Well-lit interior view of the otherwise dark and gloomy underground city of Derinkuyu. Image credit: Nevit Dilmen/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
The place made an excellent shelter and was used as such for many centuries by different people, from early Christians fleeing persecutions from the Romans, to Muslims who used it for protection during the Arab-Byzantine wars of 780 and 1180. Similar caves were used for such purposes until the early 1900’s.
“When the news came of the recent massacres at Adana, a great part of the population at Axo took refuge in these underground chambers, and for some nights did not venture to sleep above ground,” to cite one example by Cambridge linguist Richard MacGillivray Dawkins.