On the Names of Late Byzantine and Post-byzantine Cherson

Abstract

Byzantine Cherson, the Empire’s main outpost in the northern Black Sea area, was located in the south-western tip of the Crimean Peninsula. This article addresses new names of this city and, later, its ruins, which appeared from the fourteenth to eighteenth century. According to the written sources, the final decline and depopulation of this city dates to the middle or the third quarter of the fifteenth century. However, before that the Turks who lived in the vicinity called the city Sary-Kermen, or “Yellow fort.” From them, this place-name came first to Arabic writers and then to Western European travellers and cartographers. Later on, new names of the city appeared. In the seventeenth century, the sources documented the place-name Tope-Tarkan, or “Prince’s hill,” and in the eighteenth century, Church, or corrupted Χερσών. Obviously, these toponyms were in use simultaneously. In this period, Christian writers continued to call the city Cherson, but often forget the exact place where it stood. This situation reflected the changes in ethnic and language environment in the Taurica resulted by the thirteenth-century Mongol invasion and fifteenth-century Ottoman conquest, as well as the fact that the local residents forget the history of Cherson after a time its last residents left the city. Legends developed around the abandoned place, and the old ruins on the opposite (eastern) side of present-day Karantinnaia bay were probably called the city of Salunia.