Devrekani

Devrekani lies in the mountains of northern Anatolia, in the Kastamonu country behind the Black Sea coast. Despite that regional designation, the site occupies high interior country at about 1,111 metres above sea level. Its setting is therefore closer in character to the elevated Anatolian hinterland than to the humid coastal strip. Deep valleys and forested ridges separate it from the sea, while the rivers that rise here run down toward the Black Sea.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Kastamonu was the centre of the Turkmen Candar dynasty, whose beylik held the mountains between the Black Sea and the central plateau until the Ottomans annexed it in 1461. Villagers lived by raising livestock, growing grain in the valleys and cutting timber from the forests, which supplied the shipyards of the Black Sea coast. The copper mines of Küre, in the same mountains, were among the Ottoman state's important sources of the metal, and roads and mule tracks linked the highland villages with Kastamonu, the coast and Ankara.