The Roman city of Nicaea thrived in the 12th and early 13th centuries before declining under Palaiologan rule after 1261. In 1331, after a blockade of 2 years, the illustrious city fell to the Ottoman Turks. After the battle of Pelekanon, the Roman cities of Anatolia were left to be surrounded and blockaded. It had strong walls, much of which still stand today, and Nicaea was not conquered directly by assault. Instead, it was hunger that had forced surrender. A few years later the city was “practically deserted” and “the Christian community dwindled.”
The Fall of Nicaea is more the aftermath of its surrender rather than a battle for the city. Thus there was no dramatic battle like in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, nor a siege like the siege of Nicaea during the First Crusade. The city simply opened the gates when the people got too hungry and knew Constantinople could not help them. Because Nicaea surrendered, it was not violently sacked the way Constantinople was in 1453. However, it was still a terrible experience for the conquered citizens. The Ottoman forces were looking for spoils and riches, and they had cooperate with any demands made. Surely many of the local Romans would have been disturbed to see the sale of “many sacred books and icons, as well as the relics of two female saints.” Though the people were not killed or enslaved, they certainly would have lost control of their material possessions to the conquerors – their homes, money, and property.
The thriving Roman city then “sank into temporary eclipse. Its condition at that time…was described by an indefatigable traveler, Ibn Battuta, who visited Yaznik (as he called it, using an Arabic form of the Turkish name Ionic) in about 1335,” around four years after the city surrendered. Battuta took note of the city’s impressive fortifications, which had allowed it hold on for a while even as Roman imperial power in Anatolia faded. Though Battuta admired the walls, he “found the area within them practically deserted. The only inhabitants were a few of the Sultan’s men.” He also noted that the “buildings were dilapidated.”“In its first years under the Ottomans, Nicaea thus barely maintained the appearance of a city. To some extent, this must have been due to the emigration which would have been continuous for the previous half century or more as the frontier moved ever closer and the Turkish raiders became more successful and ubiquitous. People naturally would leave to seek the apparent security of the capital (Constantinople) or the European provinces, while those who stayed behind faced not only attack but the constant disruption of agriculture which could only have brought a reduced supply of food.” So the city had been in decline due to Turkish pressures even before its conquest.
A major change after 1331 was the demographic decline of this important Christian city in Anatolia. “The Christian community declined rapidly, from natural causes as well as conversion to Islam, whether forced or chosen. Two letters from the Patriarch, written in 1338 and 1340 reveal a situation” where there were forced conversions and a visible loss of Christians in the city. “In spite of this gloomy picture, there were still some professing Christians in 1354 when Gregory Palamas arrived as a captive of the Turks. Since he was allowed considerable freedom of movement within the town, he enquired where the Christians lived and was directed to the neighborhood of the Monastery of ‘the blessed’ Hyacinth. He was delighted by what he found: a beautifully decorated church set in a cool courtyard shaded by abundant trees and containing a well. He took up his lodging there.”
The city never reached the heights it did in the medieval Roman world during the Ottoman period, but it did recover somewhat in later years. But it is fair to say since 1331 it had remained a place “more remarkable for its past than its present.” The fall of Nicaea also set a precedent for what was to come – Nicomedia would fall in 1337, Adrianople fell in the 1360’s, Thessaloniki in 1430, Constantinople in 1453, and finally the last remnant of their world in Trebizond in 1461.
Source:
Nicaea: A Byzantine Capital and Its Praises by Clive Foss
shadowsofconstantinople.com 