Uşak

i.The Inner-Aegean Highlands and the Banaz Çayı

Uşak sits in the upland country of the inner Aegean at 900 metres elevation — the long transitional zone between the high western-Anatolian plateau to the east (the Kütahya-Afyon-Eskişehir country) and the lower river valleys of the Aegean coastal hinterland to the west (the Manisa-İzmir-Aydın country). The principal river is the Banaz Çayı, the northern tributary of the Büyük Menderes (the classical Maeander), which drains the central country and joins the Menderes proper at the southern edge of the province. The country to the south runs into the great travertine-terrace country shared with the neighbouring Denizli province (Pamukkale-Hierapolis, see our planned Denizli essay); to the southwest, the country falls into the deep Ulubey-Banaz canyon system.

The province extends to 5,341 square kilometres and supports a population of approximately 374,000 under the TÜİK 2024 count, organised into six districts: the central Merkez (the principal industrial-and-administrative centre); Banaz (the northeastern district on the Afyonkarahisar road); Eşme (the southwestern district, the famous kilim-weaving country); Ulubey (the canyon district); Karahallı; and Sivaslı.

ii.The Lydian and Phrygian Frontier

The Uşak country first enters the historical record at the close of the second millennium BCE as a frontier zone between the Phrygian highland country to the east (centred on Gordion in modern Ankara) and the Lydian river-valley country to the west (centred on Sardis in modern Manisa). Through the 7th and 6th centuries BCE the country lay on the eastern frontier of the great Lydian kingdom of the Mermnads, with Sardis as the capital; the principal Lydian-period legacy in the modern province is the Karun Hazinesi (the Croesus Treasure, also known as the Lydian Hoard or East-Greek Treasure) — a substantial collection of late-7th and 6th-century BCE Lydian gold and silver objects illegally excavated from a series of tumulus burials in the Güre and Toptepe country of Uşak province in the late 1960s.

The Karun Treasure was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between 1966 and 1970; after a substantial Türkiye-Republic legal action through the 1980s, the collection was returned to Türkiye in 1993 and is now held in the Uşak Müzesi, where the famous golden Pegasos / Hippokamp brooch is one of the principal exhibits. The provenance trial — the famous "Karun Davası" of the late 1980s and early 1990s — was one of the foundational episodes of the modern Turkish-Republic programme of returning illicitly exported antiquities to their place of origin.

The Lydian state was conquered by the Achaemenid Persians in 546 BCE at the fall of Sardis (after the famous campaign of Cyrus the Great against Croesus); through the Achaemenid centuries the Uşak country was a satrapal district of Lydia.

iii.Blaundus — The Macedonian Colony

After Alexander the Great's conquest of Anatolia in the 330s BCE and the subsequent partition of the empire among the Diadochi, the Lydian country was held by the Seleucid empire. Around the close of the 4th century BCE the Seleucids founded the colony of Blaundus in the Uşak country — at the modern village of Sulumenli (Ulubey district), forty kilometres south of the modern provincial seat — with settlers drawn from Macedonia and the wider Hellenistic veteran-soldier population of the Seleucid empire. The colony took its name from a town in upper Macedonia (or, in another tradition, from a Macedonian military commander).

Blaundus was set on a spectacular natural site: a narrow peninsula of high tufa terraces extending into the deep Ulubey canyon, with sheer cliffs on three sides and the city walls running across the narrow neck of the peninsula. The Hellenistic-Roman city included a substantial Temple of Demeter, the Temple of Apollo Ktistes (the city-founder Apollo), a substantial gate-and-walls complex, the theatre, the stadium, and the principal residential quarter. Through the long Roman centuries Blaundus was a working small town of Lydia; the surviving monumental ensemble is one of the best-preserved small Hellenistic-Roman city sites in inner-Aegean Türkiye, recoverable as a substantial half-day walking visit from the modern access road.

iv.Byzantine, Seljuk, Germiyan, and the Ottoman Annexation

Through the long Byzantine centuries the Uşak country was held under the theme of Thrakesion. The Seljuk conquest of the late 11th century brought the country into the Anatolian-Turkish political world; through the 13th and 14th centuries the country was held by the Germiyanoğulları beylik centred at Kütahya (see our Kütahya essay), with Uşak as one of its principal southern towns. The country passed to the Ottoman state with the rest of the Germiyan inheritance in 1428–29 under Murad II.

Through the long Ottoman centuries Uşak was a working kaza (district) of the Kütahya sancak. The principal Ottoman-period monuments — the Burma Camii (with the famous spiral-fluted minaret), the Çakaloz Camii, the substantial historic Cuma Pazarı bedesten — stand in the central historic district. The Ottoman city was the principal centre of one of the most internationally famous industries of the wider Ottoman state: the carpet-weaving tradition that produced the famous Uşak carpets.

v.The Uşak Carpet — Holbein, Lotto, and the European Renaissance

The Uşak country has been one of the principal carpet-weaving centres of Türkiye from the 15th century to the present. The famous Uşak carpet (Holbein carpet) tradition — with the characteristic large medallion or all-over star pattern in deep red, blue, and gold colour fields — emerged as the principal Anatolian carpet-export industry of the 15th and 16th centuries; the carpets reached the European market through the Ottoman trade with Venice, Florence, and Antwerp, and entered substantial European princely and merchant collections in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The carpets' modern English-language name, "Holbein carpets," derives from the works of Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), the court painter to Henry VIII of England, who depicted Uşak carpets in close to photographic detail in over twenty of his major portraits — most famously in The Ambassadors (1533, now in the National Gallery, London), where a large Uşak carpet is shown draped across the central table. The parallel "Lotto carpet" tradition takes its name from Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556), the Venetian painter who also depicted Uşak carpets in several of his great portraits. The depiction of Uşak carpets by the principal European Renaissance painters has had an extraordinary subsequent effect on the documentation of the medieval Ottoman carpet industry: the surviving 16th-century Uşak carpets in European collections can be precisely dated and provenanced through the painted record.

The modern Uşak carpet industry continues — though substantially diminished in volume from the 17th-century peak — at the traditional weaving villages of the central country and at Eşme district. The Eşme kilimleri — the flat-woven traditional Eşme kilims — are registered under Türk Patent ve Marka Kurumu Protected Geographical Indication. The principal modern Uşak carpet research and conservation programme is conducted by the Uşak Üniversitesi in association with the T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı.

vi.The 1894 Earthquake and the 19th-Century City

The historic Ottoman city of Uşak was substantially destroyed by the great earthquake of 1894 (Mw 6.7, on the western Anatolian fault system); the principal historic monumental district was largely lost, and the modern town was substantially rebuilt under the closing Ottoman decades and the early Republican period. The modern provincial centre therefore preserves a much smaller historic monumental district than the broadly comparable Kütahya, with the principal surviving Ottoman-period buildings (the Burma Camii, the Çakaloz Camii) and the late-Ottoman-Republican grid-plan modern town as the principal urban features.

The Uşak country was at the centre of the wider National-Struggle field of operations in 1920–22, with the Greek army taking the city in July 1920 and holding it for the following two years; the Turkish recovery of Uşak on 1 September 1922 was one of the principal closing events of the Great Offensive (immediately following the Dumlupınar victory of 30 August in neighbouring Kütahya; see our Kütahya essay).

vii.The Republic and the 1953 Province

Under the early Republic Uşak was reorganised as a district of the parent Kütahya Province. The modern provincial status was established by Law no. 6118 of 1 July 1953, which created Uşak as Türkiye's 65th province at the time, with the modern Eşme, Banaz, Karahallı, Sivaslı, and Ulubey districts attached. The new province was carved entirely from the territory of the parent Kütahya province.

The modern 20th-century economy has rested on the long carpet-and-textiles tradition (the substantial modern Uşak textile industry, with several large industrial estates), the substantial leather industry (the Uşak leather-tanning district is one of the principal Turkish leather centres), and a substantial agricultural base (tobacco, wheat, sugar beet, and the famous Sivaslı strawberries). The province is the seat of Uşak Üniversitesi (founded 2006), the principal new-generation university of the inner-Aegean country, with a continuing programme in carpet-and-textile studies and a substantial archaeological-research engagement on the Blaundus site.

viii.The Ulubey Kanyonu

The principal natural feature of the modern province is the great Ulubey Kanyonu (Ulubey Canyon) — a substantial network of deep tufa-stone canyons cut by the Banaz Çayı and its tributaries in the southern country of the province. The principal central canyon is approximately 77 kilometres long, making it — by some measures — the second-longest single canyon system in the world, after the Grand Canyon of Arizona. The canyon walls reach 170 metres in depth at the principal Ulubey-Karahallı section; the canyon-floor river runs through a substantial cooler microclimate, with substantial endemic flora and the rare bird-population habitat for several substantial raptor and pigeon species.

The canyon is best visited at the modern Ulubey village viewpoint, where the substantial cantilevered Ulubey Cam Teras (Glass Terrace), opened in 2018, extends out over the canyon void for the spectacular panoramic view. The principal canyon-walking circuits run from the Sulumenli (Blaundus) entry south to the great Karahallı bend. The site is on the Bursa-Uşak-Denizli Geopark Tentative-List nomination submitted to UNESCO Global Geoparks in 2023.

ix.The Modern Industrial Province

The modern provincial economy is one of the more diversified in inner-Aegean Türkiye. The principal sectors include the substantial modern carpet-and-textiles industry (Uşak is one of the principal Turkish textile-and-knitwear export centres, with substantial firms in the central industrial estate); the famous Uşak leather industry (centred on the principal tannery district at the southern edge of the city); the substantial sugar-and-food-processing industry; the modern ceramics and tile-manufacturing sector; and a substantial new-economy services sector centred around the Uşak Üniversitesi student population.

The principal civic infrastructure includes the modern Uşak Havalimanı (opened 1998), the principal road and rail connections to the wider western Anatolian network (the Eskişehir-Afyon-Uşak-İzmir railway and the modern highway system), and the substantial modern central district built up since the post-1953 provincial status.

x.The Uşak Müzesi and the Karun Hazinesi

The principal museum of the modern province is the Uşak Müzesi in the central district, opened in 1978 and substantially expanded since to accommodate the famous Karun Hazinesi (Croesus Treasure / Lydian Hoard) after its 1993 repatriation. The treasure — over 450 Lydian-period gold and silver objects from the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, including the principal golden Pegasos / Hippokamp brooch (a winged sea-horse figure of approximately 10 centimetres in length), the famous gold-and-silver patera bowls, and the substantial collection of jewellery — is held in the principal exhibition hall of the modern museum. The Karun collection is one of the principal Lydian-period archaeological collections in Türkiye.

The museum also holds the principal regional collection from the Lydian-and-Phrygian frontier country, including substantial Roman and Byzantine material from Blaundus and Sebaste (a small Roman town in Sivaslı district), and the substantial ethnographic collection of the Uşak carpet and Eşme kilim traditions.

xi.What to See, in Order

The principal first visit in the province is to the Uşak Müzesi — the principal museum of the central district — with the famous Karun Hazinesi as the centrepiece, and the substantial Lydian-Phrygian-Roman-Byzantine collection from the wider provincial country. The visit also takes in the principal carpet-and-kilim ethnographic galleries.

The second principal visit is to Blaundus (Sulumenli, Ulubey district) — forty kilometres south of Uşak city — with the spectacular peninsula site on the canyon edge, the surviving Temple of Demeter and Temple of Apollo Ktistes, the substantial city walls and gate complex, the theatre, the stadium, and the principal monumental quarter. The visit can be combined with the substantial walking circuit along the canyon edge.

The third principal visit is to the Ulubey Cam Teras (Ulubey Glass Terrace) and the central canyon viewpoint — with the spectacular panoramic view over the 170-metre-deep canyon void, and the principal walking-circuit access to the canyon-floor country.

At Uşak Merkez, the compact walking circuit covers the historic Burma Camii with the famous spiral-fluted minaret; the Çakaloz Camii; the historic Cuma Pazarı bazaar quarter; the modern central Atatürk Bulvarı with the substantial Republican-era shopping district; and the principal Uşak Üniversitesi campus.

The wider province offers Eşme (the kilim-weaving country, with the substantial traditional workshops and the principal Eşme kilim cooperative); Karahallı (the southern canyon district, with the spectacular upper-canyon views); the small Roman site of Sebaste (in Sivaslı district, with the substantial Roman-period bath and the surviving city walls); and the substantial traditional villages of the wider Banaz Çayı country.

The Holbein-Carpet Capital — Blaundus on the canyon edge, the Karun Treasure repatriated, and the great Ulubey canyon.

For the parent province from which Uşak was carved in 1953, see Kütahya; for the Lydian capital at Sardis, see the planned Manisa essay; for the Pamukkale-Hierapolis country on the shared southern border, see the planned Denizli essay. For more on the great inner-Aegean country of Türkiye, visit our sister site CountryOfTurkey.com.