Gümüşhane

Gümüşhane lies in the mountains south of Trebizond, among steep valleys rich in silver, gold and copper. Its evocative Turkish name means “silver house”, recalling the rich mines that made the district valuable. The important road from the Black Sea to the eastern Anatolian plateau ran through this rugged country, connecting the mining settlements with the coast and the lands beyond the passes.

Under Sultan Süleyman I, the mining town was developed near the silver deposits. A mosque and houses were built on his orders in the sixteenth century, forming the nucleus of the settlement known as Süleymaniye. Mining drew Muslim, Greek and Armenian communities to the area; workers extracted and smelted ore, while others supplied the charcoal needed for the furnaces.

When Evliya Çelebi visited in 1647, he described the wealth of the mines and counted seventy silver workings, some operating and others closed. He noted that the mint was no longer working but had seen coins bearing the name Canca. The town remained a major mining centre through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with workers from surrounding villages engaged in mining, smelting and the cutting of timber for charcoal. Its prosperity depended on the labour of miners and the difficult movement of metal, fuel and supplies through the mountains.