ABSTRACT
Ports and coastal zones constituted the most important points of interaction between the interior of Anatolia and the Mediterranean world. Along the 600 kilometre-long coast of Lycia and Pamphylia alone, for instance, medieval sources refer to almost 100 ports and landing places. 2 As a result of the advance of the Seljuqs towards the coast and the increasing presence of Italian merchants in the harbours of the Aegean, the Black Sea and the Levant, maritime Asia Minor became a zone of intensive contacts between Byzantines, Armenians, Turks, Persians and Arabs and ‘Latins’ or ‘Franks’, and thus also between the Orthodox, Oriental and Western Churches as well as Islam in its various forms. The number of zones of interaction increased, but so did conflict, in the wake of the Seljuq defeat by the Mongols in 1243 and the expansion of Turkish emirates, especially into western Asia Minor towards the Aegean, as well as with the establishment of Italian colonies (including ‘Catholic’ bishoprics) in coastal towns and offshore islands and of the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes. At the same time, Venetians, Genoese and other commercial communities integrated all these locations and regions as hubs and nodes into their commercial networks and into the late medieval ‘World System’. 3 With Ottoman expansion, these territories were absorbed into one imperial framework once more, which eventually also included the remaining Western colonies. During the Late Middle Ages, however, ‘no other region of Europe or the Mediterranean became a cynosure of so many ethnicities in such a small place’. 4
