The location of this city determines its entire life - the history of Sudak is inextricably linked with the Black Sea. Favorable for growing grapes climatic conditions in the region allowed the city to take one of the main places for the production of famous Crimean wines.
First inhabitants
Specialists of the Caucasian archaeological and ethnographic expedition concluded that the settlement was founded in 212 by the Sughds, the predecessors of the Circassians. That is why during the Middle Ages the settlement was named Sugdeya, then Soldaya. The bulk of the population is merchants and traders from around the world.
The Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, realizing the importance of this city as a major sea and trade center, ordered to build a fortress. The heyday in the history of Sudak is considered to be the 12th – 13th centuries, when the city was under the rule of the Venetian Republic.
Due to its favorable location, Sudak was almost always in the spotlight of its neighbors, who often made devastating raids. In the history of Sudak (briefly), the following uninvited guests left their traces:
- the Asia Minor Seljuks, who attacked the city around 1222;
- the Mongols, who regularly ravaged the settlement in the 13th – 14th centuries;
- the Genoese, who incorporated the settlement into their possessions in 1365;
- the Ottomans who came in 1475.
The Ottoman Empire, which ruled for almost three hundred years, unfortunately, "brought" the city to a terrible state. In fact, it was in complete decline - from a beautiful prosperous seaport it turned into a fishing village.
As part of Russia
In 1783, Sudak, like the whole Crimea, came under the jurisdiction of another empire - the Russian one. At first, life in the new state was no different from existence under the Ottomans. Pike perch remained a small village inhabited by fishermen and their families. This settlement was able to return the status of a city only two hundred years later, already during the years of Soviet power.
The 19th century will remain in the history of Sudak as the time of the founding of wineries and the organization of the first school of winemaking. At the end of that century, the inhabitants of the Russian Empire slowly began to explore the Black Sea coast of Crimea, realizing the beauty of rest by the sea. The calm flow of city life was hampered by the events of October 1917, when a new period in the history of Sudak began, associated with life in the country of the Soviets.
