Did You Know?
The City Gave Away Its Goats and Kept Its Clock
The Angora goat takes its name from Ankara, which was called Angora until 1930. Its fleece is mohair, though that word comes from Arabic, not from the city. White goats with long ringlets have grazed the plateaux around the city for at least two thousand years, and European travellers were writing about them from the 1550s.
For centuries the Ottoman state restricted their export, because the monopoly was worth protecting.
It did not hold.
In 1838 Sultan Mahmud II sent twelve wethers and one female to South Africa. The males were castrated deliberately, so that no rival herd could be established. It was a reasonable precaution and it failed. In 1849 Sultan Abdülmecid I gave seven does and two bucks to an American adviser — the first import to the United States. Further consignments followed, some six or seven hundred head in total, with final large shipments from South Africa of 148 goats in 1904 and 117 bucks in 1925.
By the 1960s the United States had over five million Angora goats, with more than 90% of American mohair produced in Texas. South Africa now holds roughly a quarter of the world's Angora goats and has overtaken the US in production.
Turkish academic accounts describe the outcome plainly: Anatolia, the cradle of the breed, lost its position in an industry that carries its capital's name.
The clock: and in the very year of that last shipment, Ankara gave the country something it has never given up.
On 26 December 1925 the Grand National Assembly in Ankara passed Law 697, abolishing the Ottoman alaturka system — in which the day began at sunset and every clock in the country had to be corrected every few days — and adopting the international 24-hour clock from 1 January 1926.
Istanbul lived with the consequences; its mosque timekeeping rooms, the muvakkithanes, were only formally closed in 1952. But the decision was made here.
Ankara sits at about 33° east, on UTC+3, a zone built for the 45th meridian — leaving the city roughly 48 minutes ahead of its own sun. Since 2016 Türkiye has stayed on that offset permanently, with no seasonal change at all.
The city renamed itself in 1930. The world still calls the goat Angora.
Sources
- Goat Journal, *Angora Goats Breed Profile* (148 goats in 1904, 117 bucks in 1925)
- Britannica, *Angora goat* (Origin near Ankara; introduced into Europe in the mid-16th century)
- Ronan Country Fibers (more than 5 million goats in the US in the 1960s; more than 90% share in Texas; 1.8 million in 1992, under 200,000 in 2009)
- The Rajasthan Express (~23% of the world's Angora goats are in South Africa; pre-1930 name "Angora"; 1555 record by Pierre Belon)
- Ankara University DTCF Magazine, *The Angora Goats in History (1765-1908)* (Loss of Turkish monopoly and loss of superiority of Anatolia)
- Law No. 697, 26 December 1925, entered into force 1 January 1926
- Longitude calculation: Ankara 32.85°E, UTC+3 meridian 45°E