Ancient
Mar'as (Marqas) was the capital of the Neo-Hittite kingdom of Gurgum in the Iron Age. When the Assyrians conquered the kingdom in 711 BC, Marqas became the provincial capital and seems to have remained so until the end of the Assyrian Empire.
The Roman Emperor Caligula renamed the city Germanicia Caesarea after his father Germanicus. This name was used under the Byzantines as Germanikeia. The Crusaders called the city Sebastia.
The Arabs conquered the city around 645 and used it as a base for incursions into Asia Minor. Destroyed several times during the Arab-Byzantine-Armenian battles, the city was rebuilt by the Umayyad caliph Muʿāwiya I (7th century) and expanded around 800 by the Abbasid caliph Hārūn ar-Raschīd.
Middle Ages
From 1071, Maraş became the governmental center of Philaretos Brachamios, who created his own power base in the southeast of the Byzantine Empire after the defeat of Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in the Battle of Manzikert around 1071. His territory included Antioch and Edessa. After the death of Philaretos, his officer Tatul took over the rule in Maraş and was recognized by Emperor Alexios I.
The crusaders of the First Crusade briefly occupied Maraş around 1097, and Balduin I of Jerusalem conquered Maraş in 1103 and incorporated it into the principality of Antioch. In 1114 the city was destroyed by an earthquake; according to the chronicle of Matthias of Edessa, 40,000 people were killed, which is probably an exaggeration. The effects of the catastrophe were felt as far away as Sis. In 1135, the Danishmanids unsuccessfully besieged Maraş. In 1146, Balduin of Maraş fell while attempting, alongside Joscelin II, to retake Edessa against Nur ad-Din. His successor Reinhold of Maraş fell in 1149 at the Battle of Inab, whereupon the dethroned Joscelin II, as Reinhold's brother-in-law, took power in Maraş, but fled in 1150 from the attack of the Rum Seljuks under Sultan Mas'ud I, who subsequently captured the city. Apparently, the city later passed to Nur ad-Din, who gave Maraş to Prince Mleh of Lesser Armenia in 1171 in exchange for a high-ranking Byzantine prisoner.
When the Small Armenian Empire was crushed by the Egyptian Mamluks in the 14th century, Maraş came under the rule of the Dulkadir before the city became part of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim I around 1515.
At the end of the 19th century, the city was located in the Vilâyet Aleppo and was the capital of a sandshak. It made a grand impression at that time, had 25 mosques, several Armenian churches, numerous public baths and 10,000-15,000 inhabitants, many of them Armenians. Among the craftsmen the Turkish red (kermes) dyers, weavers and comb makers stood out.
20th century
In 1919, French troops occupied the city of Maraş along with the surrounding province. The resistance against the occupiers was initiated by the scholar Sütçü İmam, it spread quickly and the insurgents were able to defeat the French. Many citizens died in the process, to which a place called Kanlıdere (Engl.: "Bloody Brook") bears witness to this day. Maraş was awarded the honorific name Kahraman (Engl.: "heroic") for the resistance in 1973. The victory there over General Gouraud's French battalions motivated Turkish fighters in all parts of the country to resist the occupying forces. This was followed by the capture of Urfa and Antep, which were given the honorary names Gaziantep (Eng: "victorious Antep") and Şanlıurfa (Eng: "glorious Urfa"). Kahramanmaraş is the only city to have been awarded the İstiklâl Madalyası (Independence Medal), as the French were driven out by local forces in the city before the troops of the Kuvayı Milliye (Atatürk's militia) intervened.
The three-week battle for Maraş in 1920 was also accompanied by massacres of Armenians who had resettled in the region after the genocide. Turkish gangs threw kerosene-soaked rags at Armenian homes and laid down a barrage in front of the American Relief Hospital. Armenians sought refuge in churches and schools. Women and children found temporary shelter in the city's six Armenian Apostolic churches, three Armenian Protestant churches, and the only Catholic cathedral. The Armenian legionaries tried to defend them but were overwhelmed. All the churches and eventually all the Armenian neighborhoods were set ablaze. The fate of the Armenians worsened when the French decided to withdraw on February 10. When the 2,000 Armenians who had taken refuge in the Catholic Cathedral tried to follow the retreat, they fell victim to Turkish rifles and machine guns.
Initial reports put the death toll of Armenians at 16,000, which was later revised to between 5,000 and 12,000, which are now considered more reliable figures.
Pogrom of 1978
→ Main article: Kahramanmaraş pogrom
After several violent clashes and riots, two teachers were shot dead on December 21, 1978. During the funeral the next day, clashes broke out again and two people were killed. On December 23, supporters of the right-wing MHP party attacked Alevi residential neighborhoods in Kahramanmaraş. There were 31 deaths and 150 injured. Despite the deployment of additional army units to Kahramanmaraş on December 24, the groups could not be prevented from further attacks. The government imposed a state of emergency on the 13 provinces in southeastern Turkey. According to official figures, 111 people have died. According to unofficial statements of the local population, more than 1100 people were killed. The government cited a conflict between leftists and rightists as the motive for the attacks.
21st century
In December 2012, it was decided to station around 400 Bundeswehr soldiers in the city as part of Operation Active Fence from January 2013, who were to operate Patriot anti-aircraft missiles there due to the civil war in Syria. On December 30, 2015, the German contribution to Operation Active Fence ended with the withdrawal of the last soldiers.
