Mediaeval Fortification of Torichan at the Turn of Two Epochs

Abstract

In historiographic literature, answers to many questions from the past of Torichan are rather scanty. The information we have had so far about it is mainly the result of numerous archaeological excavations which confirmed that it had been an important mediaeval fortification. However, for objective reasons they could not give a full answer to what had happened to it during historical changes in the mid-fifteenth century.

Through a critically inadequate approach, historiography mainly satisfied itself with general statements, often founded in oral traditions, imprecise visitors’ reports about the destructive attitudes of the conquerors to what they had found, which many fortifications were not spared, too. The lack of written sources left quite enough space to maintain such estimations, from which Torichan was neither exempted. Already the first written Ottoman sources limited the space for such considerations and announced a different course of the Torichan history.

This paper is an attempt to answer some of the questions on the basis of written sources, and to point to some unknown facts from the past of Torichan. In doing so, we synthesized the results of the earlier research as well, and pointed out some of the observations we reached on this issue. Nevertheless, basic interest, based on Ottoman written sources, is in the period from 1463 to 1540, which is, according to the result we came to, the last period of its active historical role. In that period, Torichan had acontinuous garrison, first ulufedji and later timar (1463-1540), as one of the most advanced fortifications for a long time. It was definitely abandoned in 1540 and its former name of Torichan disappeared with that abandonment; thus it has not survived to the present day at the location.