Dorylaeum


Dorylaeum or Dorylaion was an ancient city in Anatolia. It is now an archaeological site located near the city of Eskişehir, Turkey.
Its original location was about 10 km southwest of Eskişehir, at a place now known as Karaca Hisar; about the end of the fourth century B.C. it was moved to a location north of modern Eskişehir.

History

Stratigraphy:
Şarhöyük VII has been excavated since 1989. It has revealed a series of archaeological cultural deposits, the earliest dated to the 3rd millennium BC.
The city flourished during the early Bronze Age. Around 2500 BC, a particularly distinctive culture group is discernible in north-western Anatolia, the 'Demircihüyük Culture'. Dorylaeum-Sharhöyük was at the center of these cultural developments.

Middle Bronze Age

Şarhöyük VI

Late Bronze Age

Sarhöyük V layer with five subphases of the city is one of the best represented cultural phases on the mound. A new Luwian hieroglyphic seal has been discovered there in 2018. This material represents the Hittite Imperial Period.
  • SH V.5
  • SH V.4
  • SH V.3 Best preserved mudbrick architecture dating to the Hittite period.
  • SH V.2
  • SH V.1

    Iron Age

In the Iron Age, Sarhöyük IV was important under the Phrygians.

Classical and Medieval periods

Dorylaion was a Roman trading post. It also was probably a key city of the route the Apostle Paul took on his Second Missionary Voyage in 50 AD. It became a bishopric when part of the Late Roman province of Phrygia Salutaris, and produced bishops like Eusebius, who opossed the teachings of Nestorius and Eutyches.
In the third century AD, it was threatened by Gothic raids. The Roman army that was based in Asia minor was spread thin, and the navy had moved west from the Northern city of Sinope, therefore the provincials were left exposed. These Goths came from the trans-danubian region on the black sea. When the city was under threat, the people used dedicatory statues to build their wall quicker, indicating their rush to protect themselves against the invaders.
In the 11th century, Dorylaeum produced rich harvests of grain and the rivers close to the city were a great source for fish. The villages around the city were densely populated and Dorylaeum itself was embellished with stoas, fountains, and houses of illustrious citizens. Following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the collapse of Byzantine Anatolia, the city was taken by the Seljuks.
Dorylaeum was the site of two significant battles during the Crusades. In 1097, during the First Crusade, the crusaders defeated the Seljuks there, in their first major victory. During the Second Crusade it was the site of a major Crusader defeat, which effectively ended the German contribution to the crusade.
After it was sacked by Turkoman raiders, who forced its inhabitants to flee, Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos arrived in the area, chased away the Turks, rebuilt and fortified Dorylaeum in 1175-1176. The contemporary Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates relates that Manuel did not destroy the fortifications of Dorylaeum, as he had agreed to do as part of the treaty he negotiated with the Seljuk Turkish sultan Kilij Arslan II immediately after the Battle of Myriokephalon. The sultan's response to this development was not a direct attack on Dorylaeum, but the dispatch of a large army to ravage the rich Meander valley to the south.
Dorylaeum was described by the Muslim author al-Harawi as a place of medicinal hot springs on the frontier at the end of Christian territory.

Ecclesiastical history

Dorylaeum became a bishopric under the Byzantine Empire and was a suffragan the Metropolitan of Synnada in Phrygia.
Seven bishops are known from the fourth to the ninth century, the most famous being Eusebius. The see is mentioned as late as the twelfth century among the suffragans of Synnada, but must have been suppressed soon after.

Titular see

Dorylaeum is included in the Catholic Church's list of titular sees.
The diocese was nominally restored as a Latin Catholic titular bishopric in 1715 as Dorylaeum, which is spelled Dorylaëum since 1925.
It is vacant since decades, having had had the following incumbents, all of the lowest rank :