HISTORY OF ALANYA

Though first fortified in the Hellenistic period following the area's conquest by Alexander the Great, the castle rock was likely inhabited long before that under the Hittite and Persian Empires. Left to Ptolemy I Soter after 323 BC, his dynasty maintained loose control, and it became a popular spot for Mediterranean pirates who were at times loyal to Diodotus Tryphon of the Seleucid kingdom.[3] This period ended with the city's incorporation into the Cilicia Pedias province of the Roman Empire by Pompey in 67 BC.[4] After the Empire's collapse and split, the city remained under Byzantine influence, becoming a suffragan of Side, in the metropolis of Pamphylia Prima.[5] Muslims began arriving in the 7th Century, and 681 marked the end of a bishopric in Alanya. The area fell from Byzantine control after the Battle of Manzikert to tribes of Seljuk Turks, only to be returned in 1097 by Alexios I Komnenos and forces of the First Crusade.


The Mongol invasion broke down Seljuk control, and the city fell to a series of beyliks, and even to Lusignans from Cyprus. The city was sold by the Karamanoğlu dynasty in 1427 to the Mamluk dynasty for a period before the general Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1471 incorporated it into the growing Ottoman Empire. In 1571 the city was organized into the province of Cyprus, then later under Konya, and in 1868 under Antalya, as it is today. After World War I, Alanya was partitioned in the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne to Italy, if only nominally. Like most in this region, the city suffered heavily following the population exchanges the heralded the Turkish Republic, when many of the city's Christians resettled in Nea Ionia, outside Athens. The Ottoman census of 1893 had put the number of Greeks in the city at 964.[6] Tourism in the region started among Turks who flocked to Alanya in the 1960s for the alleged healing properties of Damlataş cave, and later with the access provided by Antalya Airport gaining the city greater international appeal as a resort destination.