Bizye

Vize ( el, Βιζύη, bg, Виза) is a town and district of Kırklareli Province in the Marmara region of Turkey. The district governor is Elif Canan Tuncer, and the mayor is Ercan Özalp ( CHP). According to the Turkish Statistical Institute's 2020 data, the population of the town was 14,990 and of the district 28.606. The town's distance to the provincial centre is . Vize is situated on state road D.020, which runs from Istanbul to Edirne via Kırklareli.

In 2012 Vize was designated a Cittaslow (Slow City).

History

Antiquity

Under the ancient name of Bizya or Bizye ( grc, Βιζύη) Vize served as a capital for the ancient Thracian tribe of the Asti, and was mentioned by several ancient authors.

From inscriptions it seems that during the late 1st century BCE Bizye was under local rule of the Sapians rather than under direct Roman control.

The martyrs Memnon and Severos were killed in Bizye as part of the Diocletianic Persecution beginning in 303. In 353 CE, the exiled Eustathius of Antioch chose to settle in Bizye, where he later died. The city is documented as the seat of an archbishop, as a suffragan of Heraclea, as early as the 5th century.

Middle Ages

Beginning in the 6th century, water was piped from Bizye to Constantinople, and some of the pipes are still visible. In 773 or 774, the emperor Constantine V had a bridge built here.

Bizye is described as a city (polis) in the province of Europe in the ''Synecdemus'' of Hierocles, as well as later in the '' De Thematibus'' of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.

The city appears to be identical with the "Uzusa" ( el, Οὔζουσα) mentioned by the council in Trullo in 692, which was signed by one Geōrgios ''elachistos episkopos Uzusēs tēs Thrakōn chōras''. Since there is no signature for a representative of Bizye in the document, it is assumed that they are the same place.

Proto-Bulgarian inscriptions indicate that Khan Krum captured and probably destroyed Bizye. During the 9th and 10th centuries the town served as the head of a tourmarches. In the aftermath of Thomas the Slav's rebellion in 823, his stepson Anastasios attempted to take refuge in Bizye but was handed over by the city's residents to the emperor. The folk saint Maria Nea lived in Bizye after her marriage in 896 to Nikephoros, who was tourmarches here. After her death in 903, she was venerated as a saint, and her cult became very popular in Bizye and the surrounding regions.

The Bulgarian emperor Simeon I captured Bizye in c. 925 after a five-year-long siege; the city's walls were destroyed, and most of its population fled to nearby Medea. Whether Bizye was later targeted during Peter I's campaign in eastern Thrace in 927 is uncertain.

In the 12th century, the Arab geographer al-Idrisi described Bizye as a large and well-fortified city in a fertile valley, with thriving commerce and industry. When Cuman invaders came and looted eastern Thrace in 1199, a Byzantine army was dispatched from Bizye to repel them. They were at first successful, but their initial victory was squandered because the Byzantine troops got greedy.

After the sack of Constantinople in April 1204, Bizye became part of the new Latin Empire as per the Partitio Imperii Romaniae. The city did not submit to the Latins at first, and it wasn't until March 1205 that it was brought to heel, along with the similarly rebellious cities of Arcadiopolis (modern Lüleburgaz) and Tzurulon (modern Çorlu). Just one month later, though, the Latin army was defeated by a combined force of Bulgars and Cumans led by Tsar Kaloyan, who then launched a series of invasions throughout eastern Thrace. Bizye was one of the few cities in the region that remained unaffected by these incursions. Toward the end of 1205, the nobleman Anseau de Cayeux was sent to garrison the city along with 120 knights. Later in June 1206, the emperor Henry of Flanders set up camp at Bizye, which was honored as ''"mult ere bone et forz"''.

Sometime after 1225, an Epirote force under Theodore Komnenos Doukas advanced on Bizye, but they were unable to take possession of the city. In 1237, the Cumans again invaded Thrace, and many of Bizye's residents were captured and sold as slaves. In August 1246, the Latin emperor Baldwin II negotiated a deal with the Order of Saint James which would have ceded Bizye and Medea to the order along with possessions in Constantinople. However the treaty was never put into effect. In 1147, Bizye (along with Tzurulon, Medea, and Derkos) came under the control of John III Doukas Vatatzes, who had allied with the Bulgarians.

Either at the end of 1255 or the beginning of 1256, the emperor Theodore II Laskaris defeated a combined Bulgarian and Cuman force somewhere between Bizye and Bulgarophygon (modern Babeski). He then concluded a peace treaty that fixed a new border in the upper Maritsa

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases