Candia

Title

Candia

Description

Magnificent view of the town of Candia (today Iraklio ), on the Greek island of Crete.

ca. 1486

Artist

Breidenbach, von (1440-1497)

Bernhard von Breidenbach ( also Breydenbach) was a leading official and politician of the Archbishopric of Mainz. He became known as the author of a widely read travel account to the Holy Land and as the editor of the first medical herbal book in German. published his own travel experiences as a printed book. The elaboration of his travelogue, which also contains information on the meaning of Arabic vocabulary, was undertaken by the Pforzheim Dominican Martin Rad.

Historical Description

The island of Crete is first referred to as Kaptara in texts from the Syrian city of Mari from the 18th century BC, which are later repeated in Neo-Assyrian records and in the Bible (Caphtor). It was also known in ancient Egypt as Keftiu, strongly suggesting that a similar form to both was the Minoan name for the island. In classical times, Crete lay on the edge of the Greek cultural area, it was regarded as the "island of 100 poleis" and was therefore divided into numerous small city-states. The stone-carved legal text of the then powerful polis of Gortyn is the only completely preserved codex of this type from Greek antiquity. From 1645 to 1648, the Turks conquered almost the entire island and incorporated it into the Ottoman Empire as Girit, with only Candia withstanding a siege until 1669. Numerous uprisings by the population in the 19th century against Ottoman sovereignty were bloodily suppressed. From 1830 to 1840, Crete was formally under the administration of the Vali of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha. In 1898, the intervention of France, Russia and the United Kingdom forced Crete into almost complete autonomy under the sovereignty of the High Porte. The Treaty of London in 1913 finally made Crete part of the Greek state, and a comprehensive population exchange was agreed in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.