Tortum is a district and city in the province of Erzurum. The city's population is about 4.5 thousand inhabitants. It is located at an altitude of 600 meters above sea level. A road lined with yellow sandy cliffs leads to Tortum.
The city of Tortum is the most beautiful after Erzincan in the Erzurum Eyalet. It is inhabited by remarkably sincere, friendly, chaste and affable people. Every courtyard in the city has vineyards and gardens. Thanks to the mild climate. fruits and berries are abundant. Praiseworthy are the pears, grapes and ruby-red peaches.
The fortress located in Tortum is a structure that has a quadrangular shape and is located on a high hill. The fortress has a single iron gates. Inside the citadel there is a small cathedral mosque, which has eighteen outbuildings, and there is also one granary.
In the lower suburb there are about seven hundred well-appointed buildings. There are only seven mosques and seven residential areas in the city. There are also two drawing-rooms courts, two baths, ten schools for boys, and about seventy shops from each shops. The absence of an imaret (a charitable institution attached to the Mosque) and the Bedesten (the town market).
Nowadays gemstones are mined in Tortum, for the town is situated in a mountainous mountainous terrain.
