The Roman and Byzantine age of Amasya is the long period in which a royal capital became an imperial provincial town and then, for roughly a thousand years, lived on as one of the fortresses of an eastern frontier. At its beginning stand the wars that Mithridates VI Eupator, the last great king of Pontus, fought against Rome; at its end comes the eleventh century, which opened Anatolia's gates to the Turks. Through the intervening centuries the town kept its name, its fortress on the rock and its settlement along the river, but one identity after another was laid over it. It was first a Roman provincial town, then a Christian episcopal see, and finally the capital of a thema in the Byzantine military and administrative system.

The Fall of Pontus and the Roman Annexation

Amaseia was the inland capital of the kings of Pontus, and both their palaces and their rock tombs stood on the Harşena crag. The wars that Mithridates Eupator waged against Rome form the long series of conflicts that historians call the Mithridatic Wars. During these wars the Roman commander Lucullus advanced into the interior of Pontus, and Amasya fell into his hands around 70 BC. The man who ended the war and reorganised the region was Pompey, who took over the command in the following years. Mithridates withdrew to the Crimea after 65 BC and took his own life in 63 BC in the face of a revolt by his son Pharnaces II. According to Appian, his body was buried at Pompey's order either at Sinope or at Amaseia; the sources do not settle which.

The sources point to different years for the town's full entry into Roman rule. The Amasya entry in the Islamic Encyclopedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation states that the city was incorporated into Roman territory in 63 BC; other accounts treat Lucullus's capture of 70 BC and Pompey's settlements of 64-63 BC as separate stages. The difference most likely arises from the distinction between conquest and administrative incorporation. Militarily Amasya changed hands in 70 BC, but the new boundaries and status of the region were fixed only by Pompey's settlement.

Pompey's arrangements are described in most detail by Strabo, who was himself from Amasya. According to him, after defeating Mithridates Pompey distributed the districts bordering Armenia and Colchis among the rulers who had fought on his side, divided the remaining lands into eleven administrative units and joined them to Bithynia, so that a single province emerged from the two regions. He also raised some settlements to the rank of city: Zela and Megalopolis, and the village of Phazemon, which he proclaimed a city under the name Neapolis. Amasya is mentioned as a free city in this arrangement. Strabo's lines also show that in later years Roman governors redivided the region from time to time, leaving some places to kings and local dynasts, making others free cities and attaching others directly to the Roman people. Only the coastal strip of the old kingdom joined Bithynia to form the province of Pontus and Bithynia; the greater part of the interior was later included in the province of Galatia, and Amasya remained in this second group.

Strabo's Amaseia

The most valuable witness to Roman-age Amasya is the town's own son. Strabo lived from about 64 BC to AD 24 and described his native city at length in the twelfth book of his Geographika. He speaks of it as "my city", and his description is the only detailed document showing how the structures left by the kings of Pontus stood at the beginning of the Roman age. According to Strabo the city lay in a wide, deep valley through which the Iris, the modern Yeşilırmak, flows. Nature and human foresight together had made it a settlement that could serve at once as a city and as a fortress. A high rock that fell sheer to the river was enclosed by a wall on one side, along the river bank where the city stood, and on the other by a wall climbing the peaks from both sides. The peaks were two, naturally joined to each other and equipped with towers. Within this circuit lay the palaces and the tombs of the kings.

The neck joining the two peaks was very narrow; from the river bank and the suburbs there was an ascent of five or six stadia on either side up to this neck, and from the neck to the peaks another steep climb of one stadium remained. Strabo calls this approach proof against any assault. Inside the rock were water reservoirs, and of two tube-like channels cut into the rock one ran down to the river and the other to the neck, so that even under siege the city's water could not be cut off. Two bridges spanned the river: one from the city to the suburbs and the other from the suburbs to the outer territory. The crag still stands today as Harşena Castle; the wells, the stepped underground passage cut into the rock and the channels mentioned in modern accounts recall the arrangement Strabo describes, but no firm judgement can be made about the period to which they belong.

Strabo also describes the surroundings of the city. The valley that begins at the river's edge is narrow at first, then widens and opens into the plain called Chiliocomum, the "plain of a thousand villages"; Diacopene and Pimolisene follow, and all of it, fertile land, extended as far as the Halys, the Kızılırmak. The northern part of the Amaseians' country was about five hundred stadia long; to the south it reached the district of Zela and even, in Greater Cappadocia, the lands of the Trocmi. In the district of Ximene there were rock-salt works called "halai", and Strabo thinks the river took its name Halys from this salt. He also notes that because of the Mithridatic War there were many ruined strongholds and much deserted land in his own country. Even so, he says, the country was wooded, suited to pasturing horses and other animals, and in every respect well fitted for habitation. Among the countries of the region he calls that of the Amaseians the largest and the best.

One sentence of Strabo gives the town's new legal position: Amaseia had once been given to kings, but was now a Roman province. Meanwhile part of the region was in the hands of allied Roman rulers. Around Zela, Pythodoris held Zelitis and Megalopolitis, and the priests and temple servants of the temple of Anaïtis at Zela were under her administration. These small kingdoms in the immediate neighbourhood of Amaseia were part of Rome's practice of holding frontier lands through local dynasties.

Amasya in the Provincial System

The province to which Amasya belonged changed often in Roman times. According to the provincial governorate's records, in 39 BC the Roman commander Antonius, in order to create a buffer between his own lands and the Parthians against Parthian attacks, had several vassal kingdoms established, and gave the Mithridatic district, which included Amasya, to Darius, son of Pharnaces II. In this period Amasya was the metropolis, that is the capital and an important city, of the district of Mithridates Galaticus. When Emperor Augustus founded the province of Galatia in 25 BC, he attached the district of Mithridates Galaticus to it. Another account says that Amasya joined the province of Galatia around 3 or 2 BC, within the district of Pontus Galaticus. The difference between the two dates may arise from the fact that the district's attachment to Galatia was completed not at one stroke but in several stages, in a passage from vassal to direct rule. The sources do not fully agree on this.

In AD 62 Emperor Nero turned the eastern part of the old kingdom of Pontus into a province, and the country was divided into three districts: Pontus Galaticus in the west, bordering Galatia; Pontus Polemoniacus in the middle, whose capital was Polemonion; and Pontus Cappadocicus in the east, bordering Cappadocia. Amasya was a city of the western district, Pontus Galaticus. Around 112 Emperor Trajan attached Pontus to the province of Cappadocia. In the later years of the second century Amasya had also acquired the titles "metropolis" and "first city". These titles expressed the competition for standing among cities in Roman Anatolia and show Amasya's weight within the province.

Diocletian's administrative reorganisation of about AD 295 divided Pontus into three smaller, independent provinces. The reorganisation had been prompted by a Gothic raid on Trebizond in 287, and its aim was to govern the region through a more local administration. One of the three provinces was Galatian Pontus, that is Diospontus; its name was later changed by Constantine the Great to Helenopontus in memory of his mother Helena. The governorate's records show Amasya after Diocletian as the religious and administrative centre of Diospontus. According to other sources the civil capital of the province was Amisos (modern Samsun) and Amasya was the seat of the metropolitan bishop of Helenopontus. The weight of a see in the church organisation and the city where the governor's office sat may differ, so the two accounts need not contradict each other. Among the cities of the province are counted Sinope, Amasya, Ibora, Andrapa and Zela.

The City at the Crossing of Roads

In the period of the Roman Empire, Amasya, which had provincial status, also became the centre of the inter-provincial road system. According to the example given in the governorate's records, the roads of Galatia and Cappadocia ended at Amasya. Set in the narrow pass of the Yeşilırmak valley, the town was therefore a stopping point for both trade and military movement. The fertile plains Strabo mentions, the pastures suited to horse-breeding and the salt works of Ximene formed the economic ground of the town.

One concrete document of the town's prosperity is the civic coinage struck at Amasya in its own name. Civic coins are known to have been minted at Amasya from the reign of Emperor Domitian (AD 81-96) down to that of Severus Alexander (AD 222-235). Some of these coins are held today in the coin collection of the Amasya Museum. On the coins the name of the city is mostly written Amaseia, and in some Amassia, Amasia or Amaccia. Strabo describes the town as taking its name from the Amazon queen Amasis; this has remained a tradition, and the true origin of the name is uncertain.

The Spread of Christianity and the Bishopric

From the third century AD Amasya gained importance as an episcopal see. The first strong traces of the town in Christian history fall in the last great period of persecution of Christians by the empire. According to the tradition, the cohort of Theodore, a young soldier in the Roman army, had been sent to Pontus for winter quarters. At Amasya Theodore refused to take part in a pagan sacrifice and openly declared his faith. The judges, taking pity on his youth, postponed the sentence; Theodore then burned the temple of Cybele, the Great Mother, in the town, was arrested, tortured and put to death by burning. The year of his martyrdom is given as 287 in the Golden Legend and as 306 in later tradition. Although no firm document exists for the historical core of this account, it suggests that a Christian community existed at Amasya at an early date and that a harsh reaction was shown against it.

The memory of Theodore spread quickly. Gregory of Nyssa delivered a panegyric in his honour in the winter of 381; whether the shrine in which it was delivered stood at Amasya or at Euchaita is uncertain. Theodore later became one of the principal military saints of Byzantium, and fifteen churches were built in his honour in Constantinople. His relics are said to have been moved afterwards to Euchaita, which became a pilgrimage centre under the name Theodoropolis. The first centre of the saint's cult, however, was the neighbourhood of Amasya.

Basil, one of the first bishops of the town, was martyred under Emperor Licinius, between 321 and 324. Jerome's Latin translation of Eusebius's Chronicon places the event in the 275th Olympiad. According to what Eusebius reports, in the time of Licinius Christians suffered very heavy pressure, especially at Amasya and in the other cities of Pontus, and the governor inflicted on several bishops the punishments given to criminals. Basil's name also appears among the signatures of the councils of Ancyra and Neocaesarea held in 314. At the Council of Nicaea it was Eutychianus who signed on behalf of Amasya; one source's statement that Basil attended Nicaea is regarded as an error on the strength of this signature.

Asterius, who was bishop of Amasya in the late fourth century, is one of the most interesting writers of the town's Christian age. Born in Cappadocia, he had practised as a lawyer before becoming bishop, and his episcopate began between 380 and 390. He is said to have been brought up by a Scythian slave. Sixteen sermons and panegyrics on martyrs by him have survived. These texts are valuable as much for the familiarity with classical literature they show as for the unusual details of everyday life in that age they contain. The sermon of January 400, in which he sharply criticises the pagan customs of the New Year festivities, provides the basis both for the dating of this text and for the chronology of Asterius's life.

There are also finds that show the town's Christian past in material form today. In 2013, near a spot where an illegal excavation had been attempted, a mosaic of about twenty-four square metres, said to belong to the floor of a chapel, was uncovered; it shows apples, an apple tree, partridges and geometric figures. In Aynalı Cave, one of the rock tombs of the Amasya area, wall paintings showing Jesus, Mary and the apostles are said to survive; there is, however, no firm judgement about the date of these paintings.

Byzantium's Armeniakon Thema

After the division of the Roman Empire, Amasya remained within the Eastern Roman, that is Byzantine, world. At the beginning of this period the population is known to have been predominantly Greek-speaking. The development that most shaped the town's fate was that, after the Islamic armies took Syria and Egypt in the seventh century, Byzantium was forced to rebuild its army and provincial system. The remnants of the old field army of Armenia were settled in the lands of Pontus, Paphlagonia and Cappadocia, and this military-civil administrative unit took the name Armeniakon, the "Theme of the Armeniacs". The first clear record pointing to the existence of the Armeniakon is the revolt of its strategos Saborios in 667-668; a record of 629 suggests that the arrangement may be older. Amasya is said to have been among the fortresses of the thema from the eighth century; another source names Amaseia as the thema's centre.

The thema system divided the empire into military-civil districts and rested defence largely on soldier-farmers who held land in return for service. The Armeniakon was one of the most important themata of Byzantium. It was governed by a strategos, who, together with the strategoi of the Anatolikon and Thrakesion, ranked in the highest tier and drew a salary of forty pounds of gold a year. In the ninth century the thema fielded about nine thousand men and included seventeen fortresses. Its size and its position on the north-eastern frontier, neighbouring the Muslims, had made its governor a powerful figure, and thema troops took part in several revolts in the eighth century. For this reason the thema was reduced in the ninth century: in the south and east Charsianon and Cappadocia were separated off, on the coast Paphlagonia and Chaldia around 819, and later Koloneia became a separate command as well. What remained of the Armeniakon was a smaller region covering western Pontus.

In these centuries the town also saw turbulent events. After the Muslim Arabs took Syria and Egypt from the 630s, raids on Anatolia under the Umayyad caliphs became an almost annual custom, and over those fifty years the Arabs besieged Constantinople twice. The raiders' routes often ran through the valleys of inner Anatolia, and Amasya lay on this corridor. The town was taken by the Arabs in 712, and a few years later Byzantine forces under Leo III (717-741) recaptured it.

After the failure of the second Arab siege of Constantinople in 718 the front stabilised: along the Taurus Mountains a frontier zone took shape that both sides fortified heavily and that was largely depopulated. Amasya lay just behind this line. Under the Abbasids relations were at times normalised, embassies passed back and forth and truces were made, but raids supported by both sides continued until the tenth century. The disintegration of the Abbasid state after 861 and the strengthening of Byzantium under the Macedonian dynasty reversed the course of events, and between 920 and 976 Byzantium re-established its control over northern Syria and Greater Armenia. The frontier then stayed where it was until the Seljuk Turks appeared after 1060. The repeated changes of hands show the burden Amasya carried for centuries as a frontier town. The people living behind its walls experienced both the protection and the danger of lying just behind the line between East and West.

Church Organisation and Religious Life

In the Byzantine period Amasya's religious importance continued. The bishoprics of Amisos, Andrapa, Euchaita, Ibora, Sinope, Zaliche and Zela were subject to Amasya, the metropolitan see of Helenopontus. In the tenth century the metropolis of Amasya ranked eleventh among the metropolises of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. This ranking shows the town's weight on the church map of Anatolia. From the twelfth century the Christian element declined as Turkish migration into Anatolia increased. Callistus, appointed metropolitan in 1315, could not enter his see because of a violent Turkmen attack in 1317; with the permission of Patriarch John XIII the metropolis was transferred to Limnia, which was considered safer within the bounds of the Empire of Trebizond. In 1384 the bishop of Limnia again took temporary charge of the metropolis of Amasya for the same reason. A patriarchal document states that the metropolis of Amasya, once glorious and great, had fallen into ruin and poverty through the invasion of foreigners.

The Last Years Before the Turks

Byzantium's last years at Amasya were lived amid the turmoil that followed the Battle of Manzikert. After 1071 central authority weakened; the empire had left the defence of the east largely to mercenaries of various origins. One of them was the Norman commander Roussel de Bailleul. While in Byzantine service he turned against the empire in 1073 and tried to set up a short-lived domain of his own in central Anatolia, supported by the Frankish and Norman knights whom Byzantine administration had earlier settled around the Armeniakon and Amasya. In Anna Komnene's Alexiad, Amasya appears as the place where Emperor Alexios I Komnenos received the Norman commander Roussel de Bailleul (Ursel) as a captive from a Turkish commander, Tutach. Frankish mercenaries under Roussel had seized control in the Armeniakon in 1073; Alexios restored Byzantine authority in the region in 1075. According to the account, Alexios had promised Tutach a large sum for Roussel's capture but had no money; when he tried to raise it from the people of Amasya, serious unrest broke out among them. When Alexios had Roussel shown to the crowd as if blinded, the people paid the money. Because the work was written by Alexios's daughter, the account is thought likely to be biased.

There is no firm information on when the town passed into Turkish hands. The Islamic Encyclopedia gives no date for this and says only that the city was under Danishmendid rule; other accounts say that after about 700 years of Byzantine rule Amasya fell around 1075 to the Danishmend Turkmen emirs and became their capital. This rule lasted until the annexation of the Danishmendid lands by the Anatolian Seljuk sultan Kilij Arslan II. Thus Amasya entered the Turkish-Islamic age from a millennia-long age stretching from Rome to Byzantium with an unbroken settlement tradition.

Rock Tombs and the Fortress

The largest physical trace of these ages is the town itself. The rock tombs of the kings of Pontus and the crag of Harşena Castle continued to define the town's silhouette in Roman and Byzantine times as well. These carved structures, which Strabo mentions as the tombs of the kings, consist of tomb units cut until their surroundings were wholly separated from the rock and then joined to the main rock again by stairs; eighteen units in all are mentioned. Documents on how these structures were used in Roman and Byzantine times are limited, but the defensive value of the fortress and the rock allowed the town to keep living in every age.

Chronology

About 70 BC: Roman forces under Lucullus take Amasya from Pontus.

64-63 BC: Pompey reorganises the region; the province of Pontus and Bithynia is created and Mithridates VI Eupator dies.

39 BC: Antonius gives the Mithridatic district, which includes Amasya, to Darius, son of Pharnaces II.

25 BC: Augustus founds the province of Galatia; the district of Mithridates Galaticus is attached to it. Another account places Amasya's joining of Galatia around 3-2 BC.

AD 62: Nero makes the eastern part of the old kingdom of Pontus a province; Amasya remains in the district of Pontus Galaticus.

AD 81-96: Civic coins are known to have been struck at Amasya from the time of Domitian.

About AD 112: Trajan attaches Pontus to the province of Cappadocia.

AD 222-235: The time of Severus Alexander; the last known period of coin minting at Amasya.

About AD 295: Under Diocletian's reorganisation Diospontus (later Helenopontus) becomes a separate province.

306 (287 in some accounts): Theodore, a soldier of a military unit, is martyred at Amasya.

321-324: Basil, bishop of Amasya, is martyred under Licinius.

380-390: Asterius becomes bishop of Amasya; his sermons survive.

667-668: Saborios, strategos of the Armeniakon, revolts; the first definite record of the thema.

712: The Arabs take Amasya.

718: The Arabs fail to take Constantinople; the Taurus line becomes a frontier zone.

717-741: The time of Leo III; Byzantium recovers Amasya.

1073-1075: Roussel de Bailleul seizes the region; Alexios Komnenos restores Byzantine authority in 1075.

About 1075: Some accounts place Amasya's passing to the Danishmendids at this date.

1317: The metropolitan Callistus cannot enter Amasya because of a violent Turkmen attack; the metropolis is moved to Limnia.

Sources

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Other sources

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