Theodoro

Theodoro, now called Mangup, crowns a cliff-ringed plateau in the Crimean foothills. It was the capital of a small Orthodox principality that the Greeks called Theodoro and the Italians called Gothia, after the Goths who had lived in these mountains. Tamerlane's raid in 1395 ruined the city.

Prince Alexios, who came to power early in the fifteenth century, made Theodoro strong enough to challenge Genoa for the coast from Cembalo to Lusta. In 1433 he backed a Greek revolt at Cembalo; the Genoese retook it in 1434, then lost their army to the Tatars. Marriages tied the princes to Trebizond and to Moldavia, and in 1475, when Gedik Ahmed Pasha took Kaffa in June and turned on Mangup from September, Moldavian troops were among the defenders. The town withstood five major assaults, then starved, and surrendered at the end of December on promise of mercy. The Ottomans nonetheless carried Prince Alexander and the leading men off to Constantinople, turned a church into a mosque, and, unlike the khanate, which stayed a vassal, ruled the former lands of Theodoro directly.