Ağırnas Yer Altı Şehri

With its passages, caves, and underground city ruins, Ağırnas is a settlement center understood to have been inhabited by people at least 3 thousand years before the present day. There are no historical documents from the Seljuk Period regarding the history of Ağırnas, but there are records from the Ottoman Period. According to these records; in the cadastral register made in 1500, Ağırnas was recorded as a very large village both in terms of population and economy, subject to Koramaz Nahiyesi, one of the 9 subdistricts in Kayseri, with 53 Christian households (Gebran hane), 3 Muslim households, 2 mills, 4 linseed oil presses, and paying 18 thousand akçe in tax. Greeks constituted 95 percent of the town population.

The fact that the village land was barren and volcanic and not suitable for farming and obtaining abundant yield, that it was compulsory to leave the places to be planted in the second year fallow because agriculture was done one year and not the next, and that even in the farming that was done the yield was very low, producing only one to five or one to seven even under the most favorable conditions, caused people to value other branches of occupation in order to make their living.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, fabrics woven in Ağırnas were at the top of the list of goods exported from Turkey to England. Especially the fine, soft, white cotton cloth called "Ağırnas Boğası" was seen among the highly sought-after and popular commercial goods in England, France, and Holland. This place bore the name Taşören between 1923-2003 and later returned to its old name again.

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