[1][2] From the Luwian name Tuwana were derived: The location of the Hittite Tūwanuwa/Neo-Hittite Tuwana/Classical Tyana corresponds to the modern-day town of Kemerhisar in Niğde Province, Turkey.

[16][17][18][19] The region around Tyana, which corresponded to roughly the same area as the former Iron Age kingdom of Tuwana, was known in Classical Antiquity as Tyanitis.

According to the Telipinu Proclamation, Tūwanuwa was part of the territories that the 17th century BC founder-king of the Hittite Old Empire, Labarna I, had conquered and which his sons divided among each other and established their rule there.

[1][3] During the reign of the Hittite Middle Empire's king Tudhaliya III, the cities of Tūwanuwa and Uda had become border towns of the forces of Arzawa after it had invaded the Lower Land.

[2][18] The kingdom of Tuwana was located in southern Cappadocia and covered the territory located in the present-day province of Niğde in Turkey,[25] lying to the east of the Konya Plain and the Obruk Plateau across Lake Tuz and the Melendiz Mountains until the Hasandağ volcano to the north,[18][26] where the Erdaş and Hodul mountains formed its northern boundary by separating it from the kingdom of Tabal,[18] while to the south it extended to the south until the Cilician Gates[27][26] so that Tuwana was the first area travellers would reach after leaving Ḫiyawa to the north by passing through the Cilician Gates to cross the Taurus Mountains.

[27][21][28] Tuwana was therefore located in the southern Tabalian region,[15] of which it was the largest and most prominent kingdom, with its territory consisting of several settlements surrounding the royal capital at the city of Tuwana,[1][2] although the city of Naḫitiya (modern Niğde; possibly Hittite period Naḫita[29]) might have temporarily acted as capital under the reign of the king Sarruwannis.

[44] By c. 738 BC, the Tabalian region, including Tuwana, had become a tributary of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, either after the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III's (r. 745 – 727 BCE) conquest of Arpad over the course of 743 to 740 BC caused the states of the Tabalian region to submit to him, or possibly as a result of a campaign of Tiglath-pileser III in Tabal.

[1] Tuwana however appears to have come under direct Assyrian rule during the later years of Warpalawas II's reign, especially following the annexation of the kingdom of Tabal, then reorganised as the kingdom of Bīt-Burutaš, and the deportation of its king Ambaris in 713 BC, after which Sargon II appointed one Aššur-šarru-uṣur as governor of Que based in Ḫiyawa who also held authority on Ḫilakku and the Tabalian region, including both Bīt-Burutaš and Tuwana.

[1][31][51] Following the appointment of Aššur-šarru-uṣur, Warpalawas II of Tuwana and Awarikus of Ḫiyawa became largely symbolic rulers although they might have still held the power to manage their kingdoms locally.

[31] Muwaḫḫaranis II might have continued to rule in Tabal into the 7th century BC,[53] by which time Neo-Assyrian control of the Tabalian region had ended.

[16][3] In Greek legend, the city was first called Thoana because Thoas, a Thracian king, was its founder (Arrian, Periplus Ponti Euxini, vi); it was in Cappadocia, at the foot of the Taurus Mountains and near the Cilician Gates (Strabo, XII, 537; XIII, 587).

After having sided first with the Sassanid ruler Shapur in 260 and then Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, it was captured by emperor Aurelian in 272, who would not allow his soldiers to sack it, allegedly because Apollonius appeared to him.

[72] Due to its location, the city was on one of the major Christian pilgrim routes in the empire and also had its own local saints such as Orestes, who according to tradition was martyred in Late Antiquity in Tyana and remained a venerated figure in Cappadocia up to the tenth century at least.

[77] Abbas rebuilt the site three years later as an Abbasid military colony in preparation for Caliph al-Ma'mun's planned conquest of Byzantium, but after Ma'mun's sudden death in August 833 the campaign was abandoned by his successor al-Mu'tasim and the half-rebuilt city was razed again.

In the Middle and Late Byzantine periods the city recovered somewhat as a place of relative agricultural and commercial importance, but it never hosted more than a few thousand inhabitants.