History
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Bronze Age[edit]
Although the exact date of its establishment cannot be determined, its history dates back to 3000 BC. According to old sources, the ancient name of Kütahya was Kotiaeon, Cotiaeum and Koti.
Iron Age[edit]
In the Iron Age the province was settled by the Phrygians. The Phrygians, who came to Anatolia in 1200 BC, entered the lands of the Hittite Empire and organized as a state. In 676 BC, the Cimmerians defeated the Phrygian King Midas III and dominated the area and its surroundings. During the time when Alyattes was the King of Lydia, the Cimmerian rule was replaced by the Lydian rule.
Classical Age[edit]
In 334 BC, Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persians near the Biga River, established dominance in the region. With the death of Alexander in 323 BC, the region passed to Antigonos I. In 133 BC, Cotyaion/Kotyaion (Greek: Κοτύαιον) came under Roman rule and was called Cotyaeum. Cotyaeum became part of the Roman province of Phrygia Salutaris, but in about 820 became the capital of the new province of Phrygia Salutaris III.
The ancient city of Aizanoi in Kütahya
An artifact in Kütahya Archaeological Museum
An Amazon Sarcophagus in Kütahya Archaeological Museum
Byzantine Period[edit]
Church history[edit]
The most famous event of Christian Church history in Kütahya is the martyrdom of Menas the Great Martyr and Wonderworker. The future saint Menas was born in 285 AD into a Christian family in Niceous, Egypt. He became a professional soldier in the Roman Legion at age 15 and served in Phrygia during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (284-305 AD). In 298, the Roman emperor published an edict ordering everyone to worship and sacrifice the Roman gods and the Legions were ordered to capture and persecute Christians. As a Christian, Menas could not sacrifice to the Roman gods or persecute his fellow Christians, so he threw down his soldiers belt (a symbol of rank) and left the military after three years of service. Menas went to a deserted mountain as a hermit to devote his whole life to Christ. In 304 AD after 5 years of desert solitude, Menas came to Cotyaeum during a feast to Roman god and declared that he was Christian before Pyrrhus, the Prefect of Phrygia. The Prefect imprisoned Menas and ordered his torture and beheading on a rock outside the city that is still remembered in Kütahya today.
After becoming the capital of Phrygia Salutaris, the bishopric of Cotyaeum changed from being a suffragan of Synnada to a metropolitan see, although with only three suffragan sees according to the Notitia Episcopatuum of Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise (886-912), which is dated to around 901–902. According to the 6th-century historian John Malalas, Cyrus of Panopolis, who had been prefect of the city of Constantinople, was sent there as bishop by Emperor Theodosius II (408-50), after four bishops of the city had been killed. (Two other sources make Cyrus bishop of Smyrna instead.[citation needed]) The bishopric of Cotyaeum was headed in 431 by Domnius, who attended the Council of Ephesus, and in 451 by Marcianus, who was at the Council of Chalcedon. A source cited by Le Quien says that a bishop of Kotyaion named Eusebius was at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Cosmas was at the Third Council of Constantinople in 680–681. Ioannes, a deacon, represented an unnamed bishop of Kotyaion at the Trullan Council in 692. Bishop Constantinus was at the Second Council of Nicaea in 692, and Bishop Anthimus at the Photian Council of Constantinople (879),
After the city had fallen to the Germiyanids, in 1370 the metropolitanate of Kotyaion assumed the churches of Hierapolis, Chonae and Synnada, while in 1384 Kotyaion was assumed by the metropolitanate of Laodicea and in 1386 by the metropolitanate of Prousa. No longer a residential bishopric, Kotyaion is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.
Justinian's fortifications[edit]
Under the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I the town was fortified with a double-line of walls and citadel.[citation needed]
Fall to the Seljuks, Germiyanids, Timurids and Ottomans[edit]
In 1071 Kotyaion briefly fell to the Seljuks, but was later recaptured by the Byzantines. The city was sacked by the Seljuks sometime after 1180, following the death of emperor Manuel I Komnenos. It was captured by the Germiyanids and later by Timur-Leng, until it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1428.
Ottoman Period[edit]
It was initially the center of Anatolia Eyalet until 1827, when the Hüdavendigâr Eyalet was formed. It was later center of the sancak within the borders of the Hüdavendigâr Vilayet in 1867. Troops of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt briefly occupied it in 1833.
Armenian ceramics[edit]
During this time a large number of Christian Armenians settled in Kotyaion/Kütahya, where they came to dominate the tile-making and ceramic-ware production. Kütahya emerged as a renowned center for the Ottoman ceramic industry, producing tiles and faience for mosques, churches, and official buildings in places all over the Middle East. The craft industry of Armenian ceramics in Jerusalem was started by Armenian ceramicist David Ohannessian [he], master of a Kütahya workshop between 1907 and 1915, who was deported from Kütahya in early 1916, during the Armenian genocide, and rediscovered, living as a refugee in Aleppo in 1918, by Sir Mark Sykes, a former patron. Sykes connected him to the new military governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, and arranged for Ohannessian to travel to Jerusalem to participate in a planned British restoration of the Dome of the Rock.
Today two families originating from Kutahya, the Balian and Karakashian families continue the tradition of Armenian Ceramics in East Jerusalem. The Balian studio is known under the name the Armenian Ceramics -Balian and that is where the late Marie Balian transformed the art of ceramic tile murals to a much higher level of art than imagined.[citation needed]
Fortifications[edit]
The fortifications of the city and its environs, which were vital to the security and economic prosperity of the region, were built and rebuilt from antiquity through the Ottoman period. However, the dates assigned to the many periods of construction and the assessment of the military architecture are open to various interpretations.
Late 19th- and early 20th-century history[edit]
At the end of the nineteenth century, the population of the kaza of Kütahya numbered 120,333, of which 4,050 were Greeks, 2,533 Armenians, 754 Catholics, and the remainder Turks and other Muslim ethnicities. Kütahya and the district itself were spared the ravages of the Armenian genocide of 1915, when the Ottoman governor, Faruk Ali Bey, went to extreme lengths to protect the Armenian population from being uprooted and sent away on death marches. However, Faruk Ali Bey was removed from office in March 1916, and the city's Armenian community suffered in the aftermath under the rule of his successor, Ahmet Mufti Bey. Kütahya was occupied by the Greek Army on 17 July 1921 after Battle of Kütahya–Eskişehir during the Turkish War of Independence and was then captured in ruins by the Turkish Army after the Battle of Dumlupınar during the Great Offensive on 30 August 1922.
