Encircled by wooded hills up to 1,500m/4,923ft high, this modern provincial capital is situated about 230km/149mi northeast of Ankara on the edge of the extensive Çorum Çayi basin. As well as being the market town for 100 or more villages scattered across the surrounding countryside (where, in addition to fruit and vegetables, several kinds of cereal are grown), Çorum is also heavily industrialized, the most important of its many industries being copper processing.
History
Excavation has revealed habitation here since at least the fourth millennium.
B.C., including throughout the Hittite period (up to 1200 B.C.) and in Phrygian times. The town was Persian (from 546 B.C.) before falling into the hands of the diadochi in the fourth century. After a short spell of Galatian (276 B.C.) and later Roman and Byzantine rule, it was occupied in 1075 by the Danishmendid Ahmet Gazi (who named it Çorum). Control then passed to the Seljuk Kiliç Arslan, the Mongols and the Eretna dynasty, before the town finally came into Ottoman possession in 1393.
Located within Tasari National Park, the archeological site of Alaça Hüyük has produced finds from four different cultures. The area was first occupied in the fourth millennium B.C.
Although located some distance away (to the northwest of Kükümet Meydani, on the far side of the old business quarter of Çorum), the 13th century Ulu Cami, also known as the Muradi Rabi Camii, is interesting and worth visiting. It was extensively restored in the 19th century.
The citadel, located in the southeast of Çorum, is still partly occupied. Numerous pieces of ancient masonry - inscribed gravestones, shafts of columns, architraves etc. - can be seen incorporated into the lower sections of the limestone wall, e.g. in the protruding gateway with its brick vaulting and ironwork through which "Iç Kale" is entered. On the left directly beyond the gate is the citadel mosque (Kale Camii).
The little town of Hacihamza, about 90km/56mi northwest of Çorum, boasts a 17th century caravanserai (ca. 1666) endowed by Köprülü Mehmet Pasa. From Hacihamza upstream almost as far as Osmancik the Kizilirmak valley is awash with rice paddies. Derelict norias - large waterwheels, the traditional method of irrigation along many Anatolian rivers - line the river bank.
In addition to its ethnological collection the little museum in Çorum mainly houses finds from the Hittite, Phrygian and Islamic periods (including a model of Hattusas).
Deposits from the lime-rich waters of the Karapinar karst spring, which surfaces here in this village near Cemilbey, have built up over millennia into limestone terraces similar to those at Pamukkale.
The inscription (1894) on this yellow clock- and water-tower in the town center commemorates its endowment by Yedi Sekiz Hasan Pasa, a native of Çorum working in the Besiktas district of Istanbul. Looking like a minaret the tower has a circular lower section on an octagonal base, the upper part above the gallery being four-sided.
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Alaça Hüyük
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Hacihamza, Turkey
