Aksehir, Turkey
Tourism

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, where the West Taurus mountains give way inland to the Inner Anatolian steppes. The town enjoys a reputation for its carpets and leather goods and was quite important in earlier days as a halt on the long distance route from Konya to Istanbul.

History

Aksehir, founded in the third century B.C. as Philomelion by the Macedonian prince Philomelos, was an important Phrygian town which later passed to Pisidia under Diocletian. It was here in 51 B.C. that Cicero meted out justice to the mutinous Roman cohorts and where, in 1403, Bayazit I, though later buried in Bursa, died a prisoner of the Mongols following his defeat by Tamerlane at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. For a long time the Mongols kept their notable prisoner - scourge of the East and the man who destroyed the Byzantine army at Nikopolis, holding numerous Byzantine noblemen captive in Bursa - confined in a cage-like litter in which they transported him about with their army. In 1190, while on the Third Crusade, the Emperor Friedrich I (Barbarossa) journeyed across country from Dinar to Aksehir, passing north of Lake Egridir. Enduring great hardship he made his way to Ladik, Konya, Karaman and then Silifke where he drowned in the Göksu Nehri.

Nasrettin Hoca the Turkish Eulenspiegel, born in about 1208, spent his working life in Aksehir, dying there in 1284/85.