Some miscellaneous notes on the town and antiquities of Sinop, mainly from travellers' accounts

Abstract

In these notes are presented various trouvailles encountered by the writer in the course of other researches. Although disconnected and inconclusive, they may be of some use to students of Sinop and to those interested in the general subject of the collection of antiquities in the Levant. In general, well-known sources have not been discussed, except in so far as they afford comparison with the less familiar accounts dealt with here. A final note refers to the Jewish population of Sinop in the early Ottoman period in relation to travellers' accounts.In antiquity, the status of Sinop as a port was well known. Arrian is almost alone in describing the town not as a harbour but only in relation to its being a Milesian colony and the founder of Trabzon (Baschmakoff 1948: 80–81, 94–95). Similarly, in the later middle ages and early modern times, references to Sinop were almost always in relation to its port. For some, the interest was urgent: it was a welcome refuge for Bishop Ignatios of Smolensk when in 1389 his vessel, coasting the Crimea, was driven to the southern Pontic shore. Adverse winds detained him there for two days (Majeska 1984: 86–89). He was more fortunate than Ibn Battuta, some 40 years earlier, whom bad weather had delayed there for 40 days (Ibn Battuta, translated by H. A. R. Gibb 1957: 141).