page_title: Kavala
section_title: Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Kavala / History / Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: English: Kavala port
context_page_description: Kavala is a city in northern Greece, the principal seaport of eastern Macedonia and the capital of Kavala regional unit.
  It is situated on the Bay of Kavala, across from the island of Thasos and on the Egnatia motorway, a one-and-a-half-hour drive to Thessaloniki and a forty-minute drive to Drama and Xanthi. It is also about 150 kilometers west of Alexandroupoli.
  Kavala is an important economic centre of Northern Greece, a center of commerce, tourism, fishing and oil-related activities, and formerly a thriving trade in tobacco.
context_section_description: In the 6th century, Byzantine emperor Justinian I, a descendant of a Romanised noble Thracian family (see Aromanians), fortified the city in an effort to protect it from barbarian raids. In later Byzantine times the city was called "Christo(u)polis" (Χριστούπολις, "city of Christ") and belonged initially to the theme of Macedonia and later to the Theme of Strymon. The first surviving mention of the new name is in a taktikon of the early 9th century. The city is also mentioned in the "Life of St. Gregory of Dekapolis". In the 8th and 9th centuries, Bulgarian attacks forced the Byzantines to reorganise the defence of the area, giving great care to Christoupolis with fortifications and a notable garrison. The city remained under Byzantine control and in 837 Byzantine armed forces from Christoupolis under the command of Caesar Alexius Moselie stopped Bulgarian raids in the plain of Philippoi.
  At about 830-840 AD dates a Greek inscription on the walls of a defensive tower of the fortifications of the city, still visible today, and in 926, according to another inscription (nowadays in the archaeological museum of Kavala), the General of the Theme of Strymon Vasilios Klaudon, restored the "fallen and damaged" defensive walls.
  In the mid of the 12th century the Arab geographer Edrisi visited Christoupolis and described it as a well fortified city and a center of sea trade. According to another inscription, also nowadays in the archaeological museum of Kavala, the Normans probably burnt the city in 1185, after they captured first Thessaloniki. Some years later, the city fell to the hands of the Lombards, after the Fourth Crusade and was liberated again by the leader of the state of Epirus, Theodorus Komnenos, in 1225. 
  In 1302, the Catalans failed to capture the city. In order to prevent them from coming back, the Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos built a new long defensive wall. In 1357 two Byzantine officers and brothers, Alexios and John, controlled the city and its territory. Excavations have revealed the ruins of an early Byzantine basilica under an Ottoman mosque in the Old Town. It was used until the late Byzantine era.
caption: View of the old town and the Byzantine fortress
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