History of Niğde and the origin of its name: A Guide

History of Niğde and the origin of its name

Niğde’s history reaches from farming communities at Köşk Höyük to Roman aqueducts at Tyana and medieval monuments in the city. Its name has a separate trail through inscriptions and written forms. At Andaval, a Luwian inscription belonging to King Saruanis records a place name as na-hi-ti-ia, associated with Niğde’s ancient name.

If you want to understand Niğde, begin with both the city and its surrounding settlements. Köşk Höyük preserves evidence of agriculture and livestock keeping. Kestel and Göltepe document tin production. Alâeddin Mosque, Akmedrese and the Sokullu Mehmet Paşa Bedesten bring the account into the medieval and Ottoman periods.

Where does the name Niğde come from?

The Andaval inscription provides a concrete starting point for the name’s history. Its na-hi-ti-ia form is associated with the older name Nahita. The inscription is especially useful because it preserves an actual written form, rather than a later explanation of what the name might mean.

The proposed connection with the goddess Anahita needs more careful wording. Turkish Wikipedia attributes this explanation to Avram Galanti. It is an interpretation of the name’s origin, rather than an established derivation. You should therefore read the Anahita connection as a proposal attributed to Galanti.

The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi discusses Naghita and Nagidos in relation to the medieval forms Nekîdâ and Nekîde. It also acknowledges differing views about the origin. These forms belong in the discussion, but they do not establish a simple, agreed sequence from an ancient name to the modern one.

By the fourteenth century, a spelling much closer to Niğde appears in a written work. Hamdullah el-Müstevfî recorded Nîgde or Nîkde in his Nüzhetü’l-kulûb. This gives the name’s history another dated reference, alongside the much older inscription at Andaval.

Early farming, tin mining and a fortified city

Excavations at Köşk Höyük in Bahçeli document communities living through agriculture and livestock keeping between 6050 and 4911 BCE. This evidence concerns the wider Niğde region. It should be distinguished from the later history of the city and the written evidence for its name.

Niğde Museum offers a way to picture domestic life at Köşk Höyük. Its first hall contains a full-scale reconstruction of a Chalcolithic house dated to 4883 BCE. If you find long date ranges difficult to imagine, the reconstructed house gives you a household setting to connect with that early past.

Production forms another part of the regional story. Near Celaller village in Çamardı, the Kestel mine galleries and the mining village of Göltepe have yielded evidence of tin production in the third millennium BCE. These sites add mining to a history that also includes farming and animal husbandry.

Göllüdağ preserves a later settlement near Kömürcü village. It is a fortified Late Hittite city dated to the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. The site stands on a volcanic summit at 2,172 metres, together with a crater lake. Its walls and summit setting distinguish it from the domestic reconstruction displayed in Niğde Museum.

Tyana’s waterworks and the religious sites around Niğde

The remains of ancient Tyana lie beneath much of present-day Kemerhisar. That relationship matters when you picture the ancient settlement: its remains extend below a modern inhabited place. The aqueducts belong to a water system that carried water from the Roman Pool at Bahçeli to Tyana.

Those aqueducts date to the second century CE. They provide an everyday-life link to the ancient past through water supply. Alongside tombs, mosques and inscriptions, the system brings a practical concern into Niğde’s history: moving water from its source to a settlement.

Near Aktaş stands Old Andaval Church. In his travel account published in 1842, W. J. Hamilton described it as a church dedicated to Helena. That is a dated description of the church and its dedication, rather than a construction date for the building.

Gümüşler Monastery lies approximately eight kilometres from Niğde and was carved into a large mass of rock. Its construction is generally placed between the eighth and twelfth centuries. The site received designation as an archaeological protected area in 1973.

Medieval Niğde through its monuments

Alâeddin Mosque has a firm construction date of 1223. Niğde’s bey, Ziynettin Beşare, commissioned it. Its inscription also records the architects: Üstat Sıddık and his brother Gazi. The building therefore preserves the names of its makers as well as its patron.

Hüdavend Hatun Tomb carries another specific record of patronage. According to its inscription, Hüdavend Hatun commissioned it in 1312–1313. She was the daughter of the Seljuk sultan Rükneddin Kılıç Arslan IV. Her name connects the monument with both an individual patron and a ruling family.

Sungur Bey Mosque is generally dated to around 1335, with Niğde governor Sungur Bey accepted as its patron. It has no construction inscription. That makes its approximate dating different from the inscription-based dates attached to Alâeddin Mosque and Hüdavend Hatun Tomb.

Akmedrese belongs to the Karamanoğlu period. Its construction inscription dates it to 1409–1410 and identifies its patron as Alâeddin Ali Bey, son of Karamanoğlu Alâeddin. Together, these monuments give you several dated points for following Niğde’s medieval history through surviving buildings.

Ottoman Niğde: neighbourhoods, commerce and baths

Niğde entered Ottoman administration during Fatih Sultan Mehmed’s Karaman campaigns. Full Ottoman control in the region emerged through a process lasting until 1475. The Ottoman survey of 1500 subsequently recorded the city as containing 29 neighbourhoods and 731 households.

The Sokullu Mehmet Paşa Bedesten in central Niğde is dated through an endowment deed of 1574. It has an arasta arrangement and measures approximately 14.70 by 76.50 metres. A Presidency of Communications report dated 4 April 2025 states that Niğde Municipality converted it into the City Museum.

Baths offer another link with ordinary urban life. Paşa Hamamı, in Sırali neighbourhood, is dated to the seventeenth century and attributed to Murat Paşa and his son Ali Paşa. The seventeenth-century Çarşı Hamamı belongs to the group of baths with four iwans and corner chambers.

For late nineteenth-century Niğde, Vital Cuinet recorded one library, 36 madrasas, three churches and six baths. His account adds educational and religious institutions to the picture supplied by the city’s commercial buildings and bathing facilities.

Timeline

• 6050–4911 BCE: Farming and livestock communities lived at Köşk Höyük.
• Third millennium BCE: Tin production took place around Kestel and Göltepe.
• Eighth–seventh centuries BCE: The fortified Late Hittite city at Göllüdağ belongs to this period.
• Second century CE: Tyana’s aqueducts were built.
• Eighth–twelfth centuries: Proposed construction period for Gümüşler Monastery.
• 1223: Alâeddin Mosque was built.
• 1312–1313: Hüdavend Hatun Tomb was commissioned.
• Around 1335: Accepted construction date of Sungur Bey Mosque.
• 1409–1410: Akmedrese was built.
• 1475: The process of establishing full Ottoman control had extended to this year.
• 1574: The endowment deed used to date the Sokullu Mehmet Paşa Bedesten.
• 1939–1950: Akmedrese served as storage for the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
• 1973: Gümüşler Monastery became an archaeological protected area.
• 13 April 2012: Niğde’s Historical Monuments were submitted to UNESCO’s Tentative List.

Details you won’t find in guidebooks

The Andaval inscription has a museum history of its own. The original inscription containing the name Nahita is displayed in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. A cast is displayed in Niğde Museum. You can therefore encounter a representation of this evidence for the name while visiting Niğde.

Excavations at Köşk Höyük between 1985 and 2002 uncovered 13 clay-plastered skulls. They belonged to one child and 12 adults. This precise group of finds adds another dimension to a site also known for its farming communities and reconstructed house.

At Alâeddin Mosque, a shadow on the eastern monumental portal is likened to the head of a crowned woman. It appears during summer at approximately 09:30–11:00. Sungur Bey Mosque’s eastern portal preserves a different detail: a tax inscription dated 874 AH, or 1469–1470 CE.

Akmedrese acquired another role during the danger posed by the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1950, it served as storage for the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. A building dated by its medieval construction inscription thus also belongs to the history of safeguarding museum collections.

FAQ

Sources

1. Wikipedia — Niğde Province en.wikipedia.org
2. Regional Directorates for the Conservation of Cultural Property — Niğde korumakurullari.ktb.gov.tr
3. Turkish Wikipedia — Niğde tr.wikipedia.org
4. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi — Niğde islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
5. Niğde Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism — Archaeological Sites nigde.ktb.gov.tr
6. Ministry of Culture and Tourism, DÖSİMM — Niğde dosim.ktb.gov.tr
7. Ministry of Culture and Tourism — Gümüşler Monastery and Underground City muze.gov.tr
8. Niğde Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism — Mosques nigde.ktb.gov.tr
9. Culture Portal — Hüdavend Hatun Tomb kulturportali.gov.tr
10. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi — Akmedrese islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
11. Niğde Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism — Inns, Bedestens and Caravanserais nigde.ktb.gov.tr
12. Presidency of Communications — Sokullu Mehmet Paşa Bedesten iletisim.gov.tr
13. Culture Portal — Paşa Hamamı kulturportali.gov.tr
14. Anadolu Agency — Clay-Plastered Skulls in Niğde Museum aa.com.tr
15. Culture Portal — Akmedrese kulturportali.gov.tr
16. UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Historical Monuments of Niğde whc.unesco.org

Image: NigdeKale1.jpg — Klaus-Peter Simon, CC BY-SA 3.0