AKSHAK, a city in northern Sumer in lat. 34° N., long. 44° E. There was a prehistoric Sumerian city on this site which lay on the Tigris at the mouth of the river Adhem (Physcus). It was the most northerly of the Sumerian cities and appears in the dynasty lists between Maer and the 4th dynasty of Kish. The site is usually identified with the Opis of Xenophon, who states that it was a large and populous city and that the Physcus was here spanned by a bridge, but Rawlinson identified Opis with another ancient site south of the Diyala, near Baghdad.
AK-SHEHR (anc. PHILOMELION), town, Konia vilayet, Asia Minor, at the edge of a fertile plain, on the north side of the Sultan Dagh. Philomelion was probably a Pergamenian founda tion on the Graeco-Roman highway from Ephesus to the east, and to its townsmen the Smyrniotes wrote the letter that describes the martyrdom of Polycarp. Cicero, on his way to Cilicia, dated some of his extant correspondence there; and the place was im portant in frontier wars between Byzantine emperors and the sultanate of Rum. It became an important Seljuk town, and late in the i4th century passed into Ottoman hands. There Bayezid Yilderim is said by Ali of Yezd to have died after his defeat at Angora. The place still enjoys much repute among Turks as the burial place of Nasr-ed-din Hodja. The town has a station on the Anatolian railway, about 6om. from Afiun Qarahisar and loom. from Konia. Pop. (in 1927), 46,057