Kursunlu Mosque, Kayseri, Turkey
It was originally known as Mazaca. Later it was called Eusebia by Argaeus, for King Ariarathes V Eusebes. It was the residence of the Cappadocian kings and was sacked by Tigranes I, king of Armenia, in the 1st century BCE. Renamed Caesarea Cappadociae early in the 1st century CE, it served as the capital and imperial mint of the Roman province of Cappadocia. It was a nucleus of Christianity in the 4th century, when St. Basil the Great reputedly established an ecclesiastical centre just northeast of the city.
Captured about 1080 by the Seljuq Turks, who renamed it Kayseri, it later formed a part of the Dānishmend principality. It fell to the Mongols in 1243 and in the 14th century functioned as the chief city of the Turkmen Ertanid principality before passing to the Ottomans in 1397. After the Ottomans were defeated by Timur (Tamerlane) in 1402, Kayseri was annexed by the Karamanid Turkmens and later by the Mamlūks of Egypt and Syria until it was recaptured by the Ottoman sultan Selim I in 1515.
Epic Turkey Culture & Adventure Route © Monika Newbound
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