Tokat

i.The Yeşilırmak Valley

Tokat sits in the upper valley of the Yeşilırmak — the ancient Iris, one of the principal rivers of the southern Black Sea coast — at 623 metres above the sea. The city is built on a small terrace at the foot of the steep volcanic outcrop of Topçam Kalesi (the historic citadel mound), with the river running through the southern side of the historic town. The country northward rises through forested ridges to the Pontic Alps and the Black Sea coast at Samsun; southward and westward, beyond low hills, lies the central plateau of Sivas and Amasya. The Tokat plain is one of the most fertile agricultural districts of north-central Türkiye — vineyards, fruit orchards, mulberry trees (for the historic silk industry), and the sugar-beet of the Turhal plain.

ii.Hatti, Hittite, and Iron Age

The wider Tokat country has been continuously inhabited since the Hatti period. Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements have been excavated at Maşathöyük (a Hittite-period centre, southeast of Zile, with the famous "Maşat tablets" of the 14th–13th century BCE archived at Ankara), at Komana Pontica / Gümenek on the northeastern edge of the modern city (where excavations since 2004 have documented continuous settlement from the early Bronze Age forward), and at the small Hittite-period centres scattered along the Yeşilırmak. The country was part of the Hittite imperial heartland; after the Bronze Age collapse it entered the Phrygian and later Achaemenid Persian spheres.

iii.Comana Pontica — the Goddess Ma

The most consequential classical-period centre of the Tokat country was Comana Pontica — "Comana of Pontus" — a great temple-city dedicated to the Anatolian mother goddess Ma (identified by Greek writers with Bellona or with Cybele), six kilometres northeast of the modern city at Gümenek. The city was, in Strabo's contemporary description, a "second Comana" (the first being in Cappadocia, modern Şar in Kahramanmaraş province), and was the principal religious centre of the Pontic kingdom under the Mithridatic dynasty. The temple of Ma at Comana housed perhaps six thousand temple-servants and slaves (Strabo records the number), and the great spring festivals of the goddess drew pilgrims from across northern Anatolia.

Under the Romans Comana Pontica became part of the province of Pontus-Bithynia and retained substantial autonomy as a temple-state through the early imperial centuries; the high priest of Ma at Comana was one of the most senior religious functionaries of Roman Anatolia. By the late Byzantine period the temple-city had declined, and the working settlement on the modern site of Tokat — a few kilometres southwest at the foot of the Topçam Kalesi — had taken over its functions. The 5,000-year archaeological sequence at Gümenek is now under continuous excavation by Hacettepe University.

iv.Roman and Byzantine Tokat

The medieval Byzantine city on the modern site of Tokat — Greek Dokeia — is attested from the 8th century onward as a working fortified centre of the Pontic theme. It was repeatedly raided by Arab forces in the 8th to 10th centuries and was reinforced by the Macedonian emperors. The Byzantine fortress on Topçam Kalesi was the principal defensive work of the country, and the centre of a working frontier zone facing the advancing Turkmen presence after Manzikert.

v.The Danişmendli State (1071–1178) and Niksar as Capital

The decisive Turkish phase of Tokat's history began immediately after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Turkmen commander Melik Danişmend Gazi — one of the leading emirs of the Sultan Alparslan — established his independent principality across the Sivas-Tokat-Amasya country, with the city of Niksar (modern Tokat province) as his capital. The Danişmendli State ruled the central-northern Anatolian country for over a century, from 1071 until its absorption into the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in 1178. Under the Danişmendli, Tokat was a working second-tier centre — a fortified town with a small Friday mosque, the famous Garipler Camii (built in the 12th century, one of the oldest standing mosques in Türkiye), and a substantial Türkmen population.

vi.Seljuk Tokat and the Gök Medrese (1175–1300)

The Seljuk sultan Kılıçarslan II annexed the Danişmendli lands in 1175, and from then through the late 13th century Tokat was a working centre of the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm — see our Seljuks of Rûm essay. The 13th century gave the city its principal medieval monuments. The Gök Medrese ("the Blue Medrese," 1275) — built by the Seljuk vizier Muiniddin Süleyman Pervâne (the powerful Mongol-period regent of the Seljuk state) — is a substantial cut-stone medrese with rare blue-tile mosaic decoration on its interior dome and a magnificent carved portal. The medrese was converted into a museum in 1926 and remains the principal indoor cultural stop in Tokat. The smaller Halef Gazi Tekkesi (c. 1290) and the Hatuniye Camii (1455, Ottoman) are also among the city's medieval-and-early-modern landmarks.

vii.Mongol and Eretnid Periods

After the Seljuk collapse at Köse Dağ (1243), Tokat passed through Mongol Ilkhanid administration of Anatolia, then through the small post-Mongol Anatolian principalities — the Eretnid Beylik (1335–1381) based at Sivas (with Tokat as a major centre) — and the brief Kadı Burhaneddin sultanate (1381–1398).

viii.Ottoman Tokat — and the Death of Bayezid I (1403)

Sultan Bayezid I annexed the Tokat country in 1392 as part of his consolidation of central Anatolia. Tokat became a sancak of the new Sivas-Tokat-Amasya beylerbeyilik. The most consequential single moment of Ottoman Tokat came a decade later, when, following the catastrophic Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Ankara on 28 July 1402, Sultan Bayezid I was captured by Timur and carried as a prisoner across Anatolia. The contemporary chronicles record that Bayezid was held in an iron cage and died, broken in health and spirit, at Akşehir (in modern Konya province) on 8 March 1403; his body was returned by Timur to Ottoman territory and was — by the principal tradition — kept for some time at Tokat before being moved to Bursa for permanent burial in the Yıldırım Camii complex (1406). The Tokat connection — Bayezid's body resting in the city — is part of the city's late-medieval historical identity.

Through the long subsequent Ottoman centuries Tokat was a steady working sancak of the Sivas Eyaleti. The 17th-century traveller Evliya Çelebi describes a substantial city of forty-three quarters and over a hundred mosques, with substantial Christian (Armenian) and Jewish minority quarters and a working merchant economy.

ix.Tokat Yazma — the Block-Printed Textiles

One artisanal tradition has carried the city's name across Türkiye since at least the 18th century: tokat yazma, the block-printed cotton textiles of the city. The tradition involves carved wooden blocks (the kalıp) hand-pressed in coloured natural dyes onto plain cotton; the production has remained essentially unchanged for two centuries, with two or three small workshops in the central old quarter continuing to produce headscarves, tablecloths, and wall hangings. The Tokat block-printed textiles, together with the city's silk industry and the older silk-and-cotton mixed weavings, are the principal artisanal heritage of the province.

x.The Republic and the Modern Province

Tokat was made a province under the Republican administrative reorganisation of 1923. Through the 20th century the city developed steadily — modern industry around the Turhal sugar refinery (opened 1934, one of the earliest Republican-period agro-industrial investments), the small textile industries, and an extensive agricultural economy. Under the TÜİK 2024 address-based registration count the province population is 612,674. The metropolitan municipality covers twelve districts. The largest are Merkez (~201,000, the historic city), Erbaa (~102,000, the central market town of the lower Yeşilırmak valley), Turhal (~78,000, the sugar town), Niksar (~62,000, the historic Danişmendli capital, with its substantial citadel), and Zile (~54,000, the Hellenistic Zela where Caesar's famous "veni, vidi, vici" was sent after defeating Pharnaces II of Pontus in 47 BCE).

The province is the seat of Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa Üniversitesi (founded 1992, named for the famous Ottoman-period vizier born at Tokat).

xi.What to See, in Order

The walking circuit of historic Tokat is small. From the central Cumhuriyet Meydanı the route runs through the small old quarter to the Gök Medrese (1275, with the Tokat Müzesi inside), the small Garipler Camii (12th-c. Danişmendli), the Hatuniye Camii (1455), and the various Ottoman-period houses of the central district, including the restored Latifoğlu Konağı (a substantial 18th-century timber-framed townhouse with painted interior, now a museum). The Tokat Kalesi on Topçam tepe is a Byzantine-Seljuk-Ottoman citadel with a long stone wall and the small upper court still accessible.

For the wider province, the principal excursions reach the Komana Pontica archaeological site at Gümenek six kilometres northeast of the city (active excavation, partly accessible), Niksar for the Danişmendli capital with the Yağıbasan Medresesi (1157, one of the earliest standing medreses in Türkiye) and the citadel, Zile for the Caesar-era Zela (with the small monument to "Veni, Vidi, Vici"), and Almus Dam in the eastern part of the province for the small reservoir landscape.

The Yeşilırmak valley of Comana of Ma — Danişmendli Niksar, Seljuk Tokat of the Blue Medrese, and the city where Sultan Bayezid I's body rested after the catastrophe of 1402.

For the parallel north-central Anatolian provinces, see Amasya (immediately west) and Sivas (south); for the Danişmendli framework see Sivas; for the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, see the Seljuks of Rûm. For Türkiye's Pontic and inland geography, visit our sister site CountryOfTurkey.com.