Pasinler or Basean (; ; ka, ბასიანი, tr; ; ; formerly Hasankale and Hesenqele 'the fortress of Hasan'), is a municipality and

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

Erzurum Province Erzurum Province () is a province and metropolitan municipality in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Its area is 25,006 km2, and its population is 749,754 (2022). The capital of the province is the city of Erzurum. It is the fourth lar ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

. Its area is 1,134 km², and its population is 27,055 (2022). It lies on the

Aras River The Aras is a transboundary river in the Caucasus. It rises in eastern Turkey and flows along the borders between Turkey and Armenia, between Turkey and the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan, between Iran and both Azerbaijan and Armenia, and, fin ...

. It is located east of the city of

Erzurum Erzurum (; ) is a List of cities in Turkey, city in eastern Anatolia, Turkey. It is the largest city and capital of Erzurum Province and is 1,900 meters (6,233 feet) above sea level. Erzurum had a population of 367,250 in 2010. It is the site of an ...

and is the site of Hasankale Castle (sometimes called Pasinler Castle). It was the birthplace of the Ottoman poet

Nef'i Nefʿī (نفعى) was the pen name (Ottoman Turkish: مخلص ''maḫlaṣ'') of an Ottoman poet and satirist whose real name was ʿOmer (عمر) (c. 1572, in Hasankale, Erzurum – 1635, in Istanbul). Biography Nefʿī came to the Ottoman cap ...

. The old name "Hasankale" may be based upon the

Aq Qoyunlu The Aq Qoyunlu or the White Sheep Turkomans (, ; ) was a culturally Persianate society, Persianate,Kaushik Roy, ''Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750'', (Bloomsbury, 2014), 38; "Post-Mongol Persia and Iraq were ruled by two trib ...

ruler

Uzun Hasan Uzun Hasan or Uzun Hassan (; February or March 1425 – January 6, 1478) was a ruler of the Turkoman (ethnonym), Turkoman Aq Qoyunlu state and is generally considered to be its strongest ruler. Hasan ruled between 1452 and 1478 and presided ove ...

or upon Hasan the governor of the region in the 1330s or after Küçük Hasan, grandson of Coban, who attacked the town in 1340.

History

The first ancient kingdom that had a control of this territory was Urartu, when it was called Biani. One of the versions of the name Pasinler - it is derived from the ancient tribe called

Phasians The Phasians ( ka, ფაზიელები ''Pazielebi''; ''Phasianoi''; ) were an ancient tribe located in the eastern part of Pontus. The Greek commander Xenophon, who encountered them during his march through Asia Minor to the Black Sea ...

(Phazians). The name of this tribe seems to have survived in latter-day regional toponyms –

Armenia Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia (country), Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to ...

n ''Passen'',

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

''Phasiane'',

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

n ''Basiani'', and Turkish ''Pasin''. Based upon pottery finds, Pasinler was part of the

Kingdom of Urartu Urartu was an Iron Age kingdom centered around the Armenian highlands between Lake Van, Lake Urmia, and Lake Sevan. The territory of the ancient kingdom of Urartu extended over the modern frontiers of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Armenia.Kleiss, Wo ...

during the

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

. The territory of Basean belonged to Greater Armenia from 4th century BC to 5th century AD and was part of an Armenian province - Ayrarat. According to the Armenian chronicler Movses Khorenatsi (5th century), this land was the family estate of the Armenian Ordun dynasty, established by Armenian King Vagharshak, who ruled in 117 - 138/140 AD. In the story of the Armenian chronicler Favstos Buzand (5th century), the thief of the Orduni clan attacked the power of King Khosrov III, seizing and destroying the royal house, as a result of which the princes of the Orduni clan were executed by order of Khosrov. Their ancestral lands, located in the area of Basean, with all their bounds, were given to the bishop of Basean, a native of Ordor. After AD 428 this land became part of Sasanian Armenia, right up to the Arab invasions in 7th-9th centuries. In 9th century Basean became part of

Bagratid Armenia Bagratid Armenia was an independent Armenian state established by Ashot I of the Bagratuni dynasty in the early 880s following nearly two centuries of foreign domination of Greater Armenia under Arab Umayyad and Abbasid rule. With each of t ...

. In the 10th century, the border between the Byzantine Empire and expanding early Georgian Kingdom of Tao-Klarjeti ran along the Aras river, therefore part of northern Basean/Basiani became a domain of the

Georgian Bagratids The Bagrationi dynasty (; ) is a royal dynasty which reigned in Georgia from the Middle Ages until the early 19th century, being among the oldest extant Christian ruling dynasties in the world. In modern usage, the name of the dynasty is someti ...

. In 1001, after the death of David Kuropalates, Basean/Basiani was acquired by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who annexed the Armenian lands (Tayk/Tao, Basean/Basiani), previously subdued by King David Kuropalates. and organised them into the

theme of Iberia Theme or themes may refer to: * Theme (Byzantine district), an administrative district in the Byzantine Empire governed by a Strategos * Theme (computing), a custom graphical appearance for certain software. * Theme (linguistics), topic * Theme ( ...

with the capital at Theodosiopolis. However, after the formation of the Georgian Kingdom,

Bagrat Bagrat (, in Western Armenian pronounced as Pakrad, ka, wikt:ბაგრატ, ბაგრატ) is a male name popular in Armenia. It is derived from the Old Persian ''Bagadāta'', "gift of God". The names of the Armenian Bagratuni dynasty, ...

’s son

George I George I or 1 may refer to: People * Patriarch George I of Alexandria (fl. 621–631) * George I of Constantinople (d. 686) * George of Beltan (d. 790) * George I of Abkhazia (ruled 872/3–878/9) * George I of Georgia (d. 1027) * Yuri Dolgoruk ...

inherited a longstanding claim to David's succession. While Basil was preoccupied with his Bulgarian campaigns, George gained momentum to invade Tayk/Tao and Basean/Basiani in 1014, which sparked his unsuccessful Byzantine-Georgian wars. Despite the territorial losses to Basil II, many of the territories ceded to the empire were overrun by the Seljuk Turks in the 1070s and 1080s, but were then retaken by the Georgian King

David IV David IV, also known as David IV the Builder ( ka, დავით IV აღმაშენებელი, tr; 1073 – 24 January 1125), of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the 5th List of monarchs of Georgia, king (''mepe'') of the Kingdom of Ge ...

. In the 13th century, at

Battle of Basian The Battle of Basiani was fought between the armies of the Kingdom of Georgia and the Seljukid Sultanate of Rum in the Basiani Valley, 60 km north-east of the city of Erzurum in what is now northeast Turkey. The date of the battle has been d ...

, thevGeorgians defeated the army of the

Rum Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is often aged in barrels of oak. Rum originated in the Caribbean in the 17th century, but today it is produced i ...

Sultanate. The province was part of the united

Kingdom of Georgia The Kingdom of Georgia (), also known as the Georgian Empire, was a Middle Ages, medieval Eurasian monarchy that was founded in Anno Domini, AD. It reached Georgian Golden Age, its Golden Age of political and economic strength during the reign ...

as an ordinary duchy until 1545, when Basiani was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans made Hasankale the centre of a sanjak and entirely rebuilt the citadel. They also built several mosques such as Ulucami (1554 repaired in 1836), Sivasli (1388 rebuild in 1912) Yeni (16th century rebuild in 1810) and baths. Other sights are the Coban bridge likely built in 1297 by a notable Ilkhanid Mongol named Coban and which was later restored several times. There are also two Islamic tombs near the town, Ferrah Hatun built in 1324 and the other likely in the 13th century. The nearby location of Avnik, has a ruined citadel with an old Muslim cemetery and mosque. During the 19th century, several Russo-Ottoman wars took place in this region and as a consequence many Armenians emigrated from this region to Russian held territory in Transcaucasia. When the First World War broke out the Russians advanced to the plain of Pasinler but quickly retreated together with many of the local Armenian population, some 4,000 remained and were expelled or murdered during the

Armenian Genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily t ...

. Between 1915 and 1918 it was occupied by Russia and then, after the Bolshevik revolution, held by Armenian forces. Turkish forces regained control of the town on 13 March 1918.

Composition

There are 72

neighbourhoods A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neighbourh ...

in Pasinler District: * Acı * Ağaçminare * Ağcalar * Altınbaşak *

Alvar An alvar is a biological environment based on a limestone plain with thin or no soil and, as a result, sparse grassland vegetation. Often flooded in the spring, and affected by drought in midsummer, alvars support a distinctive group of prairie ...

* Ardıçlı * Aşıtlar * Bahçelievler * Baldızı * Başören * Bulkasım * Büyükdere * Büyüktüy * Çakırtaş * Çalıyazı * Camiikebir * Çamlıca * Çiçekli * Çöğender * Demirdöven * Emirşeyh * Epsemce * Erzurumkapı * Esendere * Gerdekkaya * Gölciğez * Hanahmet * Hasandede * Kaplıcalar * Karakale * Karavelet * Kasımpaşa * Kavuşturan * Kethuda * Kevenlik * Kızılören * Kotandüzü * Küçüktüy * Kurbançayırı * Kurtuluş * Otlukkapı * Ovaköy * Övenler * Paşabey * Pelitli * Porsuk * Pusudere * Reşadiye * Saksı * Şehit Burak Karakoç * Serçeboğazı * Sivas * Sunak * Taşağıl * Taşkaynak * Taşlıgüney * Taşlıyurt * Tepecik *

Timar A timar was a land grant by the sultans of the Ottoman Empire between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, with an annual tax revenue of less than 20,000 akçes. The revenues produced from the land acted as compensation for military service. A ...

* Üğümü * Uzunark * Yamaç * Yastıktepe * Yavuzlu * Yayla * Yayladağ * Yeni * Yeniköy * Yiğitpınarı * Yiğittaşı * Yukarıçakmak * Yukarıdanişment

Şehit Burak Karakoç

Şehit Burak Karakoç (formerly: ''Korucuk'') is a

neighbourhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neighbourh ...

in the municipality and district of Pasinler,

in Turkey. Its population is 199 (2022).

People from Pasinler

Fethullah Gülen Muhammed Fethullah Gülen (27 April 1941 – 20 October 2024) was a Turkish Ulama, Muslim scholar, preacher, and leader of the Gülen movement who as of 2016 had millions of followers. Gülen was an influential Neo-Ottomanism, neo-Ottomanist, A ...

(1941–2024), Turkish preacher, imam, religious leader, founder of the

Gülen movement The Gülen movement () or Hizmet movement () is an Islamist fraternal movement. It is a sub-sect of Sunni Islam based on a Nursian theological perspective as reflected in Fethullah Gülen's religious teachings. It is referred to by its membe ...

References

External links

"Pasinler Thermal Resort" Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism

Map of Pasinler area
from MapWizard
Map of Pasinler area
from Bugday TaTuTa {{Pasinler District Populated places in Erzurum Province Districts of Erzurum Province Metropolitan district municipalities in Turkey