CAPPADOCIA

CAPPADOCIA. This semiarid region is in the east central area of Asia Minor with Caesarea (qq.v.) its principal city. The site of a minor kingdom in the Hellenistic era, it became a Roman province in A.D. 17, but remained a backwater until brought to prominence by the Cappadocian Fathers (q.v.) of the late 4th c. For many centuries it served as the primary military reserve of Byzantium (q.v.) until the disastrous battle of Mantzikert in 1071, which resulted in the permanent loss of eastern and central Asia Minor first to the Seljuk Turks and then to the Ottomans. While the population of Cappadocia was largely converted to Islam (q.v.), it seems that within a matter of decades, pockets of Christian Greeks and Armenians survived in the area until the latter’s massacre during World War I and the forced population exchange involving the former in 1924.