Pozantı (Greek: Πενδοσις, romanized: Pendhòsis, formerly Arabic: الْبَدَندُون, romanized: el-Bedendûn) is a municipality and district of Adana Province, Turkey.[2] Its area is 899 km2,[3] and its population is 19,852 (2022).[1] The town is in the highlands of Çukurova, and is a major gateway to the Mediterranean coasts. Pozantı stands in the foothills, at the bottom of one of the few passes through the mountains. The mayor is Mustafa Çay (MHP).
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Pozantı has had a number of names. In antiquity it was Pendonsis or Pendosis, to the Arabs El Bedendum, and finally Bozantı and Pozantı in Turkish.
Standing at the entrance to a pass across the Taurus Mountains, Pendonsis was strategically important, as the gateway between the high plain of Anatolia and the low plain of Cilicia or Çukurova and the Middle East beyond. Pozantı has passed through the hands of Hittites, Persians, Alexander the Great, Rome and Byzantium. Muslim forces moved through the area in the period of the Abbasids, followed by the Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. During the Crusades, control of the pass was returned to the Byzantines, then the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia and the Mamluks, before finally being brought under Ottoman control by Selim I in 1517.
Pozantı is windy and bleak, and for most of its history was a fort and a road-house, but more people began to live in the area permanently when a railway was built in 1917. However, passing trade on the road is still a major driver of the local economy.
Pozantı was briefly occupied by French forces at the end of World War I.
The only historical building in the city center is the mosque and fountain of Ottoman general Cemal Paşa, built in 1919 and since repaired and extended. At the entrance to the pass are the old and new castles of Anhşa.
The Casemates of İbrahim Pasha, the remains of a 19th-century fort, are located on the hill named Tekir, next to the modern highway D.750. The ruins of the Byzantine town of Fenese lay near the village of Aşçıbekirli. More ruins have been found near the village of Kamışlı in the high meadows (yayla) of Ören and Asar.
Mahalle, Turkey Civil Administration Departments Inventory. Retrieved 12 July 2023.
