Sivas
(2002 pop. 259,000). Sivas, capital of the province of Sivas (2002 pop. 779,000), is located northeast of central Turkey, 350 kilometers east of Ankara in the valley of the Kizel Irmak River. Inhabited since Hittite times, the city became historically significant under Emperor Diocletian as the Roman city of Sebaste, capital of Armenia Minor. The Armenian king Sennacherib John of Vaspurakan (Van) ceded his land to Byzantine emperor Basil II in 1021. The city was then lost to the Turkmen Danishmenid dynasty (1155–1192) after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. In 1174, the city was captured by Rum Seljuk Kilic Arslan II and periodically served as capital of the Seljuk empire along with Konya. Under Seljuk rule, Sivas was an important center of trade and site of a citadel, along with mosques and madrasahs (colleges), four of which survive today and one of which houses the Sivas Museum. The city fell to the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I (1389–1402) in 1398, was lost to Timur (Tamerlane; 1336–1405) in 1400, and was recaptured by the Ottomans in 1408. Under the Ottomans, Sivas served as the administrative center of the province of Rum until about the late nineteenth century. Upon the return of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881–1938), the founder of the Turkish Republic, from Amasya, the Congress of Sivas, considered a turning point in the formation of the Turkish Republic, was held in September 1919. It was at this congress that Kemal's position as chair of the executive committee of the national resistance was confirmed. Sivas is located on an important rail line linking the cities of Kayseri, Samsun, and Erzurum. Its economy is largely based on agriculture.
Further Reading
Faroqhi, Suraiya. (1960) "Siwas." In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2d ed. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 689–691.
(1999). Statistical Yearbook of Turkey, 1998. Ankara, Turkey: Devlet Istatistik Enstitusu.
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Sivas from Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. Copyright © 2001-2006 by Macmillan Reference USA, an imprint of the Gale Group. All rights reserved.
