Küre

Küre lies in the forested mountains north of Kastamonu, above the routes leading to the Black Sea. Its copper deposits made the district one of Anatolia's important mining centres. The name Küre-i Mamure appears in Ottoman records, while the older mining landscape supplied metal to craftsmen and merchants well beyond the surrounding valleys.

Genoese and Venetian merchants bought Küre copper in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the Candarid rulers held the region. Under the Ottomans, copper from the mines supplied metalworkers in Kastamonu and other towns, and reached markets in Iran and Mesopotamia. Records from the early nineteenth century describe the transport of the metal and its use by the palace and army, as well as the labour of miners and the villages connected with the mines. The workings tied this mountain district to the needs of cities and states far away.