The History of Amisos (Samsun)

Plate 1: Samsun (2015, Wikipedia Commons)

Sam Topalidis (updated 2026)
(Pontic Historian and Ethnologist)

Introduction

Samsun, known as Amisos by ancient Greeks and Byzantines, Missos by Romans, Simisso by Genoese and then Samsun by Seljuk Turks and Ottoman Turks lies between the deltas of the Kizilirmak (ancient Halys) and Yeşilirmak (ancient Iris) Rivers (Fig. 1) (Bryer and Winfield 1985).

It is the largest city, the main port on the Turkish Black Sea coast (Plate 1) and lies within the region referred to by Greeks as Pontos—the north-east portion of Turkey adjacent the Black Sea.

Ancient Amisos lies on the flat top and eastern slopes of a plateau headland just to the west of modern Samsun. Amisos didn’t have a good harbour and historically its main assets were iron, olives and some silver. Amisos had links with central Anatolia and looked more inland than across the Black Sea (Avram et al. 2004).

Fig. 1: North-east Anatolia (Amasya to Trebizond = 330 km, Zachariadou 1979:335)

On the eastern side of Amisos, the coast opens up into a wide plain. Its flat-topped acropolis which measures about 2.7 km from north to south and 1.5 km wide rises to 159 m overlooking the sea (Bryer and Winfield 1985). Temperatures typically vary from 5 to 28°C and the annual precipitation is around 730 mm.

This article covers the settlement of indigenous people around Amisos, Greek colonisation, the Mithradatic kings, the Roman and Byzantine period, the Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks, its commercial rise in the late 19th century, the genocide of its Christians and the exchange of Christian and Muslim populations between Greece and Türkiye in the early 1920s.

Human Settlement and Greek Colonisation

From 9600 to 7000 BC, north-central Anatolia remains devoid of Neolithic settlement. It is unclear whether this region has buried Neolithic sites or whether it was sparsely populated (Sagona and Zimansky 2009).

Open-air settlement at Tekkeköy, 17 km south-east of Samsun, has been dated to the Late Chalcolithic (4000–3200 BC) and Bronze Ages (3200–1200 BC) (Atasoy 2019). Settlements in Samsun’s city centre (e.g. at Dündartepe) reveal they were occupied during the Early and Middle Bronze Age (Dönmez 2005). Greek pottery from the ancient Halys Valley (Fig. 2) proves the Greeks had contacts there long before the foundation of coastal Greek cities. Iron Age settlements testify to significant cultural exchange in the late Archaic period (c.750–550 BC) (Summerer 2007).

Fig. 2: Amisos (Sinope to Amisos = 130 km, Summerer 2007:34)

Amisos was settled by Greeks ‘around’ 564 BC. Ancient authors record either a Milesian foundation, or a joint foundation by Phocaea and Miletos (both from the west coast of Anatolia) (Tsetskhladze 2007). The native people probably formed part of the population in Amisos. Greek Amisos may have been founded over an already existing settlement (Summerer 2007). By 547 BC, northern Anatolia became part of the Persian empire, but Persia probably exerted little direct political control (Şerifoğlu 2015).

According to the Greek General Xenophon (400 BC), who with less than 10,000 Greek mercenaries travelled through the southern Black Sea region on route back to Greece from Persia, stated there were local people living around Amisos, but their names were not given (Xenophon). Other historical sources record the native people around Amisos as: Syroi (Herodotus), Assyrioi (Ps.-Skylax), Leukosyroi or Kappadokes (Strabo) (Avram et al. 2004).

The Mithradates (302–63 BC)

The army of Alexander the Great (Macedonian king, 336–323 BC) defeated the Persians in Anatolia. Although Alexander did not march north of Ankara to conquer Pontos or Paphlagonia (west of Pontos), these areas accepted his authority (Şerifoğlu 2015). Mithradates I (reign 302–266 BC, of Persian descent) and a succession of kings from the same family ruled over the area from Heraclea (west of Sinope) to Trabzon for over 150 years until the reign of Mithradates VI (120–63 BC, who was defeated by the Romans) (Erciyas 2001). The kingdom had acquired Amisos sometime before 220 BC. Mithradates VI chose Amisos as his royal residence. In 71 BC, during the third Mithradatic War with Rome, the Romans captured Amisos. (Note 1.) In 31 BC, Octavian (the later Roman emperor Augustus) proclaimed Amisos a Roman ally. By the 60s AD, Amisos (Roman Missos) became part of the Roman empire (www.ehw.gr/ehw/forms/Default.aspx online).

Byzantine and Seljuk Turk Era

In around 860, during the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) empire, Amisos was an administrative division in the theme of Armeniakon (www.ehw.gr/ehw). There were a number of settlements established along the beach below the classical Amisos acropolis. Amisos on the acropolis was probably relocated before 1194 to the beach. Around 1194, the settlement on the beach passed from the Byzantines to the Seljuk Turks. In 1204, it temporarily passed to the small Komnenoi Byzantine empire of Trebizond. In 1242, the Mongols defeated the Seljuk Turks. After the Mongol withdrawal, Samsun was ceded to the Turkmen dynasty of Sinope. Next to Samsun was the new Genoese colony of Simisso which was established by 1285 and provided protection to the Greek and Armenian population (Bryer and Winfield 1985:95).

The Byzantine classical Amisos on the acropolis now lies within a military zone. Construction for the military base destroyed many archaeological remains. There were a number of rock-cut tombs, of which two of the largest were later converted into churches (Bryer and Winfield 1985:94–95).

Ottoman Turk Period

By the 14th century, Turkmen Samsun and Genoese Simisso were still distinct settlements existing side by side. The Ottoman sultan Bayezid I captured Samsun around 1393 (Note 2). The Turkmen from Sinope retook it in 1419, but it returned to the Ottoman sultan Mehmed I shortly afterward. Soon after 1424, the Genoese left their Simisso settlement. After 1452, Samsun declined until its resurgence in the 19th century (Bryer and Winfield 1985).

In 1813, British traveller Kinneir observed that although the population of the town was almost entirely Turkish, the adjoining villages were primarily Christian. In 1806, Samsun burnt to the ground and by 1829 it was still recovering. In 1838, British consul Suter thought Samsun had a population of 450 Turkish and 150 Greek families (The Encyclopaedia of Islam 1995). The Greeks began to take over the commerce of the port as it became more active from the early to mid-19th century (Bryer and Winfield 1970).

Rise of Commercial Activity From 1860

By the 1860s, Samsun comprised a small Turkish village on the shore and a smaller Greek suburb inland; their combined population was less than 5,000 people. Samsun’s revival began with the building of a highway south to Amasya and with the expansion of the tobacco industry at Bafra (52 km to the north-west). By the 1860s, Samsun became the port of the main Constantinople-Baghdad route. The most impressive feature of the revival of Samsun (as well as Bafra) was that the Greek proportion of the total population rose to 40%, due to immigration from Anatolia (Bryer (1970); Bryer and Winfield (1985)).

In 1879, the most conspicuous building was the recently built Greek church. Samsun had a bad name for dangerous fevers during the summer attributed to the marshes on the eastern side of the bay (Tozer 1881:9).

In 1896, of the 214 businesses in Samsun, no fewer than 73% were owned by Greeks. Its rapidly rising population is believed to have overtaken that of Trabzon about 1910 (Table 1) (Bryer and Winfield 1970; 1985). By 1911, of the nearly 120,000 people in the Samsun district, around 65% were Greek (Maccas 1919).

British traveller Childs, who travelled to Samsun at its peak in 1913, stated it stretched along a beach and up the slopes of foot-hills behind. There was no esplanade or marina and that offices, warehouses and cafes pushed to the shore. It was a growing town of some 40,000 people despite Turkish neglect, much of the trade and wealth of the town was in the hands of the Ottoman Greeks (Childs 1918).

(Bryer and Winfield 1970:252)

The second great expansion of Samsun was at the turn of the 20th century which was stimulated by the building of the Samsun-Sivas railway to the south-east (Bryer and Winfield 1970).

Christian Churches and Schools

In 1838, Hamilton mentions the ruins of a small church (St Theodore) at the foot of the hill leading to the port, but this later became a mosque. The large Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church was built in 1872 (Plate 2) and later augmented by adjacent boys’ and girls’ schools. Between 1926 and 1931, the church was turned into a cinema and in 1940, it was demolished. There was also the St Nicholas Gregorian Armenian and a Catholic Armenian church (built in 1856 with a convent which opened in 1885) (https://pontosworld.com).

In 1862, a Protestant mission was established with a small congregation of Armenians and Greeks and in 1880, they started a Protestant School. In 1885, they met in their new chapel (The Missionary Herald July 1880:267; March 1886:100; October 1891:403).

In 1904–1905 there were four churches in Samsun and 154 churches in its surrounding villages (https://cities.blacksea.gr). In 1906, the Ottoman Greeks in Samsun had two boys’ schools with 12 teachers and a girls’ school with eight teachers (Anestidis 2017).

 Plate 2: Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church, Samsun (https://pontosworld.com)

1915–1917 Deportations (Genocide) of Armenians and Greeks

In April 1915, during World War I, Samsun’s leading Armenians were arrested. Then in July, as the Armenian deportees began to march out of Samsun, the men were killed. After the men were murdered, many women and children were taken to Malatya (in south-eastern Anatolia) and thrown into the Euphrates River. The German consul at Samsun maintained that the Ottoman government reacted strongly to revolutionary activities by Armenians with the wholesale destruction of the Armenians (Payaslian (2009); Shenk (2012)).

The Ottoman authorities announced that wherever Orthodox Christians failed to report for military service, or had deserted after joining up, their community would be held responsible. [Conscription meant joining the dreaded labour battalions in the army, where many died.]¹ This provided an excuse for the Ottomans to burn Christian villages which produced Christian retaliation. Many Greek men from Samsun took to the mountains and joined the guerillas (Note 3) (Clark 2006).

In July 1916, the German consul at Samsun reported that, exile of Christians meant murder or death by hunger or disease (Psomiades 2006). In December 1916, for allegedly military reasons [to keep them away from the invading Russian forces to north-east Anatolia], the Ottomans ordered the deportation of the Greek population from the Black Sea coast (Hofmann 2011). On 27 December, the Greeks from Samsun marched through the snow-covered mountains. This had one object, the annihilation of the Greeks, just like Armenians (Brown and Ion 1918).

Between December 1916 and February 1917, on the pretext of seeking 300 Greek deserters in the Samsun region, some 88 Greek villages were torched (Psomiades 2006). In January 1917, in the Samsun region, 4,000 Christians were deported to Çorum (to the south-west, past Amasya) to the former homes of the deported Armenians (Akçam 2012).

1919

After World War I, allied soldiers were stationed in Anatolia to maintain order. By late January 1919, between 10,000 and 40,000 Greeks had returned to the areas of Samsun and Bafra. Around Giresun and Samsun there was intercommunal tension, where there was a sizeable Greek population. As a consequence, in early March, [an inadequately] small temporary force of 200 British soldiers arrived in Samsun to help establish order). In July, the British company was replaced by a Gurkha² unit (Morris and Ze’evi (2019); Mango (2002)).

In early May, Mustafa Kemal (called Ataturk from 1934) became Inspector General of the Ottoman Ninth Army. He was tasked by the Istanbul Government with restoring order, to gather arms and ammunition and prevent resistance against the government. On 15 May, the Greek army landed at Smyrna on the Anatolian west coast. When Mustafa Kemal arrived in Samsun on 19 May, Samsun’s trade was again in the hands of Greek traders in tobacco and hazelnuts. In the same month, Kemal notified his commanders to raise a popular Muslim partisan force until a regular army could be organised for defence (Shaw and Shaw (2002); Clark (2006)).

Also in May, a Greek Red Cross representative reported that Greek neighbourhoods in Giresun, Samsun and Sinope had been destroyed and the countryside devastated. He pleaded to the Greek High Commissioner in Istanbul for assistance for the over 1,000 orphans and for protection of the Christian population from bandits (Voutira 2011). A primary instrument of the genocide of Pontic Greeks was Topal Osman³ and his ‘cut-throats’ who, with the connivance of Mustafa Kemal wreaked destruction on the unarmed Greeks from Tripolis and Giresun to Samsun (Psomiades 2006).

1920

On 7 February, the British representative from Samsun visited the acting Governor in Trabzon and stated that if the animosity among the Greeks escalated into violence because of Topal Osman, the British navy would land troops in Giresun. Then the British and French representatives in Trabzon visited the acting Governor and repeated similar statements. The then Governor of Trabzon said Osman was using his position for personal gain and these actions were detrimental to the state (Beyoğlu n.d.).

Mustafa Kemal’s Grand National Assembly at Ankara was inaugurated in April 1920 (Korucu and Daglioglu (2019). Osman set off for Ankara on 29 October to meet with Mustafa Kemal (Beyoğlu n.d.).

On 29 May, American Rear Admiral Mark Bristol (US High Commissioner in Turkey) reported to the US State Department, that large amounts of Soviet war materials were landing at Anatolian ports on the Black Sea. In September, Bristol reported that large quantities of rifles, ammunition and field guns were still being landed for Kemal’s army. Although most of the war material was of Russian origin, French and Italian ships were also unloading heavy guns and ammunition at Samsun (Patterson 1986:83–84). These items would have been valuable to Kemal’s forces in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) in western Anatolia.

The American consul to Samsun report of 13 December 1920 indicated that Samsun’s wealth relied on tobacco with United States importing more than 80% of the tobacco grown in the district. There were three orphanages in Samsun managed by personnel affiliated with the American Near East Relief (NER) organization. While there was no organized church congregation in the town, a Greek Orthodox church and a Catholic church did exist. In the town, besides Turks, reside around 15 to 20 Americans, 30 or 40 under French protection, as well as Italians, Russians and Greeks (Küçüker 2023).

1921

In March, the Turks claimed that they were eradicating rebellion, as Greeks were killing Turks and the Greek Navy was periodically bombarding coastal towns in Pontos. Western observers asserted there was no Pontic Greek rebellion (Morris and Ze’evi 2019).

In early May, some 3,000 Greek males remained in Samsun, even though many Greek men had been pressed into labour battalions, many had paid to avoid (temporarily) joining the battalions. The two large American tobacco firms in Samsun, Alston Tobacco Company employed perhaps 600 workers (mostly Greek) and the Gary Tobacco Company employed maybe 400 workers. After the deportation of all the Greek men, the firms hired hundreds of Greek women in their place. There were other, smaller American companies such as the Melachrino Tobacco Company and a Standard Oil outlet (Shenk and Koktzoglou 2020:60).

For most of 1920–1922, an American naval destroyer was kept at Samsun. The Greek Navy visited Samsun on 12, 21 and 28 July and 5 November 1921 and an American warship sailed out to meet the Greek ships in order to prevent or delay them firing on the town (Shenk (2012); Shenk and Koktzoglou (2020:315)).

Details on the 1921 Greek deportations from Samsun are described in Note 4. After the deportation of Greeks from Samsun, attention turned to the surrounding 394 Greek villages (Fotiadis 2019:396).

As part of their genocidal policy, Turkish tribunals were created aiming to kill the most important Pontic Greeks. Between August and September, the Tribunal of Samsun pronounced 485 death sentences against Armenians and Greeks. Around 1 October, when Stanley Hopkins (from the NER organisation] travelled from Harput [around 650 km south-east of Samsun near Malatya] to Samsun, he passed an estimated 10,000 Greeks. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Greeks were estimated to be in Harput. Many of them were dying. From Harput, they were sent east (Meichanetsidis 2015:135).

On 7 September, between 70 and 100 Greek guerrillas burned a small [Turkish] village 13 km from Samsun, killing villagers. Gendarmes⁴ later drove the guerrillas away (Shenk and Koktzoglou 2020:253).

1922

In January, about 1,000 Greek women and children who had taken refuge in the mountains returned to Samsun after proclamation of an amnesty. A few days later they were exiled into the interior (Yeghiayan 2007:254–255).

In April, 1,324 Greeks, mostly women and children, were deported from Samsun. A few days later, another 1,462 Greek women and children, many of whom had recently arrived from the mountains, were deported inland (Morris and Ze’evi 2019). Another 500 Greek women were deported on 6 June. On 7 June, the Greek Navy fired 400 shells on Samsun (Shenk and Koktzoglou 2020).

Anatolian Greeks Leaving For Greece

After the Greek army’s defeat in western Anatolia in late August 1922 (Greco-Turkish War), the Kemalists began forcing Anatolian Greeks to leave their homeland.

In late November, 30,000 people had arrived at Samsun from the interior for departure to Greece. At Samsun, some vessels were taking refugees directly to Greece; but as Greek ports became inundated, other ships were leaving them in the care of the Allied military mission in Istanbul. Turkish ships, which took many of the refugees did so in hellish conditions (Clark 2006).

In March 1923, the NER organisation fed 9,000 refugees in Samsun one meal a day. Another 4,000 received no aid. Under its supervision, most of the Samsun refugees were vaccinated. In March-May, missionaries gave refugees hot baths. American naval officers on gunboats on the Black Sea often helped refugees’ passage aboard steamships. American naval Captains might have shuttled refugees themselves, but [the anti-Greek and anti-Armenian] American Rear Admiral Mark Bristol forbad this. In early April 1923, the Kemalist government instructed not to ship refugees to Istanbul as the city was becoming overcrowded (Morris and Ze’evi 2019:462–463).

In 1923–1924, Christian men who were still alive in the Turkish labour battalions, went from Erzurum to Samsun and left for Greece (Anestidis 2017). By October 1924, nearly 52,000 Christians had left the Samsun region as part of the exchange of populations (under the January 1923 Lausanne Convention) (Aydan 2016).

In 1925, after the deaths and deportations of Ottoman Christians, Samsun’s population fell dramatically to 20,000 (Table 1). Over 22,000 Muslims from Greece were brought to Samsun (Bryer and Winfield 1970).

Modern Samsun

Modern Samsun, a ‘world away’ from the atrocities of the early 20th century, is now traversed by a broad avenue with government offices, hotels and shops along the coast. The city is the main outlet for trade of the middle Black Sea coast with a railway link to Ankara. Samsun is Türkiye’s largest port on the Black Sea. Exports include tobacco wool, cigarettes, fertilizer and textiles. Samsun province is densely populated, and it constitutes one of the principal sources of Turkish tobacco (www.britannica.com/place/Samsun-Turkey). The estimated city population in 2022 was 639,900.

Notes

Note 1

In 1995, a family tomb discovered in the Amisos necropolis demonstrates the artistic wealth of the elite in the time of Mithradates VI. The tomb yielded numerous pieces of fine jewelry, dating as early as 4th century BC. There were also high quality glass objects (Roller 2020:202).

Note 2

Timur (Tamerlane), the Turkic/Mongol conqueror, moved against the Ottomans in 1402 and captured Ottoman sultan Bayezid. Timur moved around Anatolia restoring the Turkmen princes that Bayezid had earlier deposed. By 1430 the Ottoman frontier was back to where it had been in 1401 (McEvedy 1992).

Note 3

The first Greek guerrilla bands appeared in Pontos in the winter of 1915–16 before Greece entered World War I [in mid-1917]. They were few in number and poorly armed. They were initially deserters from the Ottoman army or fugitives from the draft who fled to the mountains and were augmented by others fleeing from Turkish gangs. The largest concentration of guerillas was scattered in the Samsun-Bafra area with 4,000 fighters. They were essentially a defensive force and they were not united. They lacked equipment and food for the large number of people in their care. For example, the band of Demetrios Charalambides in the Samsun region consisted of 47 fighters and 2,000 non-combatants (Psomiades 2006).

Note 4

Deportations continued from Samsun in late May 1921, when 200 Greek men were sent supposedly to Diyarbakir (in south-east Anatolia). Local Turks complained about the rounding up Greek women and children (Morris and Ze’evi 2019).

Fotiadis (2019), Hionides (1996), Morris and Ze’evi (2020) and Shenk and Koktzoglou (2020)⁵ state that on 16 June—some 280 Greek men from Samsun joined the labour battalions. They also stated that the other known deportations from Samsun in 1921 included:

• 11 June, 25 Greeks were sent out of town.
• 12 June, another 115 Greeks were deported from the American tobacco companies.
• 17 June, 1,040 Greek males (aged between 16 and 50 years) were deported, 50 km to the south-west to Kavak [Havza?]. About 700 were murdered by Topal Osman’s partisans; the rest marched to Malatya.
• 18 June, 677 men arrived safely at Kangal, then south-east to Malatya.
• 20 June, 1,085 men, when they reached Cubus Han, 820 were shot by the partisans of Topal Osman. The remaining 265 continued to Malatya.
• 25 June, 351 old men were sent south-west to Amasya while 229 young men were sent south-west to Çorum. On the road, 397 more young men were added to the latter group—all were butchered at Seitan Deresi.
• 29 June, 365 Greek men were deported. At Tokat (south of Samsun) they were united with men from Unye. In Sivas more men were added for a total of 1,066 Greeks. The men from Samsun and Unye were sent to Elbistan (near Malatya).
• On 10 July, 800 Greek clerks and 1,500 Greek civilians were deported to the interior while the population of 30 other villages of Samsun were massacred during their deportation.
• August, most of the 262 Greek men (aged 50 to 60 years) arrived at their destinations.
• 2 September, about 900 women and children from the Greek villages who had been living in Samsun were deported. About 400 women returned to the American tobacco companies in Samsun.
• Probably in early September involved 39 men and 450 women and children. Few arrived at Malatya.
• Late September, 206 mostly young men set off for Bitlis. On the road 166 died.
• 4 October, 150 Greeks (nearly all men).
• 9 October, around 60 Greek women and children.
• 21 October, about 200 men, women and children were deported south-east towards Tokat.
• In mid-December, some 700 Greeks from the Samsun area who had sought refuge in the mountains, surrendered. They were then deported to the interior (Yeghiayan 2007:245).

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the comments by Michael Bennett and Russell McCaskie on an earlier draft.

1. Words within square brackets ‘[ ]’ within a reference are the author’s words.
2. Gurkhas are soldiers from Nepal who served in the British army.
3. Topal Osman met Mustafa Kemal in May 1919 and was told to defend the towns and villages of the Black Sea with a battalion of men (Psomiades 2006).
4. Gendarmes were a provincial security force.
5. There were some inconsistences in information between these references.

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