History and Culture of Kirsehir, Explained

By All Over InformationUpdated August 10, 20268 min read

Kirsehir is a small city on the Central Anatolian steppe with an outsized place in Turkish history. It was a Seljuk provincial capital, the heart of the Ahi movement of artisan brotherhoods, and the home of poets whose verses shaped the Turkish language. Its modern fame belongs to the folk singer Neset Ertas, whose songs carried the melancholy of the plains to the whole country. This guide traces the layers of that story, from the Hittite-era hinterland to the living traditions of the present day.

The Steppe Setting

Kirsehir sits in a shallow basin on the Central Anatolian plateau, roughly halfway between Ankara and Kayseri, where the Kizilirmak bends around the city before curling north. The landscape is steppe: wheat fields, barley, sunflower in summer, and a wide sky that defines the light of the region.

The position shaped the city’s character. Kirsehir was never a great seaport or a fortress commanding a pass; it was a market town and a meeting place, a station on the roads that crossed Anatolia from east to west. That role made it receptive to traders, dervishes and craftsmen, which is exactly the population that later gave the city its historic fame.

The name itself is descriptive: it means something like “steppe city” or “city of the plains,” and the modern province of the same name covers a roughly circular patch of that steppe around the town.

Antiquity: From Hittite Hinterland to Mokissos

The steppe around Kirsehir has been settled for thousands of years. The mound at Kaman Kalehoyuk, excavated by Japanese archaeologists since 1986, revealed continuous occupation from the Bronze Age onward, with Hittite-era levels and evidence of the long-distance trade that crossed central Anatolia.

In Byzantine times the settlement was known as Mokissos, and it earned a footnote in imperial history: the emperor Justinian, in the sixth century, built a city on a mountain nearby and gave it his own name, a project that shows how much this inland region still mattered to the empire.

Roman roads and later trade routes passed through the area, connecting it to the greater cities of Cappadocia and Galatia. The archaeological record is rich but still emerging, and much of what fills the Kirsehir Museum comes from these ancient levels.

Kirsehir, Turkey — Photo by smuldur on Pixabay

The Seljuk Century: Cacabey and the Madrasa

The Seljuk sultanate of Rum, which ruled much of Anatolia from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, made Kirsehir one of its provincial towns, and the period left the city its most famous building. The Cacabey Mosque, completed in 1272, was commissioned by Nureddin Cibril, a Seljuk governor known as Caca Bey.

The building is a mosque-madrasa, an unusual combination in which the prayer hall and the school share one structure. Its tall brick minaret is a landmark, and the tower attached to the madrasa is thought to have been used as an observatory, reflecting the Seljuk enthusiasm for astronomy that also produced the observatory at Maragha.

The Seljuk age also brought the city its cultural signature: the arrival of the Ahi brotherhoods, the artisan guilds that would make Kirsehir famous across the Islamic world.

Ahi Evran and the Artisan Brotherhood

Ahi Evran, whose tomb stands in the center of Kirsehir, was a thirteenth-century preacher, leatherworker and organizer who gave the Ahi movement its name and its rules. The Ahis were guilds of craftsmen with a strong ethical code: honest work, solidarity, hospitality and care for the community, ideals drawn from Sufism and the futuwwa tradition.

Under Ahi discipline, Kirsehir’s workshops trained generations of tanners, weavers, smiths and bakers, and the city became known as the capital of the movement. The Ahi ethic influenced Ottoman guild organization and even, in the traditional telling, the founding ideals of the Ottoman state itself.

Today the Ahi tradition is remembered through the tomb complex, the annual commemoration week in September, and a living craft scene that still identifies with the brotherhood’s values.

Asik Pasa and the Poets of the Steppe

Kirsehir’s other great medieval son is the poet Asik Pasa, who died in the city in 1333 and is buried in a tiled tomb at the foot of the citadel hill. His major work, the Garib-name, is a long mystical poem written in Turkish at a time when learned men wrote in Persian or Arabic.

By choosing Turkish, Asik Pasa made a statement: that the language of ordinary Anatolians could carry serious literature. The Garib-name became one of the founding texts of early Ottoman Turkish literature, and its author is remembered as a key figure in the Turkish language’s slow rise as a literary medium.

His tomb, with its turquoise tiles, is a small and quiet place, and it remains a modest pilgrimage site for lovers of Turkish poetry. The hill beside it, the Kalesi, holds the ruins of the medieval citadel.

Ottoman Centuries: A Town on the Roads

After the Seljuks collapsed, Kirsehir passed through the hands of regional Turkish lords before the Ottomans absorbed the region in the fifteenth century. Under Ottoman rule it remained what it had always been: a provincial market town on the routes between Ankara, Kayseri and Sivas.

The Ottoman centuries were not dramatic ones for the city. It gained mosques, a bedesten and a modest position in the empire’s administration, and its crafts continued, but it never rivaled the great Ottoman cities. The quiet was broken occasionally by the revolts and movements that troubled central Anatolia, but for the most part Kirsehir settled into a long provincial rhythm.

That rhythm defined the town for four centuries, and it is visible in the old neighborhoods, where the houses of the nineteenth century still line the streets around the historic core.

The Republican Era: Province, Reversal, Restoration

The Turkish Republic inherited Kirsehir as part of the province of Ankara, and in the early years of the republic it was made a province in its own right. The story of the mid-century is remembered locally with some bitterness: in 1954, shortly after a general election in which the province voted against the ruling party, Kirsehir was absorbed into the newly created Nevsehir province.

Most historians read the decision as political punishment, and the move was widely protested. Three years later, after the following election, Kirsehir was restored as a province, and it has remained one ever since. The episode is a rare, well-documented example of a Turkish province being demoted and then reinstated.

For the people of Kirsehir the episode became part of local identity, a memory of standing up to power, and it is still told with a mixture of pride and irony in the city’s coffeehouses.

Neset Ertas: The Voice of the Bozlak

No account of Kirsehir’s culture can pass over Neset Ertas, the folk singer born in 1938 in the village of Kirtillar near the city. Ertas carried the bozlak tradition, the long, keening folk songs of central Anatolia, to national fame, singing of love, loss and the hard life of the steppe in the accent of his home region.

He was known as the Bozkirin Tezenesi, the plectrum of the steppe, for his masterful baglama playing, and his songs such as “Ah Yalan Dunya” became part of the shared memory of Turkey. He refused awards he felt were beneath his art and remained devoted to the plain people he sang for until his death in 2012.

His grave in Kirsehir has become a place of quiet pilgrimage, and his music, still played everywhere from weddings to radio stations, is the strongest thread connecting the city’s past to its present.

Living Culture: Kilims, Festivals and Daily Life

Contemporary Kirsehir lives easily with its history. The Ahi legacy surfaces in the craft shops and the September commemorations, the museum displays the region’s archaeology and ethnography, and the old market quarter still hums with the trade that has always defined the town.

The steppe calendar rules the year: harvest in summer, fairs in autumn, and long winter evenings of music and storytelling. Kirsehir kilims and woven goods are still made, and village life in the province keeps traditions alive that the city itself has partly left behind.

For visitors, the culture is most accessible through small things: a glass of tea in a steppe tea garden, the sound of a baglama from a passing car, the market in Mucur, and the quiet squares where the city’s eight centuries of history feel close at hand.

Where the Past Survives: Visiting the Layers

A single day can walk through all of Kirsehir’s history. Start at the Cacabey Mosque for the Seljuk century, cross the center to the Ahi Evran complex for the brotherhood, climb the hill for the view of the steppe, and end at the tomb of Asik Pasa.

The museum and the Kaman Kalehoyuk collections add the ancient layers, while a walk through the old quarters shows the Ottoman town. The history of Kirsehir is not behind glass; it is lived in the squares, the workshops and the songs, and it rewards the traveler who slows down enough to listen.

Frequently asked questions

Why is Kirsehir called the capital of the Ahi movement?

The Ahi brotherhoods of craftsmen, founded in the thirteenth century around the teachings of Ahi Evran, made Kirsehir their main center, and the tomb of Ahi Evran stands in the city today. The guilds’ ethics of honest work and solidarity spread across Anatolia and influenced Ottoman institutions, giving the small steppe city an outsized place in Turkish social history.

Who was Neset Ertas and why does he matter to Kirsehir?

Neset Ertas was the great folk singer of the central Anatolian bozlak tradition, born in 1938 in a village near Kirsehir. He brought the region’s songs to all of Turkey with his baglama playing and his warm, sorrowful voice, and he is buried in Kirsehir, where his grave remains a place of pilgrimage for music lovers.

What happened to Kirsehir in 1954?

After the 1954 general election, in which the province voted against the ruling Democrat Party, Kirsehir was merged into the newly created Nevsehir province, a decision widely seen as political punishment. Following the next election the decision was reversed, and Kirsehir was restored as a province in 1957, an episode still remembered locally with pride.

All Over Information

The All Over Information editorial team researches and writes practical English-language guides to Turkey. Facts are checked against official and local sources before publication, prices are published as dated ranges rather than quotes, and guides are revised when things change. We accept no sponsored posts, paid placements or paid links.