Kastamonu

Kastamonu lies in a mountain valley of the western Pontic range, on the road between Ankara and the Black Sea port of Sinop. A Byzantine town until the 13th century, it was then ruled by a Turkmen beylik, and in 1309 the Candarids took it, making it the seat of a beylik that also held Sinop and Safranbolu. Ibn Battuta stayed forty days in the city in the 1330s and found it one of the largest and finest towns, with plentiful goods and low prices.

For the next century the Candarid beys balanced between the Ottomans, the ruler of Sivas and Timur. Copper and iron from the mines around Küre were shipped from Sinop to Genoese and Venetian merchants, and the Candarids struck copper coins with two fish on them. Most of the town's baths, caravanserais, mosques and madrasas date from this age. In 1423 İsfendiyar Bey made terms with Murad II and kept Kastamonu as a tribute-paying vassal. Mehmed II absorbed the beylik in 1461, and Suleiman the Magnificent later made Kastamonu the centre of an Ottoman province.