Kozan, Adana

Template:Infobox town TR Kozan (formerly Sis) is capital town of Kozan district in Adana Province, Turkey, 68km north of the city of Adana, in the northern section of the Adana plain. The Kilgen stream, a tributary of the Ceyhan River (formerly Jibun or Pyramus), flows through Kozan crossing the plain south into the Mediterranen Sea. The Toros mountains rise up sharply behind the town.

Its population has grown rapidly in recent years, from 54,451 in 1990 to 75,833 in 2000 (census figures).

History

From 3000BC onwards there were Hittite settlements in all these plains behind the Mediterranean coast, based on farming and grazing animals.

The area then changed hands many times, eventually becoming Flavias or Flaviopolis in the former Roman province of Cilicia Secunda.

The Christian era

The name of the town is Sis in (Armenian: Սիս, or Sissu, Sision and it had an important place in ecclesiastical history both the Armenian Apostolic Church and as a Roman Catholic titular see. If the identification of Flavias with Sis, which is probable, be admitted, it will be found that it is first mentioned in Theodoret's life of St. Simeon Stylites.

In the Middle Ages Sis was the religious centre of Christian Armenians, at least until Gregory the Illuminator the first Catholicos of Armenia(patriarch) transferred his see to Vagarshabad (Echmiadzin) in 302. The church remained though and Lequien (II, 899) gives the names of several bishops of Sis, before and after Gregory:

• Alexander, later Bishop of Jerusalem and founder of the famous library of the Holy Sepulchre in the third century
• Nicetas, present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325
• John, who lived in 451; Andrew in the sixth century
• George (681)
• Eustratus, Patriarch of Antioch about 868.

In 704, Sis was besieged by the Arabs, but relieved by the Byzantines. The Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil took it and refortified it, but it soon returned to Byzantine hands. It was rebuilt in 1186 by Leo II, king of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, one of the Rupenide dynasty who made the city the capital of the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia (from 1186 till 1375). During the Crusade the catholicate returned to Sis in 1294, and remained there 150 years.

In 1266 Sis was captured and damaged by the Egyptians, but in 1375, Sis was taken and demolished by the Ramazanoğlu Turks, under the flag of the Mamluc Sultan of Egypt. The town has never recovered its prosperity, not even when it passed into the power of the Ottomans in 1516.

In 1441, Sis having fallen from its high estate, the Armenian clergy proposed to remove the see, and on the refusal of the Catholicos of the day, Gregory IX, installed a rival at Echmiadzin, who, as soon as Selim I had conquered Greater Armenia, became the more widely accepted of the two by the Armenian church in the Ottoman Empire. The Catholicus of Sis maintained himself nevertheless, with under his jurisdiction several bishops, numerous villages and convents, and was supported in his pretensions by the Catholic Pope up to the middle of the 19th century, when the patriarch Nerses, declaring finally for Echmiadzin, carried the government with him. In 1885, Sis tried to declare Echmiadzin schismatic, and in 1895 its clergy took it on themselves to elect a Catholicus without reference to the patriarch; but the Ottoman Empire annulled the election, and only allowed it six years later upon Sis renouncing its pretensions to independence. That Catholicus had the right to prepare the sacred myron (oil) and to preside over a synod, but was in fact not more than a metropolitan, and regarded by many Armenians as schismatic.

The Turkish era

Under Ottoman rule Sis was the chief town of the caza (district) of the same name, Sis, in the vilayet (province) of Adana and numbered circa 1900 4000 inhabitants, most of them Armenians. According to an Ottoman census of 1519 and 1540 the following castles remained intact in Sis: Feke, Anavarza, Lembert, Küpdere and Partzrpert(High Fortress).

In the 17th century the Ottoman presence and power in the area was weak, and practical authority rested with the local lords, the Kozanoğlu dynasty, until in 1865 the Ottoman general Derviş Paşa put together an army to disperse the Kozanoğlu and bring the area back under Ottoman rule.

Kozan is one of the many places that claim to be the birthplace of the legendary 17th century folk poet Karacaoğlan

The Armenian population of Sis was deported during the Armenian Genocide in 1915, and the monastery of St. Sophia of Sis, home of the Catholicade of Sis destroyed.

The town was occupied by French troops between March 1919 and June 1920.

Kozan today

Today Kozan is a small town with a cinema and other delights. Kozan is surrounded by vineyards, gardens and groves of cypress, sycamore, orange and lemon trees. In summer the great heat (40 degrees plus) compels the inhabitants to desert Kozan, retreating to cool off in the wooded higher ground.

Things to see

Today ruins of churches, convents, castles and palaces may be seen on all sides. The lofty castle and the monastery and church built by Leo II, and containing the coronation chair of the kings of Lesser Armenia, were still noteworthy in the early 20th century.

See also

• Kadirli - Kozan's bitter rival

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) [1]

External links

• Armenian History and Presence in Sis