Rohatyn

Rohatyn stands on the Hnyla Lypa River in Galicia. Under Polish rule it received Magdeburg rights in 1415 and developed as a trading and manufacturing town. A school of icon painting emerged in the sixteenth century, and an Orthodox brotherhood was founded in the 1580s.

The Jewish community received a charter of privileges from King Władysław IV in 1633. Local tradition associates Rohatyn with Roxelana, later Hürrem Sultan at the Ottoman court, though her precise origins are uncertain. After the first partition of Poland in 1772 the town passed to Austria.