OYA PANCAROĞLU
(Professor, Department of History, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey)
Mount Argaeus/Erciyes, the extinct volcano that rises to a height of 3917 meters in the central Anatolian plateau, has had a long history of sanctity, intertwined with Caesarea/Kayseri, the urban settlement to its immediate north. This lecture will trace the evidence for the attribution of holy status to the mountain from the Bronze Age onward, focusing particularly on images and implements from the Roman period, the subsequent Christianization of the mountain by the introduction of martyr cults in late antiquity and the later layer of Muslim appropriation and partial re-identification of significant sites on the foothills in the medieval period. The evolution of the cults associated with the mountain will be considered in tandem with the transformation of the urban settlement known in antiquity as Mazaca to the Cappadocian metropolis of Caesarea in the late Roman period and its Byzantine, Danishmendid, and Seljuk afterlives.
Sponsored by Kemal H. Karpat Center for Turkish Studies (KCTS) and Department of History