Aksaray Attractions

History

In antiquity the town was called Garsaura. Many historians equate it with the even more ancient oriental town of Kursaura whose ruler is believed to have been a party to an alliance in the third millennium B.C. against the Accadian King Naramsis. Following rebuilding the town was renamed Archelais by the Cappadocian King Archelaos. It came to enjoy considerable status as a frontier fortress against Lycaonia and a crossroads between Ephesus and the middle reaches of the Euphrates on the one hand and Ankara and Tyana (near Nigde) on the other.

During the Rum Sultanate (from the 11th century) the Seljuk Sultan Kiliç Arslan II (1156-88) built a castle here, where Henry the Lion was fêted while returning home from a pilgrimage. Among the gifts lavished upon him were 30 magnificent horses with silver bridles (specially picked from among the 1800 in the Sultan's stables), six dromedaries, two leopards and six tents. In the 13th century the town fell to the Mongols before passing in the 14th century to the Karamanlidhes. The Ottomans resettled part of the population in Istanbul, hence that city's Aksaray district.