Şilli

Şilli, the Byzantine Chele (now Şile), was a fortified harbour town on the Black Sea coast of the Kocaeli peninsula, where wooded hills run down to the sea. The Seljuk prince Süleyman, son of Kutalmış, took it in 1090 and the First Crusade won it back in 1097. The Ottomans under Bayezid I, who is credited with the lasting conquest, made it part of their lands.

Under the Ottomans the town stayed Greek. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries only Şilli and the neighbouring harbour fortress of Astrabek had Greek inhabitants in the whole district, and no Muslim lived in Şilli before the sixteenth century. Survey registers count 105 Greeks in the two forts under Mehmed II, 371 in 1523 and 686 in 1562. Vines and seafaring kept the people there, and Greek endowments paid for Gospel readings in their homes.