Afyonkarahisar Castle

Afyonkarahisar Castle crowns a rocky summit in Kale Mah., Merkez, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey. The first fortifications on the outcrop were raised in the second millennium BCE by Hittite builders; around 1350 BCE a fortress was constructed on the rock for its defensive advantage, and the Hittite king Mursilis II (c. 1320 BCE) is recorded as having built the original stronghold. The site has been proposed as the Hittite place known as Hapanuwa in the Arzawa lands, occupied by Mursilis II in the fourteenth century BCE.

After the Bronze Age the hill continued in use: a Phrygian-period settlement is attested in the early first millennium BCE. In later centuries the settlement and fortress appear under the name Akroinos and passed to Pergamon and then into Roman control. From 395 CE the town and its stronghold lay within the Byzantine world. The Seljuks captured and substantially enlarged the fortress in the twelfth century, adapting its defenses, and from 1428 the site belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The castle was repaired and altered repeatedly; Selim II ordered renovations in 1573, and the name Afyonkarahisar was used for the place. The castle has undergone additional restorations in later periods, including modern reconstruction by the Turkish government. The place name is often rendered as “Black Opium Castle,” and the town’s official name was changed from Afyon to Afyonkarahisar in 2004.