Tyana or Tyanna (Ancient Greek: Τύανα, Hittite Tuwanuwa) was an ancient city in the Anatolian region of Cappadocia, in modern south-central Turkey. It was the capital of a Luwian-speaking Neo-Hittite kingdom in the 1st millennium BC.
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Tyana is the city referred to in Hittite archives as Tuwanuwa. During the Hittite Empire period in mid 2nd millennium, Tuwanuwa was among the principal settlements of the region along with Hupisna, Landa, Sahasara, Huwassana and Kuniyawannni.[1] This south-central Anatolian region was referred to as the Lower Land in Hittite sources and its population was mainly Luwian speakers.[2] Following the collapse of the Hittite Empire, Tuwanuwa/Tuwana was a major city of the independent Neo-Hittite kingdoms. It is not certain whether or not it was initially subject to the Tabal kingdom to its north, but certainly by the late 8th century BC it was an independent kingdom under a ruler named Warpalawa (in Assyrian sources Urballa).[3] He figures in several hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions found in the region, including a monumental rock carving in Ivriz.[4] Warpalawa is also mentioned in Assyrian texts, under the name Urballa, first in a list of tributees of Assyrian king Tiglath Pileser III and later in a letter of Sargon II.[5] Warpalawa was probably succeeded by his son Muwaharani whose name appears in another monument found in Niğde.[6]
In Greek legend, the city was first called Thoana because Thoas, a Thracian king, was its founder (Arrian, Periplus Ponti Euxini, vi); it was in Cappadocia, at the foot of Taurus Mountains and near the Cilician Gates (Strabo, XII, 537; XIII, 587).
Xenophon mentions it in his book Anabasis, under the name of Dana, as a large and prosperous city. The surrounding plain was known after it as Tyanitis.
It is the reputed birthplace of the celebrated philosopher (and reputed saint, god, or magician) Apollonius of Tyana in the first century AD. Ovid (Metamorphoses VIII) places the tale of Baucis and Philemon in the vicinity.
Under Roman Emperor Caracalla, the city became Antoniana colonia Tyana. After having sided with Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, it was captured by Aurelian in 272, who would not allow his soldiers to sack it, allegedly because Apollonius appeared to him, pleading for its safety.
In 372, Emperor Valens split the province of Cappadocia in two, and Tyana became the capital and metropolis of Cappadocia Secunda. In Late Antiquity, the city was also known as Christoupolis (Greek: Χριστούπολις, "city of Christ").[7]
Following the Muslim conquests and the establishment of the frontier between the Byzantine Empire and the Caliphate along the Taurus Mountains, Tyana became important as a military base due to its strategic position on the road to Cilicia and Syria via the Cilician Gates, which lie some 30 km to the south.[7] Consequently, the city was frequently targeted by Muslim raids. The city was first sacked by the Umayyads after a long siege in 708,[7][8] and remained deserted for some time before being rebuilt. It was taken again by the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid in 806. Harun began converting the city into a military base and even erected a mosque there, but evacuated it after the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I bought a peace.[9]
The city was again taken and razed by the Abbasids under Al-Abbas ibn al-Ma'mun in 831.[10] Abbas rebuilt the site three years later as an Abbasid military colony in preparation for Caliph al-Ma'mun's planned conquest of Byzantium, but after Ma'mun's sudden death in August 833 the campaign was abandoned by his successor al-Mu'tasim and the half-rebuilt city was razed again.[11]
The city fell into decline after 933, as the Arab threat receded.[7] The ruins of Tyana are at modern Kemerhisar, three miles south of Niğde;[7] there are remains of a Roman aqueduct and of cave cemeteries and sepulchral grottoes.
As noted, in 372 Emperor Valens created the province of Cappadocia Secunda, of which Tyana became the metropolis. This aroused a violent controversy between Anthimus, Bishop of Tyana, and St. Basil of Caesarea, each of whom wished to have as many suffragan sees as possible. About 640 Tyana had three, and it was the same in the tenth century (Heinrich Gelzer, "Ungedruckte ... Texte der Notitiae episcopatum", 538, 554).
Le Quien (Oriens christianus, I, 395-402) mentions 28 bishops of Tyana, among whom were:
In May 1359, Tyana still had a metropolitan (Mikelosich and Müller, "Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitani", I, 505); in 1360 the metropolitan of Caesarea secured the administration of it (op. cit., 537). Thenceforth the see was titular.