In antiquity it was Pendonsis or Pendosis, to the Arabs El Bedendum, and finally Bozantı and Pozantı in Turkish.

Pozantı has passed through the hands of Hittites, Persians, Alexander the Great, Rome and Byzantium.

Pozantı is windy and bleak, and for most of its history was a fort and a road-house, but more people began to live in the area permanently when a railway was built in 1917.

The only historical building in the city center is the mosque and fountain of Ottoman general Cemal Paşa, built in 1919 and since repaired and extended.

The Casemates of İbrahim Pasha, the remains of a 19th-century fort, are located on the hill named Tekir, next to the modern highway D.750.