Kozan, Adana

Kozan is a city in Adana Province, Turkey, 68 km north of the city of Adana, in the northern section of the Çukurova plain. The city is the capital of Kozan district. The Kilgen Stream, a tributary of the Ceyhan River (formerly Jibun or Pyramus), flows through Kozan crossing the plain south into the Mediterranean Sea. The Toros mountains rise up sharply behind the town. Sis was the capital of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.

The population of the city has grown rapidly in recent years, from 15,159 in 1960, to 54,451 in 1990, to 72,463 in 2007 and to 74,521 in 2009 (census figures).

History

From 3000BC onwards there were Hittite settlements in all these plains behind the Mediterranean coast, based on farming and grazing animals.

The area then changed hands many times, eventually becoming Flavias or Flaviopolis in the former Roman province of Cilicia Secunda.

The Christian era

Sis (in Armenian: Սիս) or Sissu, Sision (Ancient Greek: Σισιον), Sission, Sisium had an important place in ecclesiastical history both the Armenian Apostolic Church and as a Roman Catholic titular see. 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, Sis was the religious center of Christian Armenians, until the Armenians moved the seat of Catholicos back to Vagharshapat (Echmiadzin), in Armenia. Lequien (II, 899) gives the names of several bishops of Sis, before and after Gregory IX.

Even prior to the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, Sis was an episcopal see and several names of bishops and patriarchs can be found in the literature:

• Alexander, later Bishop of Jerusalem and founder of the famous library of the Holy Sepulchre in the third century
• Nicetas, present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325
• John, who lived in 451;
• Andrew in the sixth century
• George (681)
• Eustratus, Patriarch of Antioch about 868.

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, one of the Rupenide dynasty who made the city the capital of the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia (from 1186 till 1375). During the Crusade the catholicate returned to Sis in 1294, and remained there 150 years.^[1]

In 1266 Sis, the capital of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, was captured and damaged by the Egyptian Mamluks led by Baibars. al-Said Barakah sent Qalawun to attack the city in 1277, but in 1375, Sis was taken and demolished by the Ramadanids, under the flag of the Mamluke Sultan of Egypt. The town never recovered its prosperity, not even when it passed into the power of the Ottomans in 1516. Sis became Kozan during overlordship of Kozanoğulları, a Turkmen clan between 1700-1866.

In 1441, Sis having fallen from its high estate, the Armenian clergy proposed to remove the see, and on the refusal of the Catholicos of the day, Gregory IX, installed a rival, namely Kirakos I Virapetsi (Kirakos of Armenia) 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.^[1]

The Catholicos of Sis (of the Holy See of Cilicia) maintained himself nevertheless, with under his jurisdiction several bishops, numerous villages and convents, and was supported in his views by the Catholic 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 Catholicos without reference to the patriarch; but the Porte annulled the election, and only allowed it six years later upon Sis renouncing its pretensions to independence. That Catholicos 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.^[1]

Kozan was occupied by France between March 8, 1919 - June 2, 1920 during Turkish War of Independence. After declaring republic in Turkey, Kozan was a province, compromised districts of Kozan, Kadirli, Feke and Saimbeyli between 1923-1926.

Kozan today

Today Kozan is a city surrounded by vineyards, gardens and groves of cypress, sycamore fig, orange and lemon trees. In summer the great heat (40 plus degrees Celsius or 115-118 plus degrees Fahrenheit) compels the inhabitants to desert Kozan, retreating to cool off in the wooded higher ground.

Notable natives

• Nerses Palianeci - Armenian ecclesiastical figure, politician, book publisher of 13th-14th centuries
• Grigor Khul - Armenian musician of 12th century
• Manase Sevak - Armenian biochemist and public character, member of New York Academy of Sciences and Soviet Armenia's Academy of Sciences (1897–1967)
• Grigor Kyulyan - Armenian writer (1912–1974)

Things to see

Today 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 Cilician Armenia, were still noteworthy in the early 20th century.

See also

• Kadirli - Kozan's bitter rival

Notes

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Sis". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed (1913). "Flavias". Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.  [1]

External links

• Armenian History and Presence in Sis
• Many pictures of the town and the castle