Hubbry Logo
search
logo

History of Ankara

logo
Community Hub0 Subscribers
Write something...
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
See all
History of Ankara

The history of Ankara can be traced back to the Bronze Age Hatti civilization, which was succeeded in the 2nd millennium BC by the Hittites, in the 10th century BC by the Phrygians, and later by the Lydians, Persians, Macedonians, Galatians, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks, and Ottomans.

The oldest settlements in and around the city center of Ankara belong to the Hatti civilization which thrived during the Bronze Age. The city significantly grew in size and importance under the Phrygians starting from around 1000 BC, experiencing a large expansion following the mass migration from Gordion, the capital of Phrygia, after an earthquake which severely damaged that city in antiquity. In Phrygian tradition, King Midas was venerated as the founder of Ancyra, but Pausanias mentions that the city was actually far older, in line with the present-day knowledge that we have on its history. There is the possibility that at the time Midas came the city was essentially unpopulated. In the same way by modern standards it could be argued that Ankara did not exist before Atatürk moved the capital of Turkey to the city, since its population before the capital came was almost non-existent in comparison to what it would be in following years.[citation needed]

Phrygian rule was succeeded first by Lydian and later by Persian rule, though the strongly Phrygian character of the peasantry remained, as evidenced by the gravestones of the much later Roman period. Persian sovereignty lasted until the Persians' defeat at the hands of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great.

Ankara was conquered by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, who came from Gordion to Ankara and stayed in the city for a short period. After his death at Babylon in 323 BC and the subsequent division of his empire amongst his generals, Ankara and its environs fell into the share of Antigonus. Apart from the Phrygian period in which the city experienced its largest expansion in ancient times, another important expansion took place under the Greeks of Pontos who came there and developed the city as a trading center for the commerce of goods between the Black Sea ports and Crimea to the north; Assyria, Cyprus, and Lebanon to the south; and Georgia, Armenia and Persia to the east. By that time the city also took its name Áγκυρα-Ànkyra (meaning Anchor in Greek) which is still used by the Turks with the slightly modified form of Ankara.

In 278 BC, the city, along with the rest of central Anatolia, was occupied by the Celtic speaking Galatians, who were the first to make Ankara one of their main tribal centres, the headquarters of the Tectosage tribe. Other centres were Pessinos, modern Balhisar, for the Trocmi tribe; and Tavium, to the east of Ankara, for the Tolistobogii tribe. The city was then known as Ancyra. The Celtic element was probably relatively small in numbers; a warrior aristocracy which ruled over Phrygian-speaking peasants. However, the Celtic language continued to spoken in Galatia for many centuries. At the end of the 4th century, St. Jerome, a native of Galatia, observed that the language spoken around Ankara was very similar to that being spoken in the northwest of the Roman world near Trier. This may indicate that the older Phrygian population had adopted the language of the Celtic invaders.

The city was subsequently conquered by Augustus in 25 BC and passed under the control of the Roman Empire. Now the capital city of the Roman province of Galatia, Ancyra continued to be a center of great commercial importance. Ankara is also famous for the Monumentum Ancyranum (Temple of Augustus and Rome) which contains the official record of the Acts of Augustus, known as the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, an inscription cut in marble on the walls of this temple. The ruins of Ancyra still furnish today valuable bas-reliefs, inscriptions and other architectural fragments.

Augustus decided to make Ancyra one of three main administrative centres in central Anatolia. The town was then populated by Phrygians and Celts—the Galatians who spoke a language closely related to Welsh and Gaelic. Ancyra was the center of a tribe known as the Tectosages, and Augustus upgraded it into a major provincial capital for his empire. Two other Galatian tribal centres, Tavium near Yozgat, and Pessinus (Balhisar) to the west, near Sivrihisar, continued to be reasonably important settlements in the Roman period, but it was Ancyra that grew into a grand metropolis.

An estimated 200,000 people lived in Ancyra in good times during the Roman Empire, a far greater number than was to be the case after the fall of the Roman Empire until the early 20th century. A small river, the Ankara Çayı, ran through the centre of the Roman town. It has now been covered over and diverted, but it formed the northern boundary of the old town during the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Çankaya, the rim of the majestic hill to the south of the present city center, stood well outside the Roman city, but may have been a summer resort. In the 19th century, the remains of at least one Roman villa or large house were still standing not far from where the Çankaya Presidential Residence stands today. To the west, the Roman city extended until the area of the Gençlik Park and Railway Station, while on the southern side of the hill, it may have extended downwards as far as the site presently occupied by Hacettepe University. It was thus a sizeable city by any standards and much larger than the Roman towns of Gaul or Britain.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.