Ayas (Yumurtalık)

Ayas, today Yumurtalık, is a town on the coast of Cilicia, on the western shore of the Gulf of Iskenderun, east of the mouth of the river Ceyhan (the Pyramos). It is the capital of the nahiye of Yumurtalık in the kaza of Ceyhan, in the vilayet of Seyhan (Adana). In antiquity it was known as Aigai. Italian seamen and merchants of the Middle Ages knew it as Ajazzo or Lajazzo. ²

The harbour of Ayas, then part of the Christian principality of Little Armenia, became important only in the second half of the thirteenth century. With the withdrawal of the Franks from the Crusader lands on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and the silting up of the harbour of Tarsus, the whole trade between the West and the Orient was concentrated in this harbour. It was linked by good overland routes with Syria and Mesopotamia, and with Iran through eastern Anatolia. Marco Polo set out from here on his overland journey through Asia in 1271. At the end of the fourteenth century the Florentine merchant Pegolotti described the caravan route to Tabriz that began here. Ayas was the seat of a Venetian bailo. ²

The town was plundered by Muslim armies in 665/1266 and 674/1275, and was conquered in 722/1322; it was rebuilt by the Christians after the peace treaty of 1325. It finally fell to the Egyptian Mamluks in 748/1347. It then began to decline, and the process was accelerated by sedimentation that broadened the mouth of the Ceyhan, until the whole area around Ayas became a fever-infested swamp. It was still mentioned in 1400 as the administrative centre of the province of Aleppo. After the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk Empire it became a kaza in the eyalet of Adana. Today Ayas (Yumurtalık) is an impoverished coastal town with many ruins. ¹

The entry's bibliography cites Dimashqi, Abu al-Fida's Taqwim, al-Qalqashandi, W. Heyd's Geschichte des Levantehandels, Cuinet's La Turquie d'Asie and Besim Darkot's article in the Islam Ansiklopedisi. ³