page_title: Thessaly
section_title: Late Medieval and Ottoman period
hierarchical_section_title: Thessaly / History / Late Medieval and Ottoman period
caption_attribution_description: Historical flag of Thessaly region, used during the Greek War of Independence (1821-1830), designed by Anthimos Gazis.
context_page_description: Thessaly is a traditional geographic and modern administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey.
  Thessaly became part of the modern Greek state in 1881, after four and a half centuries of Ottoman rule. Since 1987 it has formed one of the country's 13 Regions and is further sub-divided into 5 Regional Units and 25 Municipalities. The capital of the region is Larissa. Thessaly lies in northern Greece and borders the regions of Macedonia on the north, Epirus on the west, Central Greece on the south, and the Aegean Sea on the east. The Thessaly region also includes the Sporades islands.
context_section_description: In 977 Byzantine Thessaly was raided by the Bulgarian Empire. In 1066 dissatisfaction with the taxation policy led the Aromanian and Bulgarian population of Thessaly to revolt against the Byzantine Empire under the leadership of a local lord, Nikoulitzas Delphinas. The revolt, which began in Larissa, soon expanded to Trikala and later northwards to the Byzantine-Bulgarian border. In 1199–1201 another unsuccessful revolt was led by Manuel Kamytzes, son-in-law of Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos, with the support of Dobromir Chrysos, the autonomous ruler of Prosek. Kamytzes managed to establish a short-lived principality in northern Thessaly, before he was overcome by an imperial expedition.
  Following the siege of Constantinople and the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade in April 1204, Thessaly passed to Boniface of Montferrat's Kingdom of Thessalonica in the wider context of the Frankokratia. In 1212, Michael I Komnenos Doukas, ruler of Epirus, led his troops into Thessaly. Larissa and much of central Thessaly came under Epirote rule, thereby separating Thessalonica from the Crusader principalities in southern Greece. Michael's work was completed by his half-brother and successor, Theodore Komnenos Doukas, who by 1220 completed the recovery of the entire region.
  The Vlachs of Thessaly (originally a chiefly transhumant Romance-speaking population) first appear in Byzantine sources in the 11th century, in the Strategikon of Kekaumenos and Anna Komnene's Alexiad). In the 12th century, the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela records the existence of the district of "Vlachia" near Halmyros in eastern Thessaly, while the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates places "Great Vlachia" near Meteora. The term is also used by the 13th-century scholar George Pachymeres, and it appears as a distinct administrative unit in 1276, when the pinkernes Raoul Komnenos was its governor (kephale). 
  From 1271 to 1318 Thessaly was an independent despotate that extended to Acarnania and Aetolia, run by John I Doukas. In 1309 the Almogavars or Catalan Company of the East (Societas Catalanorum Magna), settled in Thessaly. In 1310, after lifting the siege of Thessalonica, the Almogavars withdrew as mercenaries in the pay of the sebastokrator John II Doukas and took over the country. From there they departed to the Duchy of Athens, called by the duke Walter I. In 1318, with the extinction of the Angelid dynasty, the Almogavars occupied Siderokastron and southern Thessaly (1319) and formed the Duchy of Neopatria.
  In 1348, Thessaly was invaded and occupied by the Serbs under Preljub. After the latter's death in 1356, the region was conquered by Nikephoros Orsini, and after his death three years later, it was taken over by the self-proclaimed Serbian emperor Simeon Uroš. Simeon's son John Uroš succeeded in 1370 but abdicated in 1373, and Thessaly was administered by the Greek Angeloi-Philanthropenoi clan until the Ottoman conquest c. 1393. 
  Ottoman control was disputed by the Byzantines until the 1420s when it was consolidated by Turahan Bey, who settled Turkomans in the province and founded the town of Tyrnavos. The territory was ruled through the Sanjak of Tirhala administrative division during the Ottoman period.
caption: One of the flags used in Thessaly during the Greek War of Independence (designed by Anthimos Gazis).
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