Safranbolu lies in the north-west of Anatolia, in the region the ancients called Paphlagonia, and its known past can be dated back to about 3000 BC. In this country between the Kızılırmak and the Filyos, the Hittites, the Phrygians, the Lydians at one remove, the Persians, the Hellenistic kingdoms of Pontos, the Romans, the Seljuks, the Çobanoğulları, the Candarids and the Ottomans all held sway in turn.
The hill where the city history museum — the old government house — now stands came under firm Turkish control in 1196, taken by Melik Muhiddin Mesut, son of the Seljuk sultan Kılıç Arslan II. The town changed hands not only between civilisations but between Turks and Byzantines, and even between the Turkish principalities and the Ottomans.
What we know of that period comes from archive documents and, above all, from travellers. Ibn Battuta recorded his stay in the castle of Safranbolu during the 1332 leg of his Anatolian journey, and his account of meeting Ali Bey, son of the Candarid ruler Süleyman, is brief but telling. His notes matter most for what they describe on the ground: the castle as a military post, the Kalealtı settlement below it and the Cami-i Kebir quarter.
The buildings came with the Candarids. Süleyman Paşa brought Safranbolu under his rule in 1326 and gave the town the oldest religious and civil buildings still standing here — the bath, the medrese, the mosque. The Ottomans probably took it first in 1354, under Şehzade Gazi Süleyman Paşa, son of Orhan Gazi; it changed hands with the Candarids again afterwards, and Ottoman rule was settled for good in 1423 under Murad II, when Safranbolu became a kaza of the Bolu sancak. The Ottoman timber houses that put the town on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the Cinci han and bath, and the Bulak cave each have their own page below.
