Place:Naxos, Kykladon, South Aegean, Greece

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Naxos is a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture. The island is famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, which until modern times was one of the best abrasives available.

The largest town and capital of the island is Chora or Naxos City, with 7,374 inhabitants (2011 census). The main villages are Filoti, Apiranthos, Vivlos, Agios Arsenios, Koronos and Glynado.

History

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Middle Paleolithic era

Stelida quarry, south-west of Chora, contains Mousterian tools dating back to the Middle Paleolithic era, which indicates that Neanderthal activity on the island spanned almost 200,000 years ago.

Cycladic civilisation

Zas Cave, inhabited during the Neolithic era, contained objects of stone from Melos and copper objects including a dagger and gold sheet. The presence of gold and other objects within the cave indicated to researchers the status of the inhabitant.

Emery was exported during that time, to other islands.

Classical era and Greco-Persian Wars

During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Naxos dominated commerce in the Cyclades.

Herodotus describes Naxos circa 500 BC as the most prosperous Greek island.

In 499 BC, an unsuccessful attack on Naxos by Persian forces led several prominent men in the Greek cities of Ionia to rebel against the Persian Empire in the Ionian Revolt, and then to the Persian War between Greece and Persia.

Naxos was the first Greek city-state to attempt to leave the Delian League circa 476 BC; Athens quickly quashed the notion and forcibly removed all military naval vessels from the island's control. Athens then demanded all future payments from Naxos in the form of gold rather than military aid.

Byzantine era

In Late Antiquity, the island was part of the province of the Islands.

Pope Martin I was detained on the island of Naxos for almost a year after he was arrested by Byzantine authorities in Rome due to his holding of a synod that condemned monotheletism. He was held on the island prior to being taken to Constantinople for trial. While detained on the island, he wrote to a certain Theodore living in Constantinople.

Under the Byzantine Empire, Naxos was part of the thema of the Aegean Sea, which was established in the mid-9th century.

In Byzantine times, the island's capital was on the southern fortress of Apalyres. During this time, it suffered from Saracen raids, particular during the existence of the Emirate of Crete (824–961), to which the island occasionally paid tribute. Traces of Muslim artistic influence are visible in frescoes from the 10th century.^[1] Nevertheless, as in Antiquity, Naxos was celebrated for its agriculture and animal husbandry; the 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi records extensive cattle raising on the island.^[1]

In the late 12th century, it may have been the capital of a short-lived thema of the "Dodekanesos".^[2]

Duchy of Naxos

In the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, with a Latin Empire under the influence of the Venetians established at Constantinople, the Venetian Marco Sanudo conquered Naxos and most of the other Cyclades in 1205–1207.^[2] Of all the islands, only on Naxos was there any opposition to Sanudo: a group of Genoese pirates had occupied the castle between the end of Byzantine rule and Sanudo's arrival. To steel his band's resolve, Sanudo burnt his galleys "and bade his companions to conquer or die". The pirates surrendered the castle after a five weeks' siege.

Naxos became the seat of Sanudo's realm, known as the "Duchy of Naxos" or "Duchy of the Archipelago".^[2] Twenty-one dukes in two dynasties ruled the Archipelago, until 1566; Venetian rule continued in scattered islands of the Aegean until 1714. Under Venetian rule, the island was called by its Italian name, Nasso.

The Sanudi introduced Western feudal law to the island, based on the Assizes of Romania. However, the native Greek population continued to use Byzantine law for civil matters at least until the late 16th century.^[2]

In the 13th century, following the capture of Antalya and Alanya on the southern Anatolian coast by the Seljuk Turks, refugees from these areas settled in Naxos.^[1] In the 14th century, the island was once more exposed to raids, this time from the Anatolian Turkish beyliks, chiefly the Aydınids. In turn, the Sanudi assisted the Genoese in capturing Chios in 1304 and the Knights Hospitaller in their conquest of Rhodes in 1309, in order to stop these islands being used as Turkish pirate base. Nevertheless, raids against Naxos are recorded in 1324 and 1326, and in 1341, Umur of Aydın carried off 6,000 people from the island and imposed a payment of tribute. Two years later, however, the Smyrniote crusade captured his main port, Smyrna.^[1]

The relief was temporary, however, as Turkish raids recommenced later in the century. The island was so depopulated that Cristoforo Buondelmonti in claimed that there were not enough men to wed the Naxiot women.^[1] The rising Ottoman Empire first attacked the island in 1416, but the Sultans recognized Venetian overlordship over the Duchy in successive treaties, in exchange for an annual tribute.^[1]

Ottoman control (1566–1821)

The Ottoman administration remained essentially in the hands of the Venetians; the Porte's concern was satisfied by the returns of taxes. Very few Turks ever settled on Naxos, and Turkish influence on the island is slight. Under Ottoman rule the island was known as Turkish: Nakşa. Ottoman sovereignty lasted until 1821, when the islands revolted; Naxos finally became a member of the Greek state in 1832.

Historical population

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