THEODOSIA

This article appears in Volume V26, Page 770 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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THEODOSIA , formerly KAPPA, a seaport and watering-place of South Russia, on the

east

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

coast of the Crimea, 66 m. E.N.E. of Simferopol and 72 M. by a branch line from the Sebastopol-Ekaterinoslav railway. It has an excellent modern harbour, and its roadstead, which is never frozen, is well protected from

east

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

and west winds, and partly also from the south, but its depth is only 11 to 14 ft., reaching 35 ft. in the middle. The population was Io,800 in 1881, and 27,236 in 1897. Among the motley population of Russians,

Tatars

TATARS (the common form Tartars is less correct)

, Armenians, Germans and Greeks are several hundred Qaraite Jews. Few remains of its former importance exist, the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

being the Citadel built by the Genoese and still showing Latin

inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS (from Lat. inscribere, to write upon)

on some of its towers, the one or two detached towers left when the town walls were pulled down, and two or three mosques, formerly Genoese churches. The town also possesses a museum of antiquities and a picture gallery containing the works of the marine painter Ayvazovsky. Theodosia is an episcopal see of the Orthodox Greek Church. Gardening is one of the leading industries; fishing, a few manufactures, and agriculture are
II
carried on. Theodosia has gained much of the trade of Sevastopol since that town was made a military port in 1894, and the value of its exports (1221 millions sterling annually), principally grain and oil-seeds, is increasing year by year. A bronze statue of Alexander III. was put up on the sea-front in 1896.
The ancient Theodosia, the native name of which was Ardabda, was a colony founded from Miletus. Archaic terraccttas show it to have been inhabited in the 6th century B.C., but it is first heard of in history as resisting the attacks of Satyrus, ruler of the Cimmerian Bosporus, c. 390 B.C. His successor Leucon took it and made it a

great

GREAT

port for shipping wheat to Greece, especially to Athens. This export of wheat continued until the days of Mithradates VI. of Pontus, against whom the city revolted. Later it became a

special

SPECIAL

part of the Bosporan kingdom with its own

governor

GOVERNOR (from the Fr. gouverneur, from gouverner, O. Fr. governer, Lat. gubernare, to steer a ship, to direct, guide)

. In the 3rd century A.D. it was still inhabited, but seems to have been deserted not long afterwards. Besides the terra-cottas and pottery very beautiful Greek jewelry has been found near Theodosia. It coined silver and copper during the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. The name Kaff a (Genoese Capha, Turkish Kefe) first occurs in a writer of the 9th century. The Genoese established them-selves on the site shortly after 1266, and the

settlement

SETTLEMENT
SETTLEMENT, ACT OF

flourished exceedingly, being the depot of a trade route reaching to China. It became the head of the Genoese establishments in Gazaria, the see of a bishop, and the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

port on the northern shore of the Black Sea, far surpassing the Venetian Tana. Its population is said to have reached 8o,000 souls of many creeds and nationalities. There was a citadel (still remaining) and magnificent walls. These were rendered necessary by the occasional hostility of the Tatar khans. When the Turks took Constantinople the colony was almost cut off from the mother city, which handed it over to the enterprising bank of St George; but it could not be saved and fell in 1495 to the Turks, who sometimes called it Kuchuk-Stambul (Little Stambul or Constantinople) or Krym-Stambul (Stambul of Crimea). Its new masters kept it under their own direct

rule

RULE

and its prosperity was not entirely destroyed. In 1771 it was taken by the Russians, and in 1783 annexed by them, whereupon the greater part of its population deserted it. Its prosperity did not return until about 1894, when new harbour works made it a convenient port for grain ships coming light out of the Sea of Azov and wishing to complete their cargoes.
See E. von Stern, Theodosia (German and Russian, Odessa, 1906); E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (

Cambridge

, 19o9); for the history of Kaffa see Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen age (Paris, 1886), vol. ii. (E. H. M.)

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