Chapter I: Preface

To the traveller who delights in tracing vestiges of Grecian art and civilization amidst modern barbarism and desolation, and who may thus at once illustrate history and collect valuable materials for the geographer and the artist—there is no country that now affords so fertile a field of discovery as Asia Minor. Unfortunately, there is no province of the Ottoman empire more difficult to explore in detail. In European Turkey, the effects of the Mahometan system are somewhat tempered by its proximity to civilised Europe, by its conscious weakness, and by the great excess of the Christian population over the Turkish: but the Turk of Asia Minor, although he may be convinced of the danger which threatens the whole Ottoman empire, from the change that has taken place in the relative power of the Musulman and Christian world, since his ancestors conquered the favoured regions of which their successors have so long been permitted to remain in the undisturbed abuse—derives, nevertheless, a strong feeling of confidence and security, from his being further removed from the Christian nations which he dreads; and sensible that European Turkey must be the first to fall before the conqueror, he feels no restraint in the indulgence of his hatred to the Christian name, beyond that which may arise from the dictates of his religion, or from the native hospitality of the people of the East.

In Asia Minor, among the impediments to a traveller’s success may be especially reckoned the deserted state of the country, which often puts the common necessaries and conveniences of travelling out of his reach; the continual disputes and wars among the persons in power; the precarious authority of the government of Constantinople, which rendering its protection ineffectual, makes the traveller’s success depend upon the personal character of the governor of each district; and the ignorance and the suspicious temper of the Turks, who have no idea of scientific travelling; who cannot imagine any other motive for our visits to that country, than a preparation for hostile invasion, or a search after treasures among the ruins of antiquity, and whose suspicions of this nature are of course most strong in the provinces which, like Asia Minor, are the least frequented by us[1]. If the traveller’s prudence or good fortune should obviate all these difficulties, and should protect him from plague, banditti, and other perils of a semibarbarous state of society, he has still to dread the loss of health, arising from the combined effects of climate, fatigue, and privation; which seldom fails to check his career before he has completed his projected tour.

Asia Minor is still in that state in which a disguised dress, an assumption of the medical character, great patience and perseverance, the sacrifice of all European comforts, and the concealment of pecuniary means, are necessary to enable the traveller thoroughly to investigate the country, when otherwise qualified for the task by literary and scientific attainments, and by an intimate knowledge of the language and manners of the people.

Among modern travellers, two only have yet traversed Asia Minor in various directions for exploratory purposes; Paul Lucas in the years 1705, 1706, and 1715, and Capt. Macdonald Kinneir in the years 1813 and 1814. The rest have merely followed a single route in passing through the country; even the travels of the two persons just named, amount only to a description of several routes instead of one; the state of the provinces and the mode of travelling having rendered it impossible to make any of those excursions from the main road, without which the geography of an unknown country cannot possibly be ascertained. It even appears from the journal of Mr. Kinneir, that the difficulties of travelling in Asia Minor have rather increased of late years than diminished. And hence he was unsuccessful in all his attempts to explore particular sites interesting to ancient history, and was unfortunate in his collection of the surest tests of ancient geography,—inscriptions.

The principality of Tshappán-Oglu, which offered some security to the traveller, has been broken up by his death; and that of the family of Kara-Osmán-Oglu, the mildness and equity of whose government over the greater part of Æolis, Ionia and Lydia, had attracted thither great numbers of Greeks from Europe, has been put an end to by the same impolitic jealousy of Sultan Mahmud which is undermining his own security and threatens the destruction of his empire. There remain only a few dispersed chieftains, most of them in a state of doubtful allegiance to the Porte, in whose districts, by good management and previous preparation, the traveller might perhaps be allowed to explore the country in safety. In no other parts can he, unless with all the requisites above stated, and a great sacrifice of time, hope to effect more than a rapid passage along the principal roads, take a transient view of some of the remains of antiquity, and note the distances of places, and the general bearings of the route, together with the relative situations of a few hills or other remarkable objects on either side of the road.

Under such circumstances, it is obvious that the geography of Asia Minor can only be improved by collecting and combining the information contained in the journals of modern travellers; by which means an approximation to a detailed map of the country may progressively be made. It was with the view of contributing to this object that I published the journal of two routes through the central parts of Asia Minor, in the second volume of the Rev. R. Walpole’s Collection of Memoirs on Greece and Asia Minor.

Having, since that publication, extended over the whole peninsula the comparative inquiry into its ancient and modern geography, which was there confined to the parts forming the subject of the journals, the result has been, the map which accompanies the present volume; the volume itself containing, together with the substance of the memoir in Mr. Walpole’s Collection, the additional remarks suggested by the more enlarged geographical inquiry.

As the _remarks_ have become considerably more voluminous than the _journal_, I cannot flatter myself that the work in its present form will possess much attraction for the general reader. It can only pretend to contain, when accompanied by the map, all the existing information upon Asia Minor most essential to the exploring traveller; at the same time that it cannot fail to offer some interest to the reader of ancient history.

The modern authorities which have served in the construction of the map are of two kinds—the maritime, and those relating to the interior of the country: the former derived from celestial observations, or nautical surveys on the sea coast; the latter, from the routes of travellers. The maritime being the most certain, and giving accuracy of position to the two ends of some of the principal routes, and consequently in a great degree to the entire lines—may be considered as the foundation of the work.

The positions of Constantinople and Smyrna are assumed from the concurrence of several good observations. The entire southern coast, from the Gulf of Iskenderún to that of Mákri, together with several parts of the coast between Mákri and Smyrna, has been laid down from the Survey of Captain Beaufort, which was made in the years 1811 and 1812, by order of the Admiralty, during the administration of Mr. Yorke; and which was published in the year 1820, by direction of the Lords Commissioners. The principal points and the general outline of the Pontic coast of the peninsula have been adopted from the recently-published chart of the Black Sea by Capt. Gauttier, of the Royal Navy of France[2]. The western coast, from the Gulf of Elæa to the mouth of the Hellespont, has been laid down from Truguet and Racord, officers of the French Navy, who accompanied Count Choiseul Gouffier in his Embassy to the Porte in 1784; and the result of whose labours is published in the second volume of M. Choiseul’s _Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce_.

In the interior of the peninsula the latitude of some important points, as Kesaría, Kónia, Afiom Karahissár, Kutáya, Manissa, Brusa, Isnik, have been observed by Niebuhr, Browne, or by Messrs. Chavasse and Kinneir: the remaining construction is nothing more than the result of a comparison of the ancient geographers and historians with the routes of modern travellers, and with the descriptions of two Turkish geographers, who lived about the middle of the seventeenth century—Mustafa Ben Abdalla Kalib Tsheleby, commonly called Hadji Khalfa, and Abubekr Ben Behrem of Damascus. Though little is to be derived from these authors with regard to the exact situation of towns, their evidence on the orthography of names, and their information on the political geography, are of considerable utility.

The elder travellers, whose routes have served in the construction of the Map, may be confined to Tavernier, Tournefort, Paul Lucas, Otter, and Pococke; for Bertrandon de la Brocquière, de la Mottraye, and Le Bruyn, afford no geographical matter that is not contained in the others.

Tavernier informs us, in his introduction, that he began his travels by a visit to England, in the reign of James the First; he died in 1685. Although he crossed Asia Minor several times, in the way to Persia, where his commercial speculations carried him, he has left us nothing more than a very brief description of two caravan routes to Tokât: the one from Constantinople, by Bóli, Tósia, and Amasía; the other from Smyrna, by Kassabá, Allah-shehr, Afiom Karahissár, Buhwudún, and across the Salt country to the Kizil-Ermak, which he passed at Kesre Kiupri.

Tournefort traversed Asia Minor only in one direction, from Erzrúm by Tokát to A´ngura, from whence he passed a little to the north of Eski-shehr, to Brusa.

Paul Lucas was sent out in the year 1704, by the same minister of Louis XIV. who employed Tournefort on a similar expedition in the Archipelago, the Black Sea, and Armenia. But, unfortunately for our geographical knowledge of Asia Minor, Lucas’s qualifications were very inferior to those of his contemporary; nor does he appear to have been well adapted, by previous study, even for those branches of investigation to which his attention was particularly directed by his employers; namely, the collecting of coins and inscriptions.

By assuming the medical character, he secured a good reception at several of the provincial towns, and protection from the governors, as far as their authority extended; but the banditti which at that period infested every part of the country, obliged him always to travel in haste, and often in the night; and he was not qualified to derive as much advantage from journeys made under such circumstances as a more experienced and more enlightened traveller might have done. He was generally careful in noting the time employed in each stage; but the names of places are often disfigured by his careless mode of writing. His ignorance and credulity made him delight in repeating the absurd tales which the traveller so often hears in these half-civilised countries; at the same time that he omitted the insertion of many useful observations which he could not have failed to make. In some instances he has repeated the fabulous accounts of the natives as if he had himself witnessed them, and has thus rendered himself liable to the suspicion of having wilfully imposed upon his readers. There can be no doubt, however, that his itinerary, abstracted from his narrative, is as correct as he was capable of making it. The geographical results, when connected and compared with those of other travellers, are a sufficient proof of this fact; and Lucas, with all his faults, has furnished us with a greater number of routes than any other traveller in Asia Minor. In 1705 he went from Constantinople to Nicomedia, Nicæa, and Brusa; from Brusa to Kutaya, Eski-shehr, A´ngura, Kir-shehr, Kesaría; from Kesaría to Nigde, Bor, Erkle, and Kónia; from Kónia to A´ngura, Beibazár, Kíwa, Nicomedia, and Constantinople, to which city he returned in February 1706. In the autumn of the same year, after a long journey in Greece, he set out on a second tour in Asia Minor from Smyrna, travelling by Sardes, to Allah-shehr, Alan-kiúi, Burdur, Susu, and Adália; from Adália to Susu, Isbarta, Egerder, Serkiserai, and Kónia; from Kónia to Erkle, and over Mount Taurus, by the Pylæ Ciliciæ to A´dana, Tarsus, and thence into Syria. In a third journey in Asia Minor, in the year 1715, Lucas went from Smyrna to Ghiuzel Hissár by Tire; from thence by the valley of the Mæander to Denizlú; and from Denizlú by Burdur to Isbarta, from whence he travelled the same road as before to Kónia. He states also, but without giving any particulars of his route, that he again visited Kesaría; and that, after having returned to to Kónia, he once more proceeded by the Pylæ Ciliciæ to A´dana and into Syria.

Next to Lucas, Otter is the most useful of the earlier travellers. He was a Swede, sent to Persia by the Court of France in 1734. He crossed Asia Minor by the way of Iznimid, Lefke, Inoghi, Eski-shehr, Ak-shehr, Kónia, Erkle, and A´dana; and returned from Persia by the route of Amasía and Boli. His narrative is chiefly valuable from his knowledge of the Turkish language, and from his having previously consulted some manuscript works in the Royal Library at Paris, especially that of Ibrahim Effendi, who first established a Turkish press at Constantinople, and whose information seems to accord with that of Hadji Khalfa, and of Abubekr of Damascus.

Among our own countrymen, Pococke is the only traveller of the last century who has published his route with sufficient precision to be of any use to the geographer; but he has been extremely negligent in noting bearings and distances: his narrative is very obscure and confused; and his journey in Asia Minor is consequently of much less importance than it might have been made by so enlightened, learned, and persevering a traveller. In the year 1740, after visiting a great part of Ionia and Caria, he ascended the valley of the Mæander and its branches to Ishekli and Sandukli, from whence he crossed to Beiad, Sevrihissár, and A´ngura. From A´ngura he crossed to the northward into the great eastern road from Constantinople, and returned to that capital by the way of Boli and Nicomedia.

Niebuhr traversed Asia Minor in the year 1766, on his return from India by the way of Baghdad, Mosúl, and Aleppo. From Iskenderún he passed by Bayas to Adana, and from thence by Erkle to Kónia, Karahissár, Kutaya, and Brusa[3].

In the year 1797, Browne returned from the interior of Africa by the way of Asia Minor. From Aleppo and Aintab, he traversed the range of Taurus to Bostán, Kesaría, A´ngura, Sabanje, and Nicomedia. Mr. M. Bruce[4] travelled the same route in 1812, and has given us a diary of names and distances not to be found in Browne’s printed book of travels.

It was in the year 1797, also, that Olivier passed through Asia Minor, from Celenderis by Mout, Láranda, Kónia, Ak-shehr, Afiom Karahissár, Kutaya, Yenishehr, Nicæa, and Nicomedia.

Seetzen traversed Asia Minor from Constantinople to Smyrna, and from Smyrna to Afiom Karahissár, Ak-shehr, Kónia, Láranda, Ibrala, and across Mount Taurus to Karaduar (anciently Anchiale, the port of Tarsus), from whence he passed by sea to Seleuceia, the port of Antioch, now Suadíeh. The distances and the names of the places which he passed through, written with great care, have been preserved; but it is feared that the rest of his valuable manuscripts are irretrievably lost[5].

In the year 1801, Browne again traversed Asia Minor from Constantinople, by Nicomedia, Brusa, Kutaya, Afiom Karahissár, Ak-shehr, Kónia, Erkle, Tarsus.

Among recent travellers, Capt. M. Kinneir has furnished us with the greatest number of routes. These are; 1. from Constantinople, by Nicæa, Eski-shehr, Seid-el-Ghazi, and Germa, to A´ngura; from A´ngura, by Uskát, to Kesaría; and from Kesaría, by Nigde, Ketch-hissar[6], and over Mount Taurus, by the Pylæ Ciliciæ, to Tarsus, Adana, and Iskenderún. 2. From Celenderis to Mout, Láranda, Kónia, Ak-shehr, Afiom Karahissár, Kutaya, Brusa, Mudánia. 3. From Constantinople, by Nicomedia, Sabanje, Turbali, Boli, Kastamni[7], Samsún, Tarabizún, to Erzrúm.

Mr. Kinneir was also one of the many persons who, during the late war, crossed the northern part of Asia Minor, to or from Persia by the way of Boli, Amasía, and Tokát.

Another road, which has been still more followed, is from Brusa or from Mikhalitza, by Ulubad and Magnesia, to Smyrna, or in the opposite direction: the latitudes of all the principal places on it have been determined by Browne[8]. Of this and of several other routes in the ancient provinces of Mysia, Lydia, Ionia, and Caria, we have descriptions in Smith, Wheler, Spon, Chishull, Pococke, Picenini, Chandler, and Choiseul Gouffier.

The authorities upon which our knowledge of the _ancient_ geography of Asia Minor is chiefly founded, are the works of Strabo, Ptolemy[9], Pliny, Stephanus Byzantinus, the curious table or map of roads called the Peutingerian Table, the Antonine and Jerusalem Itineraries[10], the Synecdemus of Hierocles, and the following historical narratives of some celebrated military expeditions:—1. The Journal by Xenophon[11], of the route of Cyrus from Sardes to Celænæ, and from thence to Iconium; and through Lycaonia and part of Cappadocia, and over Mount Taurus to Tarsus. 2. Arrian’s history of the conquest of Asia Minor by Alexander; in which the part more particularly worthy of the geographer’s attention is the march from Lycia into Pamphylia and Pisidia, and thence to Gordium in Phrygia, and to Ancyra, and through Cappadocia and the Pylæ Ciliciæ to Tarsus[12]. 3. The history of the Roman wars in Asia by Polybius, Livy, and Appian; especially the description by Livy of the marches of Cn. Manlius, in Phrygia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia, and thence into Gallogræcia, and to Ancyra[13]. 4. The march of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, from Constantinople to Iconium, in an expedition against the Turks, as related by his daughter Anna Comnena.

To these may be added, with regard to the southern coast, an anonymous Periplus, entitled, “σταδιασμὸς τῆς μεγάλης θαλάσσης,” which was extracted from a manuscript in the Royal Library of Madrid, and published in a volume called Regiæ Bibliothecæ Matritensis Codices Græci MSS. by the librarian Iriarte, in the year 1769. But the best and most numerous evidences of ancient geography are those which still exist in the country itself, in the ruins of the ancient cities, and in the inscriptions and other monuments which may be found there. When these remains of antiquity shall be thoroughly explored, and the results compared with the geographers, with the itineraries and with the passages of history just referred to, they will probably lead to a system of Ancient Geography in Asia Minor, much more correct than we at present possess[14]. For while we are still ignorant of the exact position of such important points as Gordium, Pessinus, Synnada, Celænæ, Cibyra, Sagalassus, Aspendus, Selge, Antioch of Pisidia and Isaura, it is almost a vain attempt to form any satisfactory system; as the several parts of it must depend so much upon one another, and upon an accurate determination of the principal places.

After this remark, the reader will not be surprised, upon consulting the map, to find that not only the boundaries of the provinces or districts are indistinctly marked, but that even the names of places, both ancient and modern, are often inserted without the usual note of exact locality.

The ancient provincial divisions are distributed according to the description of Strabo; or, in other words, according to their usual acceptation at the time of the establishment of the Roman Empire, when, as they ceased to have any political use, their boundaries became, as they had always in some degree been, extremely uncertain.

The appellations of the Turkish districts are either derived from the principal town of each district, or from the names of those chieftains who, together with the founder of the Ottoman dynasty, shared Asia Minor among them, on the breaking up of the Seljukian kingdom of Iconium, at the death of Aladin the Second, about the year 1300 of the Christian æra. These chieftains were, Karamán, Kermián, Teke, Aidín, Sarukhán, Sassan or Sagla, and Karasi. Múntesha, the appellation of the southwestern corner of Asia Minor, is supposed to be a corruption of Myndesia, or the country of Myndus; and this is the only district, therefore, the name of which the Turks adopted from the conquered people.

All the north-eastern part of the peninsula fell to the share of Amur and his sons, but its divisions were not distinguished by their names.

Osman, who inherited the country around Shughut from his father Ertogrul, soon increased his territory by the country to the northward and westward of that town, as far as the Propontis and the Black Sea. This part of the peninsula still retains the appellation of Khodja-Ili, or the country of Khodja, given to it in honour of Aktshe Khodja, the officer of Osman, who effected the conquest.

Khodavenkiar[15], which was the surname of Murad, son of Orkhan son of Osman, has been attached to the district of Brusa ever since Orkhan, having conquered that country from the Greeks, confided the government of it to his son.

Kermián-oglu, or the successor of Kermian[16], was the first of the Turkish princes of Asia Minor who resigned a part of his dominions to the house of Osman, and who put his family under their protection, by the marriage of his daughter with the son of Murad, the celebrated Bayazid. During the three subsequent reigns, those princes were generally tributary to, but not otherwise dependent on, the Ottoman monarchs, whom they often resisted in the field; and it was not until the family of Isfendiar, who governed in Heracleia Pontica, Castamon, and Sinope, was reduced by Mahomet the Second, and the kingdom of Karaman by Bayazid the Second, in the year 1486, that the whole of Asia Minor became an Ottoman province.

Thus much it seemed necessary to recall to the reader’s recollection, in explanation of the Turkish provincial names in the map.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Journey from Constantinople to Kónia 1

CHAPTER II.

Illustration of the Ancient Geography of the Central Part of Asia
Minor 51

CHAPTER III.

Continuation of the Journey—From Kónia to Cyprus, Alaia, and Shughut 93

CHAPTER IV.

Of the ancient places on the road from Adalia to Shughut, including
remarks on the comparative geography of the adjacent country 144

CHAPTER V.

Of the ancient places on the southern coast of Asia Minor 171