Korgan

History

The district of Korgan has been a source of iron ore since the reign of Mithridates, King of Pontus, and even before that the area was occupied by Persians in the reign of Darius I in the 6th century BC, as part of the Satrapy of Pontus and Cappadocia. The Persian presence was erased by the armies of Alexander the Great in 331BC, and the area eventually became part of the Kingdom of Pontus and then the Roman Empire. This era ended in 1083 when Korgan was conquered by the Turkish armies of Danishmend Gazi. Subsequently a number of Turkish tribes ruled here until 1398 when Bayezid I brought the area, then known as Keşdere after a tributary of the River Bolaman, into the Ottoman Empire.