A short history of Cappadocia: Hittites to the Ottomans

Cappadocia’s history is a stack of layers on a volcanic plateau: Hittite-age Anatolia, Persian rule and a local kingdom, Rome, the Byzantine monks who carved churches into the rock, Seljuk and Ottoman rule, and, in the early twentieth century, the exchange of populations that emptied villages such as Sinasos. This guide gives the main milestones in order, keeps to well-known dates and says “usually” where scholars disagree, and ends with where the layers show on the ground. It has no catalogue counts and no prices.

Where the name comes from

Cappadocia is the Greek Kappadokia, which goes back to the Old Persian name Katpatuka. It is usually explained as “land of beautiful horses”, a meaning that fits the region’s riding tradition, though the origin of the word is debated. The name belonged to a region that has had changing borders, so ancient writers and modern maps do not draw it the same way.

Hittites, Persians and Rome

In the early second millennium BC the plateau of central Anatolia appears in written sources. Assyrian merchants kept a trading colony at Kültepe, near Kayseri, with archives on clay tablets, and the Hittite state rose in the same country, with its capital further north at Hattusa. Where the region lay inside or beside the Hittite lands, and for how long, is a question for specialists. Little from this age is visible in the landscape; it lives in museums and excavations, and no hotel record mentions it.

From about the sixth century BC the region belonged to the Persian Empire, and the Persian name Katpatuka is where the later Greek name begins. After Alexander the Great, a Cappadocian kingdom with its own rulers is recorded, and Rome annexed it as a province in AD 17. Under Rome and then Byzantium the region was a frontier province, crossed by roads to the east, with Kayseri, ancient Caesarea, as its main city.

The early Church and the monastic centuries

Christianity reached the region early. In the fourth century three churchmen from Cappadocia, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, known as the Cappadocian Fathers, shaped Christian thought, and the monastic tradition associated with Basil spread through the region.

Monastic communities then did what the rock made easy: they carved churches, chapels and refectories into the tuff, and many survive. The centuries from the seventh to the eleventh are the usual setting for this activity. Raids across the frontier are the usual explanation for the underground cities, as at Derinkuyu, though the first rooms may be older. The Byzantine dispute over religious images in the eighth and ninth centuries left a mark on how churches were painted, a point the rock churches guide takes up. Dates for individual churches vary between sources, so treat any single date with caution.

Seljuks and Ottomans

After the Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071, Turkish rule spread across Anatolia, and under the Seljuks caravanserais were built along the roads that cross the region; several still stand. From about the fifteenth century the region belonged to the Ottoman state. The provincial city of Nevşehir took its modern form in the early eighteenth century, when the grand vizier Damat İbrahim Paşa, a native of the place, had it rebuilt; the Nevşehir guide describes the complex that bears his name. Throughout, villages kept mixed populations, among them Orthodox Christian communities who built churches and, in places like Sinasos, carved stone mansions.

The 1923 exchange and Sinasos

The population exchange between Greece and Turkey was agreed in 1923 and carried out over the following years. It ended the presence of the region’s Orthodox communities. Sinasos, today Mustafapaşa, is the clearest place to see the result: tall stone mansions with carved door frames and window surrounds, built for families who left. The Nujel’m Cappadocia record names the Eleni Church and the Cappadocia Museum of Art and History as a walk from the hotel, and the Mustafapaşa guide covers the village.

Where the layers show today

Layer	What survives	Where to read more
Hittite-age Anatolia	Mostly in museums and excavations	none in our records
Persian and Roman periods	Little in the landscape	none in our records
Byzantine monastic centuries	Rock churches, chapels, refectories; underground cities	Göreme Open-Air Museum, Derinkuyu
Seljuk and Ottoman periods	Caravanserais; Nevşehir’s eighteenth-century complex	Nevşehir guide
Early twentieth century	Stone mansions of Sinasos; rock villages left behind, such as Zelve	Mustafapaşa guide

UNESCO inscribed the area in 1985 as Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia, for both its cultural and its natural value.

Reading dates with care

Dates in Cappadocia come in three grades. Some are fixed by written sources: Rome’s annexation in AD 17, the Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071, the exchange agreed in 1923. Some are periods that scholars agree on in outline, such as the monastic centuries. And some are estimates, which is true of most individual churches and underground cities where no inscription gives a date. When a sign, a guide or a hotel says that a place is “a thousand years old”, the figure is usually a round one. This guide keeps to the first two grades and says “usually” for the third.

Four questions help when a guide gives a date:

• Is that date from an inscription or an estimate? Both are fine, but they are not the same.
• Who used this room, and when? A carved room can be a house, a storeroom or a chapel.
• What changed here in the 1920s? The answer shows how a village looked before the exchange.
• What is restored and what is original? Mansions and churches have often been repaired.

Where to stay

For a base that sits in the history, Mustafapaşa and Ürgüp are the old villages. Konak Bezirhane Cave Otel, pictured at the top, has 23 rooms with a jacuzzi in each, a terrace and a garden. Nujel’m Cappadocia has 18 individually styled rooms and gives a 15-minute walk to the Eleni Church and the Cappadocia Museum of Art and History. Cave Art Cappadocia has ten rooms in restored historic stone buildings on Manastır Street. Aja Cappadocia Hotel is a restored historic mansion in Ürgüp with ten themed rooms. After choosing, you can book through gocappadocia.com, the regional booking platform created through the combined efforts of 175 Cappadocia hoteliers, with a best-price guarantee; this guide takes no commission.