East Taurus

Divriği lies in the mountain country of the eastern Taurus, where the Çaltısuyu descends toward the Karasu and the Euphrates. The town occupies a gentle slope on the river’s south bank, surrounded by dry ridges and valleys. Hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters define the upper valley. Iron ore in the neighboring hills gave the district value beyond the produce of its modest fields, while roads followed the river toward Malatya and the wider Anatolian interior.

In the ninth century the place was known as Abrik. Karbeas, leader of the Paulicians, fortified it around 850 with support from Arab rulers and the emir of Malatya, making it a refuge and capital. Byzantine forces later called it Tephrike and recovered it under Basil I, when it was briefly renamed Leontokome and made the seat of a military province. The fortress remained the focus of a frontier landscape disputed by Byzantine, Armenian and Islamic powers.

After the Battle of Manzikert, Divriği passed into the orbit of the Seljuks and then the Mengüjekids. That dynasty built the Great Mosque and Hospital in the thirteenth century, covering them with carved portals, geometric reliefs and stone vaults. A medieval castle, mostly preserved in its thirteenth-century form, still overlooks the town. Mosque, hospital and citadel made the mountain settlement a centre of government, charity and Islamic learning far from the larger plains.