Kozan, Adana
Kozan () is a city in
Adana Province,
Turkey. The Kilgen stream, a tributary of the
Ceyhan River (formerly Jibun or Pyramus), flows through the city ,crossing the plain south into the Mediterranen Sea
Its population has grown rapidly in recent years, from 54,451 in
1990 to 75,833 in
2000 (census figures).
The great heats compel the inhabitants to desert it during the summer months. It is surrounded by vineyards and groves of cypress and sycamore trees.
Sis (
Armenian: Սիս, also known as
Sissu,
Sision, later
Flavias or
Flaviopolis) has had an important place in
Armenian Apostolic Church ecclesiastical history.
It is also a Roman Catholic
titular see of Cilicia Secunda. Nothing is known of its first ancient name and history, except that Flavias is said to be identical with Sis.
Lequien (II, 899) gives the names of several of its bishops: Alexander, later Bishop of Jerusalem and founder of the famous library of the Holy Sepulchre in the third century; Nicetas, present at the Council of Nicaea (325); John, who lived in 451; Andrew in the sixth century; George (681); and Eustratus, Patriarch of Antioch about 868. If the identification of Flavias with Sis, which is probable, be admitted, it will be found that it is first mentioned in Theodoret's life of St. Simeon Stylites.
In the Middle Ages it was the religious centre of Christian Armenians, at least until the catholicos established himself at Etschmiadzin.
In
302,
Gregory the Illuminator was consecrated the first
Catholicos of Armenia, but transferred his see to Vagarshabad (
Echmiadzin), whence, after the fall of the
Arsacids, it passed to
Tovin.
In
704, Sis was besieged by the
Arabs, but relieved by the
Byzantines. The
Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil took it and refortified it, but it soon returned to Byzantine hands. It was rebuilt in
1186 by
Leo II, king of the
Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, who made the city the capital of the Kingdom of
Lesser Armenia (from 1186 till 1375). The catholicate returned to Sis in
1294, and remained there 150 years.
In 1266 it was captured and burned by the Egyptians temporarily; in
1375, Sis was taken and demolished by the
Mamluc Sultan of
Egypt, and it has never recovered its prosperity, not even when it passed into the power of the Ottomans.
In
1441, Sis having fallen from its high estate, the Armenian clergy proposed to remove the see, and on the refusal of the actual Catholicos,
Gregory IX, installed a rival at
Echmiadzin, who, as soon as
Selim I had conquered
Greater Armenia, became the more widely accepted of the two by the Armenian church in the
Ottoman Empire. The Catholicus of Sis maintained himself nevertheless, with under his jurisdiction several bishops, numerous villages and convents, and was supported in his pretensions by the Pope up to the middle of the
19th century, when the patriarch
Nerses, declaring finally for Echmiadzin, carried the government with him. In
1885, Sis tried to declare Echmiadzin schismatic, and in
1895 its clergy took it on themselves to elect a Catholicus without reference to the patriarch; but the
Ottoman Empire annulled the election, and only allowed it six years later on Sis renouncing its pretensions to independence. That Catholicus had the right to prepare the sacred myron (oil) and to preside over a
synod, but was in fact not more than a
metropolitan, and regarded by many Armenians as schismatic.
Under Ottoman rule Sis was the chief town of the
caza (district) of the same name in the
vilayet (province) of Adana and numbered circa 1900 4000 inhabitants, most of whom Armenians. Ruins of churches, convents, castles and palaces may be seen on all sides.
The lofty castle and the monastery and church built by Leo II, and containing the coronation chair of the kings of
Lesser Armenia, were noteworthy in the early
20th century.
The Armenian poulation of Sis was deported during the
Armenian Genocide in 1915, and the monastery of St. Sophia of Sis, home of the Catholicade of Sis destroyed.
*
Kadirli* [
1]
* http://www.kozan.gov.tr/
*
Armenian History and Presence in Sis
