Kalašma or Kalasma (occasionally Kalašpa) was a late Bronze Age polity in Northern Anatolia on the border of the Hittite Empire.
Location
The location of Kalašma is uncertain; scholars infer it from references in contemporary documents to nearby places, many of whose locations are also uncertain. According to Carlo Corti, Kalašma lay west of Pala. Stefano de Martino places it south of Arawanna and north of Lukka. Harranassi may have been a city in Kalašma.
Following the view expressed in 1977 by Massimo Forlanini, the University of Würzburg says Kalašma was likely in northeast Anatolia, in what is now the Turkish province of Bolu, In 1960, John Garstang and Oliver Gurney had put it in southeast Anatolia, between Marash and the Euphrates, whereas Albrecht Goetze favoured southwest Anatolia. In 1958 Friedrich Cornelius suggested Greek Cerasus (now Turkish Giresun).
While Bedřich Hrozný in 1935 identified Kalašma with Kalašmitta (one of the towns which worshipped Ala) later sources state they were distinct places.
History
Forlanini says that Kalašma was not a tribal name but a city-state, the eponymous city having been fortified by the Hittite king Hantili I (died c. 1560 BCE). Hantili failed to reinstate Kalašma's local weather god, and on returning to Ḫattuša, the Hittite capital, he had to perform expiatory rituals to the Sun goddess of the Earth.
Arnuwanda I (ruled 1380s BCE) installed oathbound military commanders in regions including Kalašma. Civil administration was by a council of elders. In the reign of Arnuwanda's son Tudhaliya II, troops from Kalašma and elsewhere rebelled and fled through Išuwa to an unnamed enemy country; Tudhaliya's son Suppiluliuma I subdued the rebel regions. There were several revolts in the reign of Suppiluliuma's son Muršili II (ended 1295 BCE). One triggered a punitive raid by Hittite general Nuwanzas. Muršili replaced the elders with a single administrator named Aparru, who rebelled, seized royal power, and invaded neighbouring Sappa. Aparru was soon defeated but Kalašma was in civil war until pacified the next year by Hutupiyanza, governor of Pala.
Kalašmans were later to be found further east, at Pahhuwa on the upper Euphrates, possibly having been deported there by Muršili, or as mercenary soldiers. Kalašmans fought alongside the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh against the Egyptian Empire in 1274 BCE.
Kalašma is one of the places mentioned in a Luwian hieroglyphic tablet from the reign of Arnuwanda III (ended c. 1210 BDE) as conquered by Mukšuš.
Language
In 2023 a tablet written in "the language of the land of Kalašma" was discovered in the Bogazköy Archive excavated at Ḫattuša. It is in the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European languages, probably the Luwic sub-branch. In 1958 had noted that a Hittite-language oath taken by officials from Kalašma represented a different dialect of Hittite from the oath of other regions' officials.