Rodosto - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

RODOSTO (Turkish, Tekir Dagh), a town of European Turkey, in the vilayet of Adrianople, on the coast of the Sea of Marmora, 78 m. W. of Constantinople. Pop. (1905) about. 35,000, of whom half are Greeks. The picturesque Bay of Rodosto is enclosed by the great promontory of Combos, a spur about 2000 ft. in height from the hilly plateau to the north. The church of Panagia Rheumatocratissa contains the graves, with long Latin inscriptions, of the Hungarians who were banished from their country in 1686 by the imperialist captors of Buda. Rodosto was long a great depot for the produce of the Adrianople district, but its trade suffered when Dedeagatch became the terminus of the railway up the Maritza, and the town is now dependent on its maritime trade, especially its exports to Constantinople. It is the administrative centre of a district (sanjak) producing and exporting barley, oats, spelt and canary seed, and largely planted with mulberry trees, on which silkworms are fed. White cocoons are exported to western Europe (394 cwt. in 1901), silkworms' eggs to Russia and Persia.

Rodosto is the ancient Rhaedestus or Bisanthe, said to have been founded by Samians. In Xenophon's Anabasis it is mentioned as in the kingdom of the Thracian prince Seuthes. Its restoration by Justinian in the 6th century A.D. is chronicled by Procopius. In 813 and again in 1206 it was sacked by the Bulgarians, but it continues to appear as a place of considerable note in later Byzantine history.