As a city Kırıkkale is very new, but the ground it stands on is not. Caves, underground cities and mounds have been found in different parts of the province, and those remains confirm that this has been a settled area for many centuries.
The Turkish period begins after Manzikert. The country around Böhrek mountain, inside the province, was among the first places fought over in the effort to make Anatolia a Turkish and Islamic land, and Balışeyh, founded in 1120, is one of the earliest Turkish-Islamic settlements in Anatolia. In the following centuries various Oghuz Turkmen tribes migrating from Central Asia were settled in this region.
One of them gave the province its name. Ottoman archive documents record that the Oğuzhan clan was settled in the district then pronounced Kırıkkal'a, near Ankara — which shows the name Kırıkkala was in use here 250 to 300 years ago.
