Bayburt was a part of
Hayasa-Azzi, then was subsequently settled or conquered by the
Cimmerians in the the
Medes in the then the
Persian Empire,
Lesser Armenia,
Pontus,
Greater Armenia,
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. It was raided by the Seljuks in 1054, recaptured by
Theodore Gabras, and conquered by the
Danishmendids before the
Crusade of 1101. It was a stronghold of the
Genovese in the late Middle Ages and prospered in the late 13th and early 14th century because of the commerce between
Trebizond and
Persia. It contained a mint under the
Seljuks and
Ilkhanids. 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. Bayburt and the surrounding areas are considered to be one of the earliest Turkish settlements in Anatolia. 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. though the population grew to 6000 by the 1870s. The
bazaar, however, remained poor and the town long lacked industry. On the eve of the
First World War, the population of 10,000 was mostly
Turkish with some
Armenians. 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 124,019 people. 108,373 people were 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). == Geography ==