HISTORY OF KIRSEHIR

Kirsehir Underground Cities

Kirsehir has 5000 years of history, in the Hittites period Akua Saravena (Water City), in the Persian period Katpatukya (Cappadocia – Fine Horses Country), in the Roman period Makissos, in the Byzantine period Justinianapolis and in the Anatolian Seljuk period the city took the name as Gülşehri. Kirsehir is grateful to the Anatolian Seljuks for its revival. It was observed that Kirsehir had a great importance in the areas of science and fine arts especially after the eleventh century. Mongols entirely ruled over Anatolia after the Kösedağ War in 1243. In this period Cacaoğlu Nurettin, who was assigned as the governor, made Kirsehir a cultivated place by managing a peaceful strategy aganist the Mongols.

During this period Kirsehir became one of the most important Turkish cultures centers. It raised Turkish Islamic Poets, philosophers, and sufis such as Asikpasa, who was the innovator of the Turkish Language, Cacabey who was the founder of the astronomy medresse, Ahi Evran Veli who was the founder of the Ahi Organization, Suleyman Turkmani, Ahmet Gulsehri and Haci Bektasi Veli. Considering that Taptuk Emre and Yunus Emre also lived in Kirsehir and its peripheries, we see that these dervishes of heart provided Turkishness to settle in Anatolia by resisting aganist the Mongolian invasion. Later on Kirsehir was governed by various principalities. Finally Kirsehir entered under control of Ottomans completely and definitely during the reign of Murat the second. Kirsehir became a small break-point on the roads that lost their importance in the middle of the nineteenth century. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Kirsehir, a sanjak of the state of Konya, first became a subdivision bound to Nigde Sanjak of the provence of Konya and then it became a sanjak bound to the provence of Ankara.

People of Kirsehir who hosted Ataturk-the founder of our country-for five days during the Turkish National Struggle for independence also succeeded in their duty in the war of independence and proved this with 210 martyrs and 87 veterans.

Kirsehir became an administrative province in 1924. It became an administrative district and it was joined to Nevsehir in 1954 because of dirty politics of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. It became an administrative province again in 1957. Today growing day by day with its six administrative districts. Kirsehir is a candidate to be culture, tourism, education and industry center.