The story of Kemaliye (Eğin) Old Town

Until 1922 this town was called Eğin, a Göktürk name meaning "a garden as beautiful as paradise". Kemaliye lies in the Karasu Valley west of the Munzur Mountains, rising from the lakeshore at 845 metres up the slope to 1000-1100 metres. In 1813, James Playfair's "A System of Geography" described Eğin as a small amphitheatre-shaped town at the foot of a mountain, on a fertile road reaching the Euphrates.

The English explorer Francis Rawdon Chesney, following the Euphrates in 1835-1837, counted 2,700 houses and wrote of high limestone cliffs that seemed to threaten to destroy the town, and of clefts so narrow a bridge could span them. The Ottoman sultan Çelebi Mehmed settled Caucasian families here and granted them the stewardship of Istanbul's meat trade. Dyed and polished leather, handwoven manusa cloth, carpets and silk went out; gold, silver, spices and coffee came back.

Stand in the valley and look up at Chesney's cliffs.