Khadjibey

Khadjibey stood on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea, at the site of the later port of Odesa. A frontier port called Kaczubyeiow appears in a chronicle under 1415, when it belonged to the Polish king and Lithuanian grand duke. The name and the settlement survived through changes of power on a coast connected to the steppe by roads and estuaries.

Under Ottoman rule Khadjibey had a fort, a mosque and a small settlement. In the 1760s the defences were strengthened; a plan drawn in 1766 also recorded shops, warehouses, a guest yard and a landing place. During the Russo-Turkish War, a Russian detachment under José de Ribas captured the position in 1789. In 1794 Catherine II ordered the construction of a military harbour and commercial port, and the town developed under the name Odesa.