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Kalehisar Archaeological Site

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Kalehisar Archaeological Site (Kalehisar Ören Yeri) lies within the boundaries of Mahmudiye village in the Alaca district and holds the remains of a medieval settlement recorded in Ottoman registers as Karahisar-ı Demirli. Besides the castle and its walls, a madrasa, a caravanserai and a bathhouse are known. Oktay Aslanapa made soundings here in 1965 and 1966, and since 2021 excavations have been carried out under Prof. Dr. Mustafa Kemal Şahin of Aydın Adnan Menderes University. For the plan of the madrasa see Kalehisar Medrese (Behramşah Medrese).

Name and location

The settlement also appears in the sources as Karahisar-ı Demirli (Demürlü), Demirli Karahisar, Karahisar Temürlü and Karahisar Demirci. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (the Encyclopaedia of Islam of the Turkish Religious Foundation), the settlement, made up of a castle and a two-quarter town around it, later came to be called Kalehisar. Hakan Yazar and Mehmet Ali Bozkuş suggest that the name “Demirli” may refer to the nearby Demir Ziyareti dervish lodge and the village of Demirşeyh (see Demirşeyh Mausoleum). A story in Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî’s Mirkâtü’l-Cihâd, which the authors regard as legendary, also links the name to an iron-like stone formed from weapons that Melik Danişmend’s warriors burnt as they withdrew after failing to take the castle.

Sources give different distances. Aslanapa places the remains 5 km northeast of Alacahöyük, and Yazar and Bozkuş 6 km north of the Alacahöyük archaeological site and 5 km south of the Çorum-Sungurlu road. The distance from Alaca is given as 15 km in a 2024 announcement by Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ), 20 km on the website of the Alaca District Governorate (both to the northwest), 20 km (north) in the Çorum Kültür Envanteri (Çorum Cultural Inventory) and about 5 km (northeast) in Çorum Tarihi (History of Çorum) (Çorum Tarihi, p. 77). İTÜ places the site 1 km south of Mahmudiye, while the inventory places the group of buildings 2-3 km south of the village, at the Kaletepe locality. The 7 km Alacahöyük-Kalehisar-Mahmudiye route is one of the day walks of the Hitit Yolu trails.

The Çorum Kültür Envanteri records the group of buildings as the “Kalehisar (Behramşah) Külliyesi” (Kalehisar or Behramşah complex) (p. 257). The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, however, gives the name Karahisar-ı Behramşah to a different Karahisar in Yozgat province, today known as Saraykent.

Phrygian traces

In Çorum Tarihi, Sevim Uluç lists Kalehisar among the Phrygian settlements of Çorum and writes that a Phrygian inscription appears on a Cybele altar on a high rock, which with its double-headed backrest closely resembles the examples at Midas City (Çorum Tarihi, p. 39). The Çorum Kültür Envanteri also records Phrygian and Byzantine settlement on the castle hill and Byzantine and Seljuk settlement on its slopes (p. 138). For the wider period see Ancient Çorum.

Seljuk and Beylik periods

In Çorum Tarihi, Ömür Bakırer notes that Karahisar is described as an important administrative centre in the Seljuk period, and reports Faruk Sümer’s view that the centre of the region in Seljuk times was Demirli Karahisar, while the city of Çorum took shape under the Ottomans (Çorum Tarihi, pp. 75, 77). According to the book, Hüsameddin Timurtaş, who ruled at Karahisar in AH 665 / AD 1266, endowed land to the madrasa in his endowment deed; this may be why the building is known as the Hüsamiye Medrese (Çorum Tarihi, p. 79).

Drawing on the coin finds and building remains published by Kurt Bittel in 1955, Yazar and Bozkuş describe the settlement as economically developed and militarily important in the Seljuk period. According to the chronicles they cite, the Ilkhanid emir Tugaçar settled at Karahisar-ı Demirli in 1295, Shaykh Muhammad Selmâstî, a disciple of Rumi (Mevlânâ), was buried there, and Kadı Burhâneddin took the castle in 1386, probably without a fight.

The wooden minbar of the early 14th century in the Çorum Grand Mosque is generally thought, as local tradition holds, to have come from Karahisar (Çorum Tarihi, p. 77); Yazar and Bozkuş also report the tradition that it was brought from a ruined mosque at Karahisar-ı Demirli.

A district centre in the Ottoman period

According to Suraiya Faroqhi, the survey register of Mehmed II’s reign describes Demirli Karahisar as a nefs (town proper) and a “şehir yeri” (town site) and counts it, like Çorum, as the centre of a vilayet, here a small administrative unit. At the start of Süleyman I’s reign it was one of the five kazas (judicial districts) of the Çorum sanjak, and it still appears among them in the 1637-38 register of the nüzul levy (Çorum Tarihi, pp. 103-105). Kâtib Çelebi’s Cihannümâ also names it among the districts of Çorum.

The town had two quarters, Kadı and Kazancılar. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, they had 97 households in 1530, and nine guards served in the castle. From the Ottoman tax surveys, Yazar and Bozkuş calculate that the number of taxpayers rose to 187 in 1522 and fell to 116 in 1577; in their view the settlement still had town status in 1577, as a place where Friday prayers were held and a market met.

According to Çorum Tarihi, a decree of 1585 orders the judge of Karahisar Demirli to live in the inn rather than in the madrasa, while a decree of 1617 states that the Cemaleddin and Hüsameddin madrasas had been in ruins for 150 years; the book notes that the two decrees contradict each other (Çorum Tarihi, p. 79). Faroqhi writes that the teachers appointed to the madrasa tended to leave the town and settle in İskilip (Çorum Tarihi, p. 127).

According to Yazar and Bozkuş, the settlement was abandoned over time, and people from nearby villages removed the stones of its buildings for reuse. The English traveller William J. Hamilton, who passed through the region in the first half of the 19th century, wrote that local people said the inscribed stones in the walls of Çorum Castle had been brought from the ruins of Karahisar (Çorum Tarihi, p. 76).

The 1965-1966 excavations

According to Çorum Tarihi, the madrasa was first mentioned in a 1955 publication by Kurt Bittel (Çorum Tarihi, pp. 77, 90). With soundings made in July 1965 and July 1966, Aslanapa recorded the plans of the madrasa, the caravanserai and the bathhouse, noting that the three buildings were not connected to one another:

  • Madrasa: known as the Hüsamiye Medrese, a two-iwan, single-storey building of rubble stone; the excavation uncovered brick-arched entrances and the piers of the courtyard porticoes. Aslanapa dates the plan and the archaic appearance of the building to the first quarter of the 13th century and notes that the pottery found agrees with this date.
  • Caravanserai: a long block in three parts running north-south: a wide hall with two rows of three piers, a vaulted corridor flanked by six long rooms on each side, and a section that may have held stables. In Aslanapa’s view the plan is closer to Ottoman caravanserais, yet not a single Ottoman sherd was found in the two seasons. He suggests that it was built halfway along the old Çorum-Yozgat road, long after the madrasa, probably at the end of the 14th century.
  • Bathhouse: what was a single arch before excavation proved to be a bathhouse; only the plan of the hot section could be drawn, and the furnace is fairly well preserved. Aslanapa dates it to the same years as the caravanserai.

Pending firmer evidence, Aslanapa considers it most likely that the Ottomans abandoned the place perhaps in the mid-15th century; in the 1577 survey studied by Yazar and Bozkuş, however, the settlement still appears with town status.

Citing Aslanapa’s 1967 study in the journal Anatolica, “Seldschukische Scherben und Keramiköfen in Kalehisar” (Seljuk sherds and pottery kilns at Kalehisar), Çorum Tarihi reports that the kilns and pottery finds may point to a production centre (Çorum Tarihi, pp. 90-91); Şahin also describes Kalehisar as a place where pottery and tiles were made. According to the Çorum Kültür Envanteri, the group of buildings was listed by decision no. 8440 of 10 May 1975; the inventory also records, to the north, a square tomb of which only one arch fragment survives (p. 257).

Research and excavations since 2017

Surface surveys were carried out in 2017 and 2019-2020, and excavations began in 2021 under the direction of the Çorum Museum; since 2022 they have continued with presidential approval under Şahin’s direction. The fourth season ran from 8 July to 4 September 2024. The team includes researchers in art history, history, anthropology, archaeozoology and geophysics, and staff and students from Yozgat Bozok, Istanbul Technical, Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa and Hitit universities also took part in the 2025 season. According to a 2025 report by the İhlas News Agency (İHA), human skeletons found at the site are being studied bioarchaeologically and animal bones archaeozoologically.

According to Şahin’s 2022 article, five pieces of carved stone that had been brought to the village entrance for use in a wall were found in August 2019. Şahin suggests that they probably belonged to the border of a portal and, from the similarity of their geometric pattern of stars and polygons to examples in Amasya and Kayseri, proposes a tentative date in the third or last quarter of the 13th century.

According to İTÜ, geophysical surveys begun in 2019 were extended in 2023 and 2024, using electrical resistivity tomography, magnetic survey and ground-penetrating radar to locate buried structures such as a mosque, a bathhouse, kilns, houses and cemeteries. According to a 2024 report in Yeni Akit, Şahin said that an intact earthenware oil lamp, glazed on the inside, was found in the 2021 season and that similar lamps had come to light in the excavations at the Kubadabad Palace. The same report mentions an inscription of the reign of Alâeddin Keykubad I in the Çorum Museum; it does not say where the inscription was found.

According to Aydın Adnan Menderes University, the Çorum Governorate, Çorum Municipality, the Alaca District Governorate and Alaca Municipality also supported the 2026 season, and Governor Ali Çalgan visited the excavation on 6 August 2026. For the wider history of the district see History of Alaca.

Sources

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