Tokat is the capital city of Tokat Province of Turkey in the mid-Black Sea region of Anatolia. It is located at the confluence of the Tokat River (Tokat Suyu) with the Yeşilırmak. In the 2018 census, the city of Tokat had a population of 155,000. History The city was established in the Hittite era. During the time of King Mithradates VI of Pontus, it was one of his many strongholds in Asia Minor. Known as Evdokia or Eudoxia, ecclesiastically it was later incorporated into the western part of the Byzantine Greek Empire of Trebizond. Some authors like Guillaume de Jerphanion and William Mitchell Ramsay identified Tokat with the ancient and medieval Dazimon, with Ramsay saying, "Dazimon, which seems to have been a fortress, must have been the modern Tokat, with its strong castle. Henri Grégoire, on the other hand, refuted this as implausible, because a 13th-century text written by Ibn Bibi clearly distinguishes Dazimon and Tokat as separate places. Instead, he said, Tokat should be identified with the town of Dokeia () mentioned in another 10th-century text, by Theophanes Continuatus, which says that the Byzantine general John Kourkouas was born in a village near Dokeia sometime in the 9th century. According to Grégoire, the name "Dokeia" does not have a Greek etymology and probably represents an old Anatolian place name. The supposed derivation from "Eudokia", he claimed, is only a folk etymology that came much later. After the Battle of Manzikert the town, like most of Asia Minor, came under the control of the Seljuk Turks. After the death of Sultan Suleiman ibn Qutulmish in 1086, the Emir Danishmend Gazi took control of the area, operating from his power base in the town of Sivas. It would be many decades before the Seljuks re-took control of that region, in the reign of Kilij Arslan II. After the Battle of Köse Dağ, Seljuk hold over the region was lost, and local Emirs such as the Eretna took power until the rise of the Ottomans, who captured the town in 1392. Prior to WWI, Tokat had 40,000 residents of which included 15,000 Armenians, 1,000 Greeks, and a small number of Jews. Climate Tokat has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate, or alternatively a continental climate (Köppen: Csa, Trewartha: Dc). Due to the relatively high altitude and inland location, winters are fairly cold with average lows below the freezing point and significant snowfall. Economy Historically,