Mokissos

Mokisos (also Mokissos or Mokessos ) was an early Byzantine city in the southwest of Cappadocia in Asia Minor, probably with Viranşehir ( Turkish = ruined city ) about 35 km south of the modern Aksaray is identical.

Formation and flowering time

According to the report of the historian Prokopios ( De aedificiis V 4, 15-18) was Mokisos the name of an old, dilapidated fortress in a plane in the time of Emperor Justinian I (527-565 ) in a safe place in the near Bergen was rebuilt and expanded to a city. The new city was equipped with a strong wall, churches, inns, public baths and raised to the rank of a metropolis ( the seat of a Metropolitan ). Since Mokisos is mentioned as a city already under Anastasius I ( 491-518 ), the start-up could have actually taken place in its time, perhaps in response to an attack by the Sabirs to Asia Minor in the year 515 527/28 Mokisos appears in Synekdemos of Hierocles, a list of cities in the Roman Empire.

The elevation to the rank of a metropolis can be dated to 535. Mokisos was then the capital of the new ecclesiastical province of Cappadocia III, which was created from parts of the former ( political ) Cappadocia II Province, and received a number of important bishoprics, including Nazianzos (modern Nenezi ) and Koloneia ( Aksaray ). At the political level Cappadocia II was not divided so that Mokisos was only an ecclesiastical administrative center. Metropolitan of Mokisos were present at the councils and synods of 536, 553 and 692 in Constantinople Opel, in their documents, the city is also called Iustinianupolis ( = city of Justinian ).

Mokisos as a ruined city

After the 6th century Mokisos appears only in lists, and the Bishop De thematibus of Konstantinos VII Porphyrogenitus ( 944-959 ), but that is partly based on older, non-updated sources. Probably the city was destroyed already in the 7th century by the Arabs, and the Metropolitan resided amidst the ruins or in a nearby monastery later.

After the Turkish conquest of Asia Minor since 1071 many bishops fled to Constantinople Opel, where the presence of a Metropolitan of Mokisos is attested around 1170 and 1265. The last known Metropolitan, Ioannikios was appointed in 1370. The location of Mokisos was long disputed, until the city was identified in 1939 by Ernst Honigmann with Viranşehir at Aksaray. Since no inscriptions at the site, however, are obtained, a definitive proof of this can not be done.

The ruined city with an area of ​​about 50 ha, situated on 1500 m height in an old craters of the extinct volcano Hasan Dagi, so that, except the heavily fortified acropolis and a church is almost invisible from the plain.

In other reports as Prokopios, there are no city walls, and besides a large number of simple, built of unhewn boulders private houses only churches are to receive public buildings, which can be dated to the 6th and early 7th century. They are built of blocks from the local dark stone and have the typical forms of Anatolian architecture of its time, such as horseshoe arches. The city built over a Roman necropolis, from a number of Tumulusgräbern is obtained between the houses. Apart from an unspecified datable to repair a church, there are no signs of construction activity after the early 7th century, and several churches and monasteries in the area were in the 10th - 11th Century probably built with stone blocks from Mokisos.