Guide
The first forts at Erzurum go back to the Ottoman–Iranian war of the eighteenth century, but the largest of them were built from the beginning of the nineteenth, against Russian raids and invasions of eastern Anatolia. Twenty-one of them ring the city, set on hilltops with wide fields of view.
Each holds a headquarters, quarters for soldiers, training grounds, mess halls, cisterns and firing chambers; some are a single building and some a group of large ones joined together. They vary in size and in position, and the two most important are Mecidiye and Aziziye, immediately east of the city.
They are built of stone throughout, with soundness and use put ahead of architectural manner. Rooms stand side by side under a thick layer of earth. The assembly courtyards, stores and infirmary are placed on the side away from where an enemy would come. The barrack rooms occupy the widest part, laid out as connected rectangles three to four metres across and six to fourteen and a half metres deep; most are single-storey, though some were divided horizontally with wooden beams to gain space.
Mecidiye and Aziziye did the work they were built for in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78, remembered here as the War of '93, where they were critical in stopping the Russian advance.
