Çorum in the Byzantine, Danishmendid, Seljuk and Beylik Periods

The Danishmendname traditions about the origin of Çorum’s name and people are covered on the History and Çorum’s name and its origin pages. This page, based on the second part of Çorum Tarihi (Turkish, “History of Çorum”), written by Ömür Bakırer (p. 59-92), covers the same centuries from a different angle — the debate over Çorum’s Byzantine-era identity, its administrative and economic condition under the Danishmendids, Seljuks and beyliks, and the documented history of Çorum Castle. According to the book, almost no monumental structure from this era survives in Çorum, so its medieval history rests largely on assumptions and comparison with neighbouring regions (Çorum Tarihi, p. 61).

The Byzantine period: the Euchaita, Nikonya and Yankoniye debate

According to the book, Çorum’s Byzantine-era identity remains disputed among scholars. In 1890 W.M. Ramsay argued that the city of Euchaita, named in Byzantine sources, was Çorum itself; in 1903 J.G.C. Anderson instead proposed the nearby village of Elvan Çelebi, and in 1926 H. Gregoire and H. Cumont proposed the village of Avkat. More recently, S. Vryonis repeated the view that Euchaita was Çorum, and also attached the name Yankoniya to the city (Çorum Tarihi, p. 61-62). Meanwhile the names Nikonya and Yankonya, mentioned without justification by the Amasya historian H. Hüsamettin, were repeated by other researchers; T. Anakök relates an undocumented tradition that the Arab commander Müslime renamed Çorum during the 715-717 Arab campaign. M.H. Yınanç, for his part, argues these names derive from the Danishmendname but have no connection to the city. The book concludes that no document proves — or disproves — that Çorum was Euchaita, Nikonya or Yankoniye, leaving the naming question unresolved (Çorum Tarihi, p. 62).

The cult of St Theodore, trade and the road network

If Euchaita is accepted as Çorum or its immediate vicinity, the city appears to have flourished religiously and economically in the Byzantine period as the centre of the cult of St Theodore Stretelatis; donations brought by pilgrims and the fairs held on the saint’s feast day boosted the city’s population and its markets, and Euchaita is compared in this respect to Ankara and Amasya (Çorum Tarihi, p. 65-66). Scholars disagree on when the city was raised to a metropolitan see: Ramsay proposes 886-911 in one place and 886-959 in another, while Vryonis points to the 11th century (Çorum Tarihi, p. 64). Euchaita is recorded as a stop on two major routes of its time: the north-south “Trade Road” running from Amisos (Samsun) to Caesareia (Kayseri), and the east-west “Pilgrims’ Road” running from Nicomedia (İzmit) via Gangra (Çankırı) and Andrapa (İskilip) to Euchaita and on to Amaseia (Amasya) (Çorum Tarihi, p. 66-67).

No Byzantine-period structure survives in Çorum itself, but some inscriptions and column fragments reused as building material in the castle walls point to Roman- and Byzantine-era structures, and perhaps a fortress, having once stood in the area. The book suggests that if a Byzantine castle was built here, it could date either to the 7th century, under the “theme” system set up against Arab raids, or to the reign of Emperor Michael III (after the 860s) (Çorum Tarihi, p. 67-68).

The Danishmendid conquest (1075) and naming traditions

The book reports two differing traditions about the Danishmendid conquest of Çorum and its region. Per the Danishmendname, Emir Danishmend Ahmed Gazi, after taking part in the 1071 Battle of Manzikert, was tasked with conquering the region; he took Tokat and Zile in 1073, then Amasya and, in 1075, Çorum. In another version of this tradition, an assault led by Çavlı Bey on Ahmed Gazi’s behalf was repelled with help the Byzantine governor Nestor received from neighbouring cities, and Ahmed Gazi himself conquered the city in 1075 (Çorum Tarihi, p. 68). A second view in the book, however, holds that the true conqueror of the region was not Emir Danishmend Ahmed Gazi but one of Melikshah’s commanders, Emir Artuk or Emir Tutak; Ahmed Gazi was appointed emir over the region only after the conquest (Çorum Tarihi, p. 68-69).

On the origin of the city’s name, the book sets side by side the Danishmendname’s “Cürümlü” (“guilty”) turning into “Çorumlu” tradition, and the tradition that Ahmed Gazi settled the Çorumlu clan of the Oghuz Alayuntlu tribe here under its chief İlyas Bey; per the latter, the settlement was known as Çorumlu after the clan, and only became “Çorum” after the Islamic year 1000 (1591-92). Evliya Çelebi, meanwhile, traces the name to the words “Çorlu” and “Çevri-Rum” (Çorum Tarihi, p. 69-70).

The Danishmendid and Seljuk periods, and the “sleepy town”

The Danishmendids ruled the Yeşilırmak and Kelkit river basins as vassals of the Seljuks of Anatolia from 1095 to 1176, expanding their territory between 1127 and 1142 to include Ankara, Çankırı, Kastamonu, Çorum and Yozgat. The beylik was annexed to Seljuk territory in 1174 by Kılıç Arslan II, after which Çorum became part of the Sivas-centred province of Danişmendiye (Çorum Tarihi, p. 70-71). Per the book, however, Çorum lacks any monumental structure from this period, unlike neighbouring Sivas, Amasya and Tokat; the reason given is that the town fell outside the two main caravan routes linking Anatolia to the Black Sea ports (west: Ankara-Çankırı-Kastamonu-Taşköprü-Sinop; east: Kırşehir-Yozgat-Turhal-Amasya-Ladik-Samsun), so no caravanserai was built near it either. The book also cites F. Sümer’s view that the true regional centre in Seljuk times was Karahisar Demirli, with the town of Çorum only developing under the Ottomans; another view simply describes the town as “sleepy” under both the Seljuks and the beyliks (Çorum Tarihi, p. 71-72, 80-81). After the 15th century, once the Bursa-Tabriz trade route grew in importance, Çorum became a stop along it (Çorum Tarihi, p. 72).

The Mongol invasion, and the Eretna and Kadı Burhaneddin beyliks

After defeating the Seljuk army at Köse Dağ in 1243, the Mongols began stationing occupying forces in Anatolia from 1256 onward; the region including Çorum, together with a broad area stretching from Kayseri to Çankırı, was governed by Mongol-appointed general governors as the province of Rum. After the mid-14th-century breakup of the Ilkhanid state, the Eretna beylik (1341) and then the Kadı Burhaneddin beylik (1380) were founded in the region (Çorum Tarihi, p. 72-73). Following Eretna’s death in 1352 his beylik weakened, and in the 1360s Çorum, İskilip and Osmancık passed to the beylik of the Amasya ruler Şadgeldi Pasha (Çorum Tarihi, p. 73). Kadı Burhaneddin, having taken over Eretna’s territory in 1380, came to control the Bursa-Tabriz trade route the Ottomans were trying to develop. In response, around July 1392 Sultan Bayezid I’s army was defeated by Kadı Burhaneddin at Kırkdilim, on the Çorumlu plain, and Prince Ertuğrul died in the battle; a second Ottoman campaign soon managed to retake Çorum, Kastamonu, Osmancık, Merzifon and Amasya and their surroundings (Çorum Tarihi, p. 73-74).

The book notes that a sizeable Kara Tatar population lived in the Çorum region during this period. Timur relocated some of them when he withdrew from Anatolia in 1404; after taking the throne at Osmancık in 1416, Çelebi Mehmed exiled the Kara Tatar clans of Çorum and İskilip to Rumelia, settling them around Filibe (Plovdiv). Following the conquest of Trabzon in 1461, some of Çorum’s population was in turn resettled there (Çorum Tarihi, p. 74-75).

Çorum Castle and the pulpit of the Great Mosque

Bearing no inscription and of unknown exact date, Çorum Castle is regarded as either a Danishmendid or Seljuk structure and the only original medieval building to survive. The earliest surviving document about it dates to 1571; a document from 1577 refers to it as “the pious endowment of Sultan Süleyman” and shows the castle contained four neighbourhoods, while a document from 1609 records 120,000 akçe allocated for building a suburb (varoş) outside it. Evliya Çelebi, visiting Çorum in the 17th century, describes the castle as a small Seljuk structure built by Sultan Kılıç Arslan. Travellers W.F. Ainsworth and W.J. Hamilton, passing through in 1842, observed numerous reused marble columns, cross-marked gravestones and inscriptions built into the walls, which they took as traces of an early Christian settlement (Çorum Tarihi, p. 75-77). Another medieval survival in the city is the carved wooden pulpit (minbar) of the Great Mosque, dated 1307; the mosque’s original structure is dated to the late 13th century, under Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad III, while the pulpit is thought to have been brought, probably, from the nearby village of Karahisar (Çorum Tarihi, p. 77).

Karahisar Demirli and the Elvan Çelebi lodge

Despite the scarcity of architectural remains in Çorum itself, the settlement of Karahisar Demirli (Kalehisar), about 5 km northeast of Alaca, has yielded the remains of a madrasa, caravanserai and bathhouse dated to the 13th-14th centuries. Said to have been an important administrative centre in Seljuk times, Karahisar’s Hüsamiye Madrasa is linked to a 1266 endowment deed by Hüsameddin Timurtash; the caravanserai is thought to have served travellers at the midpoint of the old Çorum-Yozgat road (Çorum Tarihi, p. 77-79). The book also covers in detail the remains of a dervish lodge (zaviye) and tomb (türbe) at Elvan Çelebi (also known as Tekke) village, north of Mecitözü district: the inscription on the lodge yields a date of 681 AH/1282-83, and that on the tomb 707 AH/1307. Per the book, Elvan Çelebi was a grandson of Baba (Şeyh) İlyas, a follower of Baba İshak of Khorasan, and may have founded the lodge here by Islamizing a former Christian shrine (Çorum Tarihi, p. 79-80). These dates differ from the 1352 founding date given on the site’s Elvan Çelebi page; this discrepancy between sources is simply noted here.

The book concludes that Çorum passed through the 13th and 14th centuries amid religious and political upheaval and frequent changes of ruler, a disorder that, in its view, kept the region from the kind of sustained development that would have left lasting cultural traces (Çorum Tarihi, p. 80-81).

Sources

• Çorum Tarihi (History of Çorum), 5th Hittite Festival Committee; ed. Çorum Municipality City Archive, 3rd ed., Çorum Municipality Cultural Publications, Çorum 2020, ISBN 978-605-84272-4-2 (Part 1, Section 2: “Çorum in the Byzantine, Danishmendid, Seljuk and Beylik Periods,” by Ömür Bakırer), p. 59-92. https://www.corum.bel.tr/public/uploads/2026/01/corumtarihi.pdf

Frequently asked questions

Which Byzantine city is Çorum identified with?

According to Çorum Tarihi (Turkish, 'History of Çorum'), scholars disagree: in 1890 W.M. Ramsay argued that the Byzantine city of Euchaita was Çorum itself, a view S. Vryonis later repeated; but J.G.C. Anderson (1903) proposed the nearby village of Elvan Çelebi, and H. Gregoire and H. Cumont (1926) proposed the village of Avkat. No document proves the matter either way (Çorum Tarihi, p. 61-62).

What kind of settlement was Çorum in the Seljuk and beylik periods?

Per Çorum Tarihi, the town lay off the era's main caravan routes (the western route via Ankara-Çankırı-Kastamonu-Taşköprü to Sinop, and the eastern route via Kırşehir-Yozgat-Turhal-Amasya-Ladik to Samsun), so it never developed the way neighbouring Sivas, Amasya and Tokat did; sources describe it as a 'sleepy town' (Çorum Tarihi, p. 71-72).

What was the Battle of Kırkdilim?

Per Çorum Tarihi, around July 1392 the army of Sultan Bayezid I was defeated by Kadı Burhaneddin at Kırkdilim, on the Çorumlu plain; Prince Ertuğrul died in the battle. A second Ottoman campaign soon retook Çorum and its surroundings (Çorum Tarihi, p. 74).