Kaffa

Kaffa began as the Greek colony of Theodosia, but the town of 1337 was Genoese. Merchants from Genoa bought the site from the Golden Horde in the late thirteenth century and made it the chief port of their Black Sea colonies, ruled by a consul behind a walled citadel. Ibn Battuta counted some two hundred ships in its harbour. Pope John XXII created a Latin bishopric here in 1318, with a diocese stretching from Varna to Sarai. Greeks, Armenians and Latins lived side by side, and the slave market, supplied from the steppe and the Caucasus, was among the largest in Europe.

Khan Jani Beg besieged Kaffa in 1343 and again in the following years, and the Black Death is said to have reached Italy from here in 1347. The city recovered, and in 1462 the Genoese placed it under the protection of Casimir IV of Poland, but no help came. On 1 June 1475 the fleet of Gedik Ahmed Pasha anchored before the walls, and on 6 June the city surrendered. Its Latin families were moved to Istanbul, where they gave their name to the Kefeli quarter. As Kefe it remained a great slave port until Russia took it with the rest of Crimea in 1783.