Keskin

Keskin lies on the high steppe of Central Anatolia, at an elevation of 1,123 metres, just south of the great bend of the Kızılırmak, the ancient Halys. The plateau is cold in winter and hot and dry in summer, a country of wheat fields, grazing land and low hills where settlement is tied to the interior rather than to the coasts that frame the peninsula.

After the Seljuk victory at Manzikert in 1071 Turkmen groups moved onto the Anatolian plateau, and the steppe around Keskin came into the Turkish world. Under the Ottomans it belonged to the region of Ankara, whose angora goats gave the fine mohair wool that was spun and exported to Europe. Villagers combined cereal farming with sheep and goat herding, and the roads that crossed the Kızılırmak linked the district with Ankara and the towns of the interior. Keskin was a small market for the produce of this rural plateau rather than a great city.