Kadirli, historically Kars () or Karsbazar[ İlçe Belediyesi , Turkey Civil Administration Departments Inventory. Retrieved 22 May 2023.] Its population is 98,469 (2022).
History
The Cilicia/Çukurova plain is rich farmland and a place of strategic importance on an important trade route between the Middle East and Anatolia. It has been settled since the time of the Hittites and after by various civilizations:
,
Roman Empire (the Roman city of Flavius may have been located here), Byzantines, Armenians and finally Turks. The most prominent group of Turks to settle here were the Dulkadir lords, semi-autonomous barons during the
Ottoman Empire era, who ruled
Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş and
Hatay Province for two centuries. They were dispersed after the land was captured by the Ottoman sultan
Selim I in 1517.
Kadirli was occupied by French forces at the end of the First World War under the terms of the armistice signed by the Ottoman Empire. The French forces were resisted by local peoples and eventually withdrew from the town in March 1920. Kadirli was a district (ilçe) in Kozan province between 1923-1926 and in Adana Province between 1926 and 1995. In 1996, it was attached to the newly created province of Osmaniye.
Kadirli today
Kadirli is a town providing the basic infrastructure, such as shops and schools, to an area of rich farmland, which produces grain and 75% of Turkey's radishes. There are two reservoirs for irrigating the area. There is small scale industry.
In the summertime, families move to the uplands of Taurus Mountains, mainly Plateau Maksutolugu, adjacent to Kahramanmaraş because of hot weather in a general manner, also working people staying in town join their families in the weekends. In recent times, inhabitants also prefer to spend their summertime at the sea side in Yumurtalık and Mersin during hot season as an alternative of moving to plateau.
In Kadirli, there is a vocational college
Demographics
Evliya Çelebi wrote that the town was mostly inhabited by Turcomans in his
seyahatname.
On the eve of World War I, before the Armenian genocide, the town had a population of 2,000 of which 1,800 were
Armenians. In addition to a small church, the town maintained an Armenian school, attended by 85 students in 1900.
Places of interest
There are many archaeological and touristic sites nearby such as:
-
Karatepe National Park
[ Karatepe/Aslantas Neo-Hittite Open Air Museum] - from Kadirli. The ruins of a walled city of the time of the Hittites. Discovered by archaeologists Halet Cambel and Helmuth Theodor Bossert. Relics found here date from a late Hittite kingdom (8th century BC) and include vast historic tablets, statues and ruins, even a monumental gate and pillars of lions and sphinxes. The ruins even gave us inscriptions in Hittite and Phoenician, which have been used to decipher the Hittite language.
-
The Ala Cami
[ www.alacamibasilica.co.uk] is the oldest surviving monument in Kadirli. Its remains display over a millennium and a half of local history in several building phases. In the late 5th / early 6th century the site was artificially terraced for the construction of a large basilical church, built in at least two stages from a variety of reused architectural elements and incorporating the hypogeum as a crypt.
See also
External links
