Prosphorion Harbor

Map of the Byzantine Constantinople . The Prosphorion Harbor was in the northeastern part of the city on the south bank of the Golden Horn at the mouth of the Bosporus

The Prosphorion Port ( ancient Greek Προσφόριον ) was a Byzantine port in Constantinople . The port was built in the time of the Greek colony Byzantion (founded in 657 BC), the predecessor settlement of Constantinople. The building was used until the end of the first millennium AD. It was the first port of the city of Constantinople.

location

The port was on the south bank of the Golden Horn , east of today's Galata Bridge , in Region I of Constantinople, where the sea wall at the Byzantine Eugenius Gate (Ottoman Yalıköşkü Kapısı ) makes a sharp bend and continues to the west where it goes there was a wide bay at the mouth of the Golden Horn. This bay, once a harbor basin, is now filled and part of the area of the Sirkeci station south of the Sepetçiler Köşkü . The area belongs to the district of Hoca Paşa in Eminönü , which is part of Istanbul's Fatih district .

history

The Prosphorion Harbor (first bay on the left of the Golden Horn), Byzantium nunc Constantinopolis by Braun and Hogenberg (1572)

The first port of Constantinople was built in the time of Byzantion in a bay on the south bank of the Golden Horn. In Byzantine times, the quarter was called ta Eugeniou ( ancient Greek τὰ Εὑγενίου ) after the Eugenius Gate . The port was at the foot of the first hill of the city of Constantinople. Thanks to its location, the port was spared the strong southwest winds of the Propontis . After the city was destroyed by the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in 196 AD in punishment for aiding his rival Pescennius Niger , reconstruction began. The port was enlarged to the west and eventually extended to the area of today's Sirkeci station. The first berth was probably near the Eugenius Gate and was named after Timasius († 396), who had served as a general under the emperors Valens and Theodosius I. Shortly after Constantinople was founded by Constantine the Great in 324, the port became known as the "closed port" ( κλειστός λιμήν kleistos limēn ) because it was protected by piers , sea walls and the Eugenius Tower.

The name "Prosphorion", which the port received only after the founding of the city of Constantinople, could have originated on the one hand from the proximity to the market ( πρόσφορον prosphoron ), or from the title of the nearby square Phosphorion ( Φωσφόριον ), which arose from the legend that Hecate Phosphoros ( "light bearer" ) lit a light here to help the defenders of the city of Byzantium to defeat Philip II of Macedonia . Another theory suggests that the name could come from a nearby cattle market ( βοσπόριον, βοόσπορος or βόσπορος bosporion, boosporos or bosporos ), which was relocated near the Forum Tauri under Emperor Constantine V in the 8th century .

Two hundred years earlier, Emperor Justinian I had already relocated the market for sea freight from Prosphorion to the larger Sophienhafen on the Propontis Coast. In the port, the Scala Chalcedonensis landing stage was reserved for the residents of Chalcedon on the other side of the Bosporus . Apart from that, the port only had one function as a trading port: In Prosphorion, the economic goods from the Bosporus, the Black Sea and Asia were cleared. The region around the port was therefore a lively economic center with many shops: The Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae documented that in the 5th century four out of six horrea (warehouses) in the city were in the Prosphorion area. However, the port always had problems with sediment deposits from the flowing rivers and therefore silted up in the first millennium after Christ. Until the late Byzantine palaeologists times, the former port was used as a shipyard for the emperor's ships, which he used from the Blachernen Palace to the Hagia Sophia . Dock and shipyard were submitted to the Eugenius gate, which at that time also Kaisertor was called because the emperor had to go through the door to the Hagia Sophia.

In 1457 the area of the abandoned port was enclosed by the wall of the Topkapı Palace by the Ottomans .

literature

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

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m Raymond Janin : Constantinople Byzantine . Institut Français d'Etudes Byzantines, Paris 1964, p. 235.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Pictorial dictionary 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 , p. 57.

41,016 28.98Coordinates: 41 ° 0 ′ 57.6 ″ N , 28 ° 58 ′ 48 ″ E

[ja235-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m Raymond Janin : Constantinople Byzantine . Institut Français d'Etudes Byzantines, Paris 1964, p. 235.

[mw57-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Pictorial dictionary 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 , p. 57.