Samsun

Samsun faces the Black Sea at the edge of a coastal plain between the deltas of the Kızılırmak and Yeşilırmak. Ancient Amisos was a Greek city and an important port linking the sea to the roads of northern Anatolia. In the Middle Ages the coastal settlements here developed distinct identities: Muslim Samsun lay near Simisso, a Genoese trading colony, rather than being simply another name for it.

Genoese merchants established themselves at Simisso in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Their ships exchanged goods with traders who carried merchandise inland along the roads toward Amasya and the central plateau, while the neighbouring Muslim settlement had its own fortifications and commercial life, and its shipbuilders drew on the maritime experience of the older coastal community. As Mongol influence in Anatolia waned, local Turkish rulers and the Ottomans competed for control of the region.

In the early fifteenth century fire and warfare disrupted Simisso's trade. Ottoman forces established authority over Samsun and its neighbours around 1419–1420, and the Genoese fortifications were destroyed. The two nearby centres came under a single administration, though Italian merchants continued to appear in the records for a time. Samsun remained a harbour on the southern Black Sea, its history reflecting the connections and rivalries between seaborne merchants and the powers of the Anatolian interior.