Sopot Castle (Albania)

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Mosque of Haji Bendo within the castle walls

The castle of Sopot ( Albanian  Kalaja e Sopotit or Kalaja e Borshit ), together with the Ottoman mosque of Haxhi Bendo ( Albanian  Xhamia e Haxhi Bendos ) located within the castle walls, are the landmarks of the place Borsh in southern Albania .

location

The Sopot hill above the village of Borsh

The castle and the mosque are located directly on the Albanian Riviera high above the coast of the Ionian Sea . The Sopot Castle Hill reaches a height of 326  m above sea level. A. and drops steeply to the north, west and south. The castle, located high above the village and the gorge of Borsh, protects the access from the coast inland towards Kuç, Kurvelesh and Shushica Valley (towards Amantia ) and the path between Chaonia and the Illyrian centers of central Albania and around Vlora .

history

The history of the Ottoman castle complex goes back to antiquity . The fortifications follow the trail of an acropolis . After that it was rebuilt a total of four times, including during the Byzantine era and after the conquest of the region by the Ottomans .

The earliest finds in the castle area date back to the 12th century BC. BC, when a fortification against the Dorians was built in the Bronze Age . In the 4th century BC A small settlement was established west of the Acropolis. In the 1st century BC The settlement was abandoned.

The place was not mentioned again until the 13th century. The name Sopot comes from Slavonic . This name can be found, for example, as the name of the formerly German- populated city of Sopot in West Prussia . Al-Idrisi , the Arab- Muslim cosmographer of King Rugher of Sicily , calls this place “Kitab Rudschar” Sopot in his work . In medieval Greek sources the castle is called Sopoton or Sopotos , from which the name of the place is derived in other languages. Its port is mentioned in Greek portolans under the name Gazopolis . It has nothing (yet) to do with the Arabic or Turkish title Ghâzi .

In the period up to the Turkish occupation at the beginning of the 15th century and beyond, the owner of the castle changed repeatedly. The Archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos wrote here the " archon of Sopotos " ( ancient Greek ἀρχοντία Σοπωτοῡ archontia Sopotou ), when it became part of the region Vagenetia was. In 1258, the despot of Epirus Michael II Komnenos Dukas gave the castle together with Buthrotum and the island of Corfu as a dowry for his daughter Helena to Manfred of Sicily . But the castle soon came back under Epiriot control before it was ceded again by Nikephorus I Komnenos Dukas to Charles I of Anjou in 1279 . In the following decades the area fell back into Epiriot hands, but in the uprising of Epirus against the paleologists and the Byzantines (1338/39), the castle residents were the emperor Andronikos III. Faithful to Palaiologos .

After the successful conquest of the Ottoman Turks in 1417, a cadastre from 1431 lists Sopot as a hill with 60 households and the capital of a Nahiye . In 1456 the units of King Alfonso V of Aragon acted against the Ottomans in the area of ​​" Sobato" . In 1470 Sopot came under Venetian control, more precisely under the jurisdiction of the governor of Corfu. At the end of the Ottoman-Venetian War from 1463 to 1479, the Ottomans raised a claim to the castle and were ultimately awarded it. In 1488, some local Albanians led a revolt against the Ottoman government. In the 16th century, Sopot - with the support of local insurgents - was again Venetian.

In 1798 Ali Pasha von Janina had the castle, as well as the whole region, under his control. After his death in 1822 the hill was abandoned.

The first archaeological description was made in the 1930s. In 1971 the area was mapped. Excavations took place between 1976 and 1990.

description

Entrance to the castle

Both the castle and the mosque are in a ruinous state. Remnants of the walls and towers from different periods have been preserved. The approximately 1000 meter long walls of the castle, which continue to correspond to the ancient fortifications, survived under the Ottoman rule. Inside, the medieval fortification was separated in two by a wall. Triangular towers were added later, probably in the mid-Byzantine era. Inside the castle there are ruins of various buildings and cisterns. Medieval residential buildings were laid out on terraces .

The mosque of Haxhi Bendo, the only standing building in the complex, was probably built from local materials at the end of the 17th century. Unlike the Byzantine-Greek churches and monasteries in the region, the mosque has not yet been restored after the end of communism in Albania . It is a construction of the type of single-dome mosque that is common in Albania. The square building has a side length of around eight meters. To the north is a tiled-roofed porch (hajat) with three stone arches. Which is located on the south facade mihrab . In the northwest corner is the rest of the minaret . The dome is now covered with concrete. Namesake Haxhi Bendo Vasili (or Haxhi Bedo ) was the son of the orthodox vassal Vasili, who was in the service of Ali Pasha of Janina and operated in the villages of Souli (1805-1813). He died along with his brother Ali Vasili fighting the Souliotes on mesolonischem area.

An ancient necropolis has been found south of the city .

Web links

Commons : Sopot Castle  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Official map 1: 50,000 of the military cartographic office of Albania, sheet K-34-136-D, 2nd edition 1983
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Bashkim Lahi: Borsh . In: Christian Zindel, Andreas Lippert, Bashkim Lahi, Machiel Kiel (eds.): Albania. An archeology and art guide from the Stone Age to the 19th century . Böhlau, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-20723-8 , pp. 84-87 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Peter Soustal, Johannes Koder: Tabula Imperii Byzantini . 3: Nikopolis and Kephallēnia. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-7001-0399-9 , p. 262 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ a b Oliver Gilkes: Albania. An Archaeological Guide . IBTauris, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-78076-069-8 , Borsh (Sopot), pp. 88 f .
  5. ↑ a b Aleksandër Meksi : Xhamitë e Shqipërisë . Plejad, Tirana 2018, ISBN 978-9928-18337-8 , Xhamia në Kalanë e Borshit - Sarandë, p. 81-84 .
  6. ↑ Xhamite duan ndërhyrje emergjente restauruese, mund të mos i kemi më .. In: Gazeta Impakt. April 27, 2019, Retrieved December 1, 2019 (Albanian).

Coordinates: 40 ° 4 ′ 13 ″  N , 19 ° 51 ′ 20 ″  E