Neorion harbor

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Map of the Byzantine Constantinople. The port is located in the north-eastern part of the city on the south bank of the Golden Horn near the confluence with the Bosporus

The Neorion port ( Greek λιμὴν τοῦ Νεωρίου or λιμὴν τῶν Νεωρίων ) was a Byzantine port in Constantinople that was used from the 4th century until the late Ottoman period . It was the first port after the city was expanded and renamed by Constantine the Great and the second oldest after the Prosphorion port , which was built in ancient Byzantium .

location

The port was on the south bank of the Golden Horn in the north of Constantinople, east of today's Galata Bridge , in Region VI of Constantinople. In Ottoman times, the area belonged to the Bahçekapı district (English garden gate ) between customs warehouses and the Abdülhamid -Medrese. Today the place belongs to the district Bahçekapı in Eminönü , which is part of the Istanbul district of Fatih . The harbor basin is now filled and the site of the landing stage for the ferries to Kadiköy and Üsküdar .

history

The Neorion harbor (second bay on the left side of the Golden Horn) on the map Byzantium nunc Constantinopolis by Braun and Hogenberg (1572)

The Neorion port was the first newly built port of the city of Constantinople after its "foundation" and after the Prosphorion port the second in the city. The port area was laid out below the northwest slope of the first hill of Constantinople in a district called ta Eugeniou ( Greek τὰ Εὑγενίου ). Here on the south bank of the Golden Horn, the ships were protected from the strong south- westerly winds of the Lodos , which blew inward from the Sea of ​​Marmara. In addition, silting up here in the Golden Horn was far less of a problem than on the south coast of the city to the Marmara Sea, where estuaries deposited sediments and the wind drove sand into the bays. Due to the favorable conditions, sailing ships could enter the Golden Horn in any weather and dock in the port. North winds rarely made it difficult to enter. The port was used as a trading port and shipyard. There was also an oars workshop here.

There were many shops in the area around the port due to trade. Not least because of this, but also because of the shipyard's timber storage, there were repeated violent fires in the harbor district. In 433 all shops burned down because a fire broke out in the port area. In 465 a fire broke out in a cured goods store that devastated eight regions of the city, and in 559 the shops burned down again when a mansion caught fire in a riot. According to an old legend, the apostle Andrew settled here when he landed in Byzantium and became the first patriarch of Constantinople . In 697, Emperor Leontios had the port dredged.

By the 8th century at the latest, trade increasingly shifted to the Propontish ports on the south coast of Constantinople and under Leo III. the port also became the site of the navy. Even so, the Neorion remained an important trading port for the city over the centuries that followed. First, Venetian merchants and traders from the Amalfi Republic settled in the west of the area around the port. Merchants from the Republic of Pisa followed at the end of the 11th century and Genoese merchants in 1155 who settled south and east of the Neorion port. In the 17th century, long after the Genoese had moved to the Galata area on the other side of the Golden Horn, Jewish traders settled in the area around the harbor and lived there until the middle of the 20th century when the square in front of the Yeni Cami was enlarged and a new coastal road was built.

Because of the Jews in the quarter, the port quarter was called Çifutkapı (German: Jews Gate ) in Ottoman times . At the time of the greatest expansion of the Latin settlement of the region, the area of ​​the Latins extended far west of the port to the Bigla Gate (also Drungarios Gate ), later the Ottoman Odun Kapı . During the rise of the Genoese in the Palaiologian era, overseas trade shifted from Neorion to Galata, but after the conquest of the Ottomans in 1453, the Genoese lost their influence and the Neorion port became an important trading port again until the late Ottoman period.

architecture

On the shoreline of the Neorion harbor stood a portico called Keratembolin ( Greek Κερατεμβ Neλιν ). The building took its name from a statue depicting a man with four horns. According to tradition, a bronze statue of a cattle was also placed in the harbor, which caused fear and horror among the residents of the area. Emperor Maurikios is therefore said to have ordered the statue to be sunk in the sea at the end of the 6th century. A shipyard was housed in part of the port, which is said to have been located near the church of St. Euphemia.

literature

  • Raymond Janin : Constantinople Byzantine . Institut Français d'Etudes Byzantines. Paris 1964.
  • Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Image lexicon on the topography of Istanbul: Byzantion, Konstantinupolis, Istanbul up to the beginning of the 17th century . Wasmuth, Tübingen 1977, ISBN 978-3-8030-1022-3 .
  • Ewald Kislinger : Neorion and Prosphorion - the old ports on the Golden Horn . In: Falko Daim (ed.): The Byzantine ports of Constantinople . Verlag des Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseums, Mainz 2016, ISBN 978-3-88467-275-4 , pp. 91–97 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Janin (1964), p. 235.
  2. ↑ a b c Müller-Wiener (1977), p. 57.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Janin (1964), p. 236.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Müller-Wiener (1977), p. 58.
  5. ↑ a b c d Kislinger (2016)
  6. ↑ Janin (1964), p. 90.

Coordinates: 41 ° 1 ′ 0 ″  N , 28 ° 58 ′ 30 ″  E