Sinope: The Past

A little history is good for the soul: Sinop was long used as a Hittite (18th-16th century BC) port which appears in Hittite sources as "Sinuwa". The city was re-founded as a Greek colony in the 7th century BC. Sinope then was captured by Pontus Kingdom in 183 BC, by Romans in 70 BC and by the Seljuk Turks in 1214. After 1261, Sinop became home to two successive independent emirates following the fall of the Seljuks: the Pervâne and the Jandarids. It was captured by the Ottomans in 1458.

Sinop peninsula

In November 1853, at the start of the Crimean War, in the Battle of Sinop, the Russians, under the command of Admiral Nakhimov, destroyed an Ottoman frigate squadron in Sinop, leading Britain and France to declare war on Russia.
In elementary school we were asked to memorize the Turkey map so we could draw it from memory. Of course we couldn't get all of the details of those shores right, but Sinop peninsula was one of my saviors: when I drew that one right, my whole map somehow looked right :)

Sinope

In Greek Mythology Sinope was one of the daughters of Asopus, the river god. There are two myths about Sinope. In one, Sinope was seized by the god Apollo and carried over to the place where later stood the city honouring her name. She bore to Apollo a son named Syrus, supposedly afterwards king of the Syrians. The other myth relate that Sinope was abducted to the site by Zeus, who, in his passion, swore to fulfil her dearest wish. Sinope declared she wished to remain a virgin. Sinope later tricked Apollo and the river Halys in the same fashion and remained a virgin all her life.

Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher and was born in Sinope in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC. He was a controversial figure. After being exiled from his native city for defacing the currency, he moved to Athens to debunk cultural conventions. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used his lifestyle and behaviour to criticise the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society. He begged for a living and slept in a tub in the marketplace. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He publicly mocked Alexander and lived. He embarrassed Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaged his lectures. After being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth. There he passed his philosophy of Cynicism to be fashioned it into the school of Stoicism, one of the most enduring schools of Greek philosophy.