Bayburt

The name of the town was formerly written in Ottoman Turkish as بايبورد (Bayburd)[3] and in English as Baiburt.[4][5] It was known as Paipert under the Byzantines. The name derives from the medieval Armenian Baydbert (Բայտբերդ), which derives from its ancient name Ambatavan (Ամբատավան).

Bayburt Castle

City Center

Bayburt straddles the Çoruh amid an open and fertile plateau on the route between Trabzon and Erzurum.[5] It was founded by the Azzi people. It was subsequently settled or conquered by the Cimmerians in the 8th century BC, the Medes in the 7th century BC, then the Persians, Pontus, Rome, the Byzantines, the Bagratid Armenian Kingdom, the Seljuk Turks, the Aq Qoyunlu, Safavid Persia, and then the Ottoman Turks.

The town was the site of an Armenian fortress in the 1st century and may have been the Baiberdon fortified by the emperor Justinian.[4] It was a stronghold of the Genovese in the late Middle Ages[4] and prospered in the late 13th and early 14th century because of the commerce between Trebizond and Persia.[6] It contained a mint under the Seljuks and Ilkhanids.[6] From c. 1243 to 1266, Bayburt was under brief control of the Georgian princes of Samtskhe. A Christian church within the Bayburt castle was built in the 13th century under the Trapezuntine or Georgian influence.[7]

Under Ottoman rule, the town was the center of the Bayburt Sanjak in Erzurum Eyalet. When Erzurum was devastated in the early 16th century, Bayburt served for a time as the de facto capital of the province.[6] The area was raided by the Safavids in 1553. Bayburt was captured by a Russian army under General Paskevich[5] and its fortifications thoroughly demolished in 1829.[4] It was the furthest westward reach of the Russians during that campaign.[5] The British traveller William John Hamilton commented on the ruins in the 1840s,[8] though the population grew to 6000 by the 1870s.[4] The bazaar, however, remained poor and the town long lacked industry.[5] Prior to the First World War, the population of 10,000 was mostly Turkish with some Armenians.[5]

According to the Qamus al-A'lam (Qāmūsu'l-aˁlām/قاموس الأعلام, “Dictionary of the World”) of Shemseddin Sami, Sanjak of Bayburt, comprising four kazas called Ispir, Şiran, Kelkit and Bayburt itself, had 505 villages and 40 nahiyes. The sanjak had a population of 124019 people. 108373 people of the population was Turkish and Muslim, and the rest of the population was Christian, predominantly Armenian.

Inside the Sanjak of Bayburt there were said to be 292 mosque and masjid, 176 madrasah, 87 church and monastery, 2 middle school (rushdiye), 108 primary school (sıbyan mektebi).[9]

Bayburt has a continental climate with freezing cold winters and heavy snow. Summers are warm with cool nights. The climate is humid continental under the Köppen Climate System. Most of the precipitation occurs in late spring and early summer. The lowest temperature recorded was -31.3 °C (-24.3 °F) in January 1972. The highest temperature recorded was 37.1 °C (98.8 °F) in August 2006. The highest snow thickness recorded was 110 cm (43.3 inches) in March 1976.

"Bayburt Otobus Terminali", located in the south of the city, is the main port to Bayburt.

According to the address based population registration system, 2017 population is determined as around 80 000.

• İrşadi Baba (folk poet) (1879-1958)[17]
• Suat Türker
• Dede Korkut
• Bayburtlu Kara Ibrahim Pasha
• Hovhannes XI (Çamaşırciyan) (Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople between 1800 and 1801)
• Krikor Amirian
• Lütfü Silo [18][19]
• Selim Genç[20]
• Mustafa Yeneroğlu[21]
• Berhan Şimşek[22]
• Hakan Çalhanoğlu
• Vasip Şahin
• Naci Ağbal
• Namık Kemal Zeybek
• Serdar Orçin
• Baybutlu Zihni

Bayburt is twinned with:

• Bayburt Museum of Modern Arts
• Şehit Osman Hill
• Arpalı Kasabası

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bayburt.

• Baynes, T. S., ed. (1878), "Baiburt" , Encyclopædia Britannica, 3 (9th ed.), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 240
• Maunsell, Francis Richard (1911), "Baiburt" , in Chisholm, Hugh (ed.), Encyclopædia Britannica, 3 (11th ed.), Cambridge University Press, p. 214