Fatsa

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Map of Anatolia ancient regions

Fatsa is a town and a district of Ordu Province in the central Black Sea region of Turkey.

Variants

Jat Gotras Namesake

Jat Gotras Namesake

Name

The oldest recorded name of the town is Polemonion (Ancient Greek: Πολεμώνιον, Latinized as Polemonium), after Polemon I of Pontus. A derivative of Polemonion, i.e. Bolaman, is the modern name of the river passing through Fatsa (the river is the ancient Sidenus).[1] The present name, Fatsa, has been influenced by modern Greek Φάτσα or Φάτσα Πόντου (φἀτσα is derived from Italian faccia), which translates as "face or housefront on the sea", but has in fact mutated from Fanizan, the name of the daughter of King Pharnaces II of Pontus, through Fanise, Phadisana (Greek: Φαδισανή),[2] Phadsane[3] Phatisanê Vadisani (Greek: Βαδισανή), Phabda,[4] Pytane, Facha, Fatsah into today's Fatsa. Apart from Polemonion, another Greek name of the town was Side.[5]

History

Antiquity: The history of Fatsa goes back to antiquity, when the coast was settled by Cimmerians, and Pontic Greeks in the centuries BC. The ruins on Mount Çıngırt (the ancient rock tombs and vaults) are from this period.

Roman and Byzantine periods: Fatsa was first mentioned, in the era of the Kingdom of Pontus, as Polemonium, after King Polemon I, the Roman client king appointed by Mark Antony. Under Nero, the kingdom became a Roman province in AD 62. In about 295, Diocletian (r. 284–305) divided the province into three smaller provinces, one of which was Pontus Polemoniacus, called after Polemonium, which was its administrative capital.

As the Roman Empire developed into the Byzantine Empire, the city lost some of its regional importance. Neocaesarea became the capital of the province, and the Diocese of Polemonion was a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Neocaesarea.[6] Due to partition of the Byzantine Empire as a result of the Fourth Crusade, Fatsa became a part of the Empire of Trebizond in 1204.

In the 13th and 14th centuries Genoese traders established trading posts on the Black Sea coast.[7] Fatsa became one of the most important of these ports. There is a stone warehouse on the shore built in this period.

Ottoman period: Following the conquest of the Empire of Trebizond by the Ottomans in 1461, Fatsa become a part of Rûm Eyalet and later a part of Trebizond Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire and remained within the Sanjak of Janik until the collapse of the Empire in 1921. Fatsa became a district of Ordu Province, following the formation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.

Archaeology

In 2020, archaeologist discovered ruins of a church at the bottom of the lake Gaga.[8]

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[9] mentions.... We find here the nations of the Genetæ7 the Chalybes8, the town of Cotyorum9, the nations of the Tibareni and the Mossyni, who make marks upon their bodies,10 the people called Macrocephali11, the town of Cerasus12, the port of Chordule, the nations called the Bechires13 and the Buzeri, the river Melas14, the people called the Macrones, and Sidene with its river Sidenus15, by which the town of Polemonium16 is washed, at a distance from Amisus of one hundred and twenty miles.

7 Strabo speaks of a promontory called Genetes; and Stephanus Byzantinus mentions a river and port of the same name.

8 Strabo places the Chaldei, who, he says, were originally called Chalybes, in that part of the country which lies above Pharnacia (the modern Kerasunt).

9 Or Cotyora. According to Xenophon, this was a colony of Sinope, which furnished supplies for the Ten Thousand in their retreat. The place was on a bay called after the town. Hamilton, in his Researches, &c., Vol. i., is of opinion that Cotyorum may have stood on the site of Ordou, where some remains of an ancient port, cut out of the solid rock, are still visible. He remarks, however, that some writers suppose that Cotvora was the modern bay of Pershembah, which is more sheltered than Ordou. Cotyora was the place of embarkation of the Ten Thousand.

10 Similar to what we call tatooing. Parisot suggests that these people may have been the ancestors of the Mongol tribes who still dwell in tents similar to those mentioned by Mela as used by the Mossyni.

11 Or the "long-headed people."

12 Its site is not improbably that of the modern Kheresoun, on the coast of Asia Minor, and west of Trebizond. Lucullus is said to have brought thence the first cherry-trees planted in Europe.

13 It has been remarked, that Pliny's enumeration of names often rather confuses than helps, and that it is difficult to say where he intends to place the Bechires. We may perhaps infer from Mela that they were west of Trapezus and east of the Thermodon.

14 Now the Kara Su, or Black River, still retaining its ancient appellation. It rises in Cappadocia, in the chain of Mount Argæus.

15 Still called by the same name, according to Parisot, though sometimes it is called the river of Vatisa. More recent authorities, however, call it Poleman Chai.

16 On the coast of Pontus, built by king Polémon, perhaps the Second.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[10] mentions ....We next come to the rivers Iasonius17 on the site of the older city of Side, at the mouth of the Sidenus and Melanthius18 and at a distance of eighty miles from Amisus, the town of Pharnacea19, the fortress and river of Tripolis20; the fortress and river of Philocalia, the fortress of Liviopolis, but not upon a river, and at a distance of one hundred miles from Pharnacea, the free city of Trapezus21, shut in by a mountain of vast size.

17 Probably near the promontory of Jasonium, 130 stadia to the northeast of Polemonium. It was believed to have received its name from Jason the Argonaut having landed there. It still bears the name of Jasoon, though more commonly called Bona or Vona.

18 Sixty stadia, according to arrian, from the town of cotyora

19 Supposed to have stood on almost the same site as the modern Kheresoun or Kerasunda. It was built near, or, as some think, on the site of Cerasus.

20 Still known by the name of Tireboli, on a river of the same name, the Tireboli Su.

21 Now called Tarabosan, Trabezun, or Trebizond. This place was originally a colony of Sinope, after the loss of whose independence Trapezus belonged, first to Lesser Armenia, and afterwards to the kingdom of Pontus. In the middle ages it was the seat of the so-called empire of Trebizond. It is now the second commercial port of the Black Sea, ranking next after Odessa.

References

  1. ↑ Smith, William, ed. (1854–1857). "Sidenus". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray.
  2. ↑ Friedrich Heinrich Theodor Bischoff, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der alten, mittleren und neuen Geographie, 1829
  3. ↑ Richard J. A. Talbert, Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World,
  4. ↑ Anthony Bryer and David Winfield, The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1985: ISBN 0-88402-122-X), p. 111.
  5. ↑ Putzgers, F.W., Historischer Schul-Atlas, Bielefeld, 1929
  6. ↑ DIMITRI KOROBEINIKOV (2003): Orthodox Communities in Eastern Anatolia in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.1 Part 1: The Two Patriarchates: Constantinople and Antioch, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 15:2, 197-214
  7. ↑ Rakova Snezhana, "Genoese in the Black Sea", Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World, Black Sea
  8. ↑ Ruins of church discovered on bottom of lake
  9. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 4
  10. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 4

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