya plain, built by the Baghdad Railway in 1907-1913, and new crops such as cotton in the Cilician plain were introduced. Since the foundation of the Republic there have been deliberate efforts to bring Anatolia economically into line with European countries. ³⁴