Story
The story of Mount Hasan
Art historians sometimes call a wall painting from ancient Çatalhöyük the first landscape, and some believe it shows Hasan Dağı rising above the settlement's houses. The people of Çatalhöyük gathered obsidian around this volcano. Its main cone, Büyük Hasan, reaches 3268 metres and rises abruptly from the Aksaray Plain, the Obruk Plateau and the Bor Plain; its summit crater holds a crater lake.
Just to the southeast stands its smaller twin, Küçük Hasan, at 2844 metres. Oak forests cover the slopes up to 1750 metres, Yörüks live around its foothills, and the ancient Roman city of Nora lies at its feet. During the Arab-Byzantine wars it was the second mountain from the south in the Byzantine beacon system that warned the capital of raids.
The volcano still sleeps, but after a 5.3 earthquake on 20 September 2020, pressurised gas vents appeared, and in November 2021 studies detected rising magma.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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