Kaffa Bay

Kaffa Bay opened onto one of the Black Sea's busiest medieval commercial centres, the Genoese port of Caffa, now Feodosia. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ships connected this Crimean harbour with the wider Genoese network, including Matrega, Tana and ports on the Anatolian shore. Grain, salt, fish, caviar, furs, wax and honey moved westward, alongside enslaved people and merchandise brought overland from farther east. The traffic supported a city of Armenians, Greeks, Turkic-Tatar residents and a smaller Latin community, governed by a Genoese consul. Customs and treasury records reveal how closely maritime exchange was tied to colonial administration and revenue. Ottoman forces captured Caffa in June 1475, ending Genoese rule and changing the political authority over the harbour. A contemporary Tuscan merchant's letter, written that August, described the conquest. The bay's historical importance lay in this combination of anchorage, commercial routes and contested control over a major gateway between the steppe and the sea.