There is a mound; and a few inscriptions are built into a bridge, which here spans the river, carrying the road from Niksar to Tokat.
The chief towns in the interior were Amasia, on the Iris, the birthplace of Strabo, the capital of Mithradates the Great, and the burial-place of the earlier kings, whose tombs still exist; Comana, higher up the river, a famous centre of the worship of the goddess Ma (or Cybele); Zela, another great religious centre, refounded by Pompey, now Zilch; Eupatoria, refounded by Pompey as Magnopolis at the junction of the Lycus and Iris; Cabira, Pompey's Diospolis, afterwards Neocaesarea, now Niksar; Sebastopolis on the Scylax, now Sulu Seral; Sebasteia, now Sivas; and Megalopolis, a foundation of Pompey, somewhere in the same district.
They took possession of Sivas, Tokat, Niksar, Ablastan, Malatia, probably after the death of Suleiman, though they may have established themselves in one or more of these cities much earlier, perhaps in 1071, after the defeat of Romanus Diogenes.
The opium exported by way of Constantinople includes that of Hadjikeuy and Malatia; the Tokat kind, of good quality, including that produced in Yosgad, Sile and Niksar, and the current or second quality derived from Amasia and Oerek; the Karahissar kind including the produce of Mykalitch, Carabazar, Sivrahissar, Eskichehir.
In the summer of 1896 (June 14-22) there were massacres at Van, Egin, and Niksar; and on the 26th of August the Imperial Ottoman Bank at Constantinople was seized by revolutionists as a demonstration against the Christian powers who had left the Armenians to their fate.