|
|
Kütahya is a city of 131,286 (1990) in west-central Turkey on the Porsuk River at the foot of Ajem mountain. The town is overlooked by a fortress.
The modern Kütahya, the Cotiaeum of the Romans, is located in what was anciently known as Phrygia; famous for its legendary King Midas, the last of the Phrygian kings who lived to regret his wish that all he touch be turned to gold. It was near Kütahya that Alexander the Great cut the "Gordian Knot" in 333 B.C. Kütahya was under the control of Rome and Byzantium until the end of the 11th century.
In 1071 the Seljuk Turks defeated and captured the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes at the Battle of Manzikert in eastern Anatolia. The Seljuks released the emperor who made his way to Kütahya only to be blinded there by his rival and brother, the future emperor. The Battle of Manzikert opened Anatolia to massive migration by Turkic nomads. The city was occupied by the Seljuk Turks in 1080.
Thereafter, Kütahya became a border march between the Byzantine and Seljuk states. It changed hands several times in this turbulent era before becoming the capitol of the Kurdish/Turkoman Germiyan principality in 1302. The last Germiyan ruler of Kütahya, Yakub II, allied himself with Tamerlane who visited the city as his guest in 1403. Although the alliance against the Ottoman Empire worked for a short time, Tamerlane soon returned to Samarkand and Yakub was persuaded to leave his realm to the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (1405-1451) in his will. The city was finally absorbed into the Ottoman Empire upon Yakub's death in 1429.
Kütahya's commercial importance stemmed from its location on the great road which ran through Asia Minor from Istanbul to Aleppo, and from its emergence as a center for the production of ceramics and tiles which were used to decorate mosques, churches, and synagogues throughout the Middle East and Europe.
The production of painted ceramic wares and tiles had begun in Kütahya certainly by the end of the 1400'; perhaps much earlier. Its importance increased after Sultan Selim I, the Grim (1740-1520) resettled tile workers there from Tabriz, in Persia, after his victory over the founder of the Safavid dynasty, Shah Isma'il I (1487-1524) in 1485 at the Battle of Chaldiran. The beautiful ewer in the British Museum signed 'Abraham of Kütahya' on the bottom dates from this era.
In the 17th century Kütahya began to supplant Iznik as the center for the production of ceramic vessels and tiles in the Ottoman empire. The famous traveler Evliya Chelebi (1611-1684) noted the abundance of ceramic wares produced in Kütahya. By the end of World War I however, the production and quality of ceramic wares in Kütahya had also declined.
After the war a small group of survivors; Ahmet Shahin, and others, slowly began the process of reestablishing the technical quality and design of Kütahya ceramics. In the late 1980's there was a sudden explosion in the creativity of the designs and technical qualty of the wares. This growth was led by the children and grandchildren of the postwar Kütahya artists and by others who were attracted by the creativity and commercial prospects of this dynamic sector. In February of 2001 the ateliers were were bustling to fill orders for decorative ceramic wares and tiles for Turkey, the Middle East, Germany, Austria, Japan, Australia, and elsewhere.