Şavşat

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Şavşat
Coat of arms is missing
Help on coat of arms
Şavşat (Turkey)
Red pog.svg
Savsat, main-w.jpg
Main street in the center. Looking west
Basic data
Province (il) : Artvin
Coordinates : 41 ° 15 '  N , 42 ° 22'  E Coordinates: 41 ° 14 '36 "  N , 42 ° 21' 50"  E
Height : 1174  m
Residents : 6,162 (2018)
Telephone code : (+90) 466
Postal code : 08 700
License plate : 08
Structure and administration (as of 2019)
Structure : 3 malls
Mayor : Nihat Acar ( CHP )
Website:
Şavşat County
Residents : 17,606 (2018)
Surface: 1,316 km²
Population density : 13 inhabitants per km²
Kaymakam : Musa Göktaş
Website (Kaymakam):
Template: Infobox location in Turkey / maintenance / district
Residential area north of the thoroughfare. Few houses still follow the traditional construction method

Şavşat ( Georgian შავშეთი , Shawscheti ) is a city and the administrative center of the district of the same name ( İlçe ) in Artvin Province in northeastern Turkey . The city of Şavşat is home to 35 percent of the district's population.

location

Şavşat is located at an altitude of 1000 meters on the expressway leading from Hopa on the eastern Black Sea coast to Kars , about halfway between Artvin in the west and Ardahan in the east. In the north, the wooded Imerchewi Hills, which are used as pastureland, form the foothills of the Karçal Mountains ( Karçal Dağları ), which rise to 3167 meters north of the city . The thoroughfare runs in the valley of the Berta Suyu , which becomes Şavşat Deresi on its upper reaches in the area of ​​the city . It is a right tributary of the Çoruh . To the south of the valley, several peaks of the Yalnızçam mountain range reach heights between 2500 and over 3000 meters.

The district is located in the east of the Artvin Province, it borders in the east on the Ardahan Province and in the northeast on the Autonomous Republic of Adjara in Georgia . Four kilometers west of the city center, a side road branches off to the north at the medieval fortress of Şavşat, which is enthroned on a rocky peak in the middle of the valley. It leads via the mountain villages of Ciritdüzu and Veliköy to Meşeli Karagöl, 25 kilometers away, a lake in the Karagöl-Sahara National Park , which is named after the Sahara mountains there. From Ciritdüzu the ruins of the former Georgian cathedral Tbeti in the village of Cevizli can be reached in a north-westerly direction .

Cityscape

To the east of the fortress, the road leaves the Bachtal and leads slightly uphill on its north side to the compact city center, which is surrounded by hills densely covered with coniferous forest. The bus station is located in the higher eastern part of the village below a new building district with high apartment blocks. There are several simple hotels, numerous restaurants and shops along the thoroughfare. Characteristic of the side streets running north up the slope between the usual blocks are older houses with pitched roofs, the gables of which are facing the street. The construction is reminiscent of the traditional houses in some villages in the area, built from a beam construction with board cladding. The city in the midst of an agrarian surrounding area lives from trade, there are no noteworthy industrial companies.

fortress

The former principality of Shavscheti (Turkish Şavşat) within the Georgian empire Tao-Klardschetien once extended over a much larger area than today's Turkish district. From the 9th century, the princes of the Bagratid dynasty ruled temporarily from the fortress Ardanuç over an area from the Black Sea to Erzurum in the south and today's western Georgia in the east. In the 11th century, the historian Sumbat Davitisdze reported in his "History of the Bagratids" about the monastery chief ( Archimandrite ) of Tbeti, Bishop Saba Mtbevari, who had a castle and a tower built near his monastery in 1027/28. He called the castle Sveti ("pillar"). It is possible that it meant the fortress of Şavşat ( Şavşat Kalesi ). According to Sumbat, Bishop Saba and some nobles from Shavscheti could have defended the fortress against a Byzantine attack in the following years . The fortress became the residence of the Shavshet princes. In the middle of the 16th century, the Ottomans ended Georgian rule and closed the monasteries. The fortress is likely to have been inhabited until the beginning of the 19th century; semi-autonomous Georgian local rulers ( Bey ) probably resided at the end .

The fortress hill is rocky and steep on all sides. A path zigzags up on the east side. The surrounding wall, of which even larger parts have been preserved, exactly follows the outer edge of the hilltop. The entrance gate is in the middle of the straight east wall, the west wall runs in a large arch. A single round tower on the southeast corner was supposed to serve as a last refuge. In the western area there are still remains of an inner wall that separated the outer courtyard from the inner living area. The visible ruins could be from the 14th or 15th century.

population

Şavşat is the second largest district in the province. With a population density of 13 inhabitants per square kilometer, it is just over half the provincial average. In addition to the district town, 65 villages ( Köy ) belong to the district. The average population per village is 176 inhabitants, the area around 20 square kilometers. With 603 inhabitants, Pınarlı is the largest village.

Personalities

Web links

Commons : Şavşat  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Türkiye Nüfusu İl İlçe Mahalle Köy Nüfusu , accessed on May 5, 2019
  2. V. Silogava, R. Shengelia: Tao Klardjeti. Chapter IV. Eparch of Tbeti . Iberiana, Tbilisi 2006
  3. Wolfram Hörandner, Johannes Koder, Maria A. Stassinopoulou (eds.): Wiener Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik. Contributions to the symposium forty years of the Institute for Byzantine and Neo-Greek Studies at the University of Vienna in memory of Herbert Hunger. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2004, p. 70, ISBN 978-3-7001-3376-6
  4. ^ Thomas Alexander Sinclair: Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey. Vol. II. The Pindar Press, London 1989, pp. 19f