Derinkuyu Underground City 9843 Nevit Enhancer

The Derinkuyu underground city (

Cappadocian Greek Cappadocian Greek ( cpg, Καππαδοκικά, Καππαδοκική Διάλεκτος), also known as Cappadocian or Asia Minor Greek, is a dialect of modern Greek heavily influenced by Turkish, originally spoken in Cappadocia (modern-day ...

: ''Malakopi''; tr, Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri) is an ancient multi-level underground city in the

Derinkuyu Derinkuyu ("deep well") (Cappadocian Greek: Μαλακοπή; Latin: ''Malakopí'') is a town and district of Nevşehir Province in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey. According to 2010 census, population of the district is 22,114 of which 10, ...

district in Nevşehir Province, Turkey, extending to a depth of approximately . It is large enough to have sheltered as many as 20,000 people together with their livestock and food stores. It is the largest excavated underground city in Turkey and is one of several underground complexes found throughout

Cappadocia Cappadocia or Capadocia (; tr, Kapadokya), is a historical region in Central Anatolia, Turkey. It largely is in the provinces Nevşehir, Kayseri, Aksaray, Kırşehir, Sivas and Niğde. According to Herodotus, in the time of the Ionian Revo ...

Features

The underground city at Derinkuyu could be closed from the inside with large stone doors. Each floor could be closed off separately. The city could accommodate up to 20,000 people and had amenities found in other underground complexes across Cappadocia, such as

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented grapes. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different ...

and oil presses,

stable A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals and livestock. There are many different types of stables in use today; the ...

s, cellars, storage rooms,

refectories A refectory (also frater, frater house, fratery) is a dining room, especially in monasteries, boarding schools and academic institutions. One of the places the term is most often used today is in graduate seminaries. The name derives from the Lat ...

, and

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common type ...

s. Unique to the Derinkuyu complex and located on the second floor is a spacious room with a

barrel-vaulted A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

ceiling. It has been reported that this room was used as a religious school and the rooms to the left were studies. Starting between the third and fourth levels are a series of vertical staircases, which lead to a cruciform church on the lowest (fifth) level. The large ventilation shaft appears to have been used as a well. The shaft provided water to both the villagers above and, if the outside world was not accessible, to those in hiding.

History

Caves might have been built initially in the soft volcanic rock of the Cappadocia region by the

Phrygians The Phrygians ( Greek: Φρύγες, ''Phruges'' or ''Phryges'') were an ancient Indo-European speaking people, who inhabited central-western Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) in antiquity. They were related to the Greeks. Ancient Greek authors use ...

in the 8th–7th centuries BC, according to the Turkish Department of Culture. When the Phrygian language died out in

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

times, replaced with its close relative the

Greek language Greek ( el, label= Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy ( Calabria and Salento), souther ...

, the inhabitants, now

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...

, expanded their caverns to deep multiple-level structures adding the chapels and

Greek inscriptions The Greek-language inscriptions and epigraphy are a major source for understanding of the society, language and history of ancient Greece and other Greek-speaking or Greek-controlled areas. Greek inscriptions may occur on stone slabs, pottery ost ...

. The city at Derinkuyu was fully formed in the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

era, when it was heavily used as protection from

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

s during the

Arab–Byzantine wars The Arab–Byzantine wars were a series of wars between a number of Muslim Arab dynasties and the Byzantine Empire between the 7th and 11th centuries AD. Conflict started during the initial Muslim conquests, under the expansionist Rashidun an ...

(780–1180 AD). The city was connected with other underground cities through many kilometers of tunnels. Some artifacts discovered in these underground settlements belong to the Middle Byzantine Period, between the 5th and the 10th centuries. These cities continued to be used by the Christian natives as protection from the Mongolian incursions of

Timur Timur ; chg, ''Aqsaq Temür'', 'Timur the Lame') or as ''Sahib-i-Qiran'' ( 'Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction'), his epithet. ( chg, ''Temür'', 'Iron'; 9 April 133617–19 February 1405), later Timūr Gurkānī ( chg, ''Temür Kü ...

in the 14th century. After the region fell to the

Ottomans The Ottoman Turks ( tr, Osmanlı Türkleri), were the Turkic founding and sociopolitically the most dominant ethnic group of the Ottoman Empire ( 1299/1302–1922). Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks remains scarce, ...

, the cities were used as refuges (

: ) by the natives from the Turkish Muslim rulers. As late as the 20th century, the local population, Cappadocian Greeks, were still using the underground cities to escape periodic

persecutions Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these ter ...

. For example,

Richard MacGillivray Dawkins Richard MacGillivray Dawkins FBA (24 October 1871 – 4 May 1955) was a British archaeologist. He was associated with the British School at Athens, of which he was Director between 1906 and 1913. Early life He was the son of Rear-Admiral Rich ...

, a Cambridge linguist who conducted research from 1909 to 1911 on the Cappadocian Greek speaking natives in the area, recorded such an event as having occurred in 1909: "When the news came of the recent massacres at Adana, a great part of the population at Axo took refuge in these underground chambers, and for some nights did not venture to sleep above ground." In 1923, the Christian inhabitants of the region were expelled from Turkey and moved to Greece in the

population exchange between Greece and Turkey The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey ( el, Ἡ Ἀνταλλαγή, I Antallagí, ota, مبادله, Mübâdele, tr, Mübadele) stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at ...

, whereupon the tunnels were abandoned. In 1963, the tunnels were rediscovered after a resident of the area found a mysterious room behind a wall in his home while renovating. Further digging revealed access to the tunnel network. In 1969, the site was opened to visitors, with about half of the underground city currently accessible.

Other underground cities

Nevşehir Province has several other historical underground cities including

Kaymaklı Underground City Kaymakli Underground City ( Turkish: Kaymaklı; Cappadocian Greek: Ανακού) is contained within the citadel of Kaymakli in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. First opened to tourists in 1964, the village is about 19 km from Nevşeh ...

. The underground cities and structures are carved out of unique geological formations. They may have been used as hiding places during times of raids. The locations are now archaeological tourist attractions. They remain generally unoccupied. More than 200 underground cities of at least two levels have been discovered in the area between

Kayseri Kayseri (; el, Καισάρεια) is a large industrialised city in Central Anatolia, Turkey, and the capital of Kayseri province. The Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality area is composed of five districts: the two central districts of Kocasina ...

and

Nevşehir Nevşehir (from the Persian compound ''Now-shahr'' meaning "new city"), formerly Neapolis (Ancient Greek: Νεάπολις) and Muşkara, is a largely modern city and the capital district of Nevşehir Province in the Central Anatolia Region of ...

. Some 40 of those include three or more levels.

References

Bibliography

External links

Cavetowns and gorges of Cappadocia

Underground Cities of Cappadocia - Myth and Truth
in German)

Derinkuyu & The Underground Cities of Cappadocia
''Sometimes Interesting''. 9 May 2014 {{Coord, 38.3735, 34.7351, format=dms, region:TR_type:landmark, display=title Underground cities in Cappadocia Archaeological sites in Central Anatolia Christianity in the Byzantine Empire Buildings and structures in Nevşehir Province Nevşehir Tourist attractions in Nevşehir Province