Abstract:

The Rum Seljuk surface remains at Patara, in the bathhouse and on the upper section of the adjacent wall around Yarımada attest to their presence at Patara, together with their probable reuse of the Roman Pharos, certainly still standing to a considerable height at this time and providing a marker for mariners along this coast until after 1524 as Piri Reis's maps of this coastline clearly record; although the port no longer functioned to any significant extent after the Lusignan Crusader sack of Patara in May 1362 and so it is not noted or marked as such by Piri Reis. The 1211 Rum Seljuk-East Roman border agreement, the 1216 letter to King Hugh of Cyprus addressing the problem of piracy and the use of Seljuk naval forces from Lycian ports, including vessels probably based at Patara for the 1216 re-conquest of Antalya, together with the 1220 Rum Seljuk-Venetian trade treaty indicate firm Rum Seljuk state control over Lycia and its Turkmen and Rum populations, as over the ports of Lycia, including the port of Patara, was established within the first 2 decades of the 13th c. Rum Seljuk control which continued into the 7th decade and arguably, with the rise of the Seljuk sponsored Menteşe Beylik into the first decade of the 14th c. The use and significance of the port in the period from the 13th c. to the sack of 1362 is noted, including serving as a Seljuk naval base in the control of piracy, for local cabotage trade and for Latin and Rum pilgrimage to the birthplace of St. Nicholas and, from the 1270's onwards, as a base for jihad-raiding of Latin and Rum territory and shipping. The reasons for the port's failure to recover following the sack of 1362, in addition to the known gradual silting up of the port, are given, the closeness of Rhodes in the hands of the Hospitaller Knights of St. John of Jerusalem from 1310-1522 with the permanent threat of a raid on Patara in the absence of a strongly fortified entrance to the harbor, combined with a significant degree of Hospitaller control through galley patrols over the adjacent sea lanes and only Latin-Rum not Muslim merchant vessels passing along this route led, it is suggested, to the rise in prominence of more secure bases in Caria and northwards to pro­secute the jihad as the 14th c. progressed, Miletus-Balat, Milas-Peçin and Ephesus-Ayasoğ­luk and Izmir-Smyrna (until 1344), in addition to depopulation caused by the 1347 plague pandemic and the distance overland from the port to major urban centers. With the Knights surrender of Rhodes in 1522 the sea-lane from Istanbul to Egypt past Patara was opened to Ottoman merchant vessels leading to the decline in trade through the port of Antalya, but the port of Patara was by then silted up and Patara was abandoned.

Keywords: