Tenedos (; ; ), or Bozcaada in Turkish, is an island of Turkey in the northeastern part of the Aegean Sea. Administratively, the island constitutes the Bozcaada district of Çanakkale Province. With an area of , it is the third-largest Turkish island after Imbros (Gökçeada) and Marmara. In 2022, the district had a population of 3,120 inhabitants. The main industries are tourism, wine production and fishing. The island has been famous for its grapes, wines and red poppies for centuries. It is a former bishopric and presently a Latin Catholic titular see.
Tenedos is mentioned in both the Iliad and the Aeneid, in the latter as the site where the Greeks hid their fleet near the end of the Trojan War in order to trick the Trojans into believing the war was over and into taking the Trojan Horse within their city walls. Despite its small size, the island was important throughout classical antiquity due to its strategic location at the entrance of the Dardanelles. In the following centuries, the island came under the control of a succession of regional powers, including the Persian Empire, the Delian League, the empire of Alexander the Great, the Attalid kingdom, the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire, before passing to the Republic of Venice. As a result of the War of Chioggia (1381) between Genoa and Venice the entire population was evacuated and the town was demolished. The Ottoman Empire established control over the deserted island in 1455. During Ottoman rule, it was resettled by both Greeks and Turks. In 1807, the island was temporarily occupied by the Russians. During this invasion the town was burnt down and many Turkish residents left the island.
Under Greek administration between 1912 and 1923, Tenedos was ceded to Turkey with the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) which ended the Turkish War of Independence following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. The treaty called for a quasi-autonomous administration to accommodate the local Greek population and excluded the Greeks on the two islands of Imbros and Tenedos from the wider population exchanges that took place between Greece and Turkey. Tenedos remained majority Greek until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when many Greeks emigrated because of discriminatory policies and episodes of anti-Greek violence. Starting with the second half of the 20th century, there has been immigration from mainland Anatolia, especially Romani from the town of Bayramiç.
Name
The island is known in English as Tenedos (the Greek name). Over the centuries many other names have been used. Documented ancient Greek names for the island are Leukophrys,Suda Encyclopedia, tau.311Conon, Narrations (Photius), §28 Calydna, Phoenice and Lyrnessus (Pliny, HN 5,140). The official Turkish name for the island is Bozcaada; the Turkish word "boz" means either a barren land or grey to brown color (sources indicate both of these meanings may have been associated with the island) and "ada" meaning island. The name Tenedos was derived, according to Apollodorus of Athens, from the Greek hero Tenes, who ruled the island at the time of the Trojan War and was killed by Achilles. Apollodorus writes that the island was originally known as Leocophrys until Tenes landed on the island and became the ruler. The island became known as Bozcaada when the Ottoman Empire took the island over. Tenedos remained a common name for the island along with Bozcaada after the Ottoman conquest of the island, often with Greek populations and Turkish populations using different names for the island.
Geography and climate
Tenedos is roughly triangular in shape. Its area is . It is the third largest Turkish island after Marmara Island and Imbros (Gökçeada). It is surrounded by small islets, and is situated close to the entrance of the Dardanelles. It is the only rural district (ilçe) of Turkey without any villages, and has only one major settlement, the town center.
Geological evidence suggests that the island broke away from the mainland producing a terrain that is mainly plains in the west with hills in the Northeast, and the highest point is . The central part of the island is the most amenable to agricultural activities. There is a small pine forest in the Southwestern part of the island. The westernmost part of the island has large sandy areas not suitable for agriculture.
The island has a Mediterranean climate with strong northern winds called etesians. Average temperature is and the average annual precipitation is around . There are a number of small streams running from north to south at the southwestern part of the island. Freshwater sources though are not enough for the island so water is piped in from the mainland.
History
Prehistory Archeological findings indicate that the first human settlement on the island dates back to the Early Bronze Age II (ca. 3000–2700 BC). Archaeological evidence suggests the culture on the island had elements in common with the cultures of northwestern Anatolia and the Cycladic Islands. Most settlement was on the small bays on the east side of the island which formed natural harbours. Settlement archaeological work was done quickly and thus did not find definitive evidence of grape cultivation on the island during this period. However, grape cultivation was common on neighboring islands and the nearby mainland during this time.
According to a reconstruction, based on the myth of Tenes, Walter Leaf stated that the first inhabitants of the island could be Pelasgians, who were driven out of the Anatolian mainland by the Phrygians. According to the same author, there are possible traces of Minoan and Mycenaean Greek influence in the island.
Antiquity
Ancient Tenedos is referred to in Greek and Roman mythology, and archaeologists have uncovered evidence of its settlement from the Bronze Age. It would stay prominent through the age of classical Greece, fading by the time of the dominance of ancient Rome. Although a small island, Tenedos's position in the straits and its two harbors made it important to the Mediterranean powers over the centuries. For nine months of the year, the currents and the prevailing wind, the etesian, came, and still come, from the Black Sea hampering sailing vessels headed for Constantinople. They had to wait a week or more at Tenedos, waiting for the favorable southerly wind. Tenedos thus served as a shelter and way station for ships bound for the Hellespont, Propontis, Bosphorus, and places farther on. Several of the regional powers captured or attacked the island, including the Athenians, the Persians, the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, the Seleucids and the Attalids.
Callisteia (καλλιστεῖα) were beauty contests celebrated across ancient Greece, with the island of Tenedos being one of the known sites where such competitions were held.A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875, Callisteia
Mythology Homer mentions Apollo as the chief deity of Tenedos in his time. According to him, the island was captured by Achilles during the siege of Troy. Nestor obtained his slave Hecamede there during one of Achilles's raids. Nestor also sailed back from Troy stopping at Tenedos and island-hopping to Lesbos. The Odyssey mentions the Greeks leaving Troy after winning the war first traveled to nearby Tenedos, sacrificed there, and then went to Lesbos before pausing to choose between alternative routes.
Homer, in the Iliad mention that between Tenedos and Imbros there was a wide cavern, in which Poseidon stayed his horses.Homer, The Iliad Book XIII.
Virgil, in the Aeneid, described the Achaeans hiding their fleet at the bay of Tenedos, toward the end of the Trojan War, to trick Troy into believing the war was over and allowing them to take the Trojan Horse within Troy's city walls. In Aeneid, it is also the island from which twin serpents came to kill the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons as punishment for throwing a spear at the Trojan Horse. According to Pindar (Nemean Odes no. 11), the island was founded after the war by bronze-clad warriors from Amyklai, traveling with Orestes.
According to myth, Tenes was the son of Cycnus, himself the son of Poseidon and Calyce. Philonome, Cycnus's second wife and hence Tenes's stepmother, tried to seduce Tenes and was rejected. She then accused him of rape leading to his abandonment at sea along with his sister. They washed up on the island of Leucophrys where he was proclaimed king and the island renamed Tenedos in his honor. When Cycnus realized the lie behind the allegations he took a ship to apologize to his son. The myths differ on whether they reconciled. According to one version, when the father landed on the island of Tenedos, Tenes cut the cord holding his boat. The phrase 'hatchet of Tenes' came to mean resentment that could not be soothed. Another myth had Achilles landing on Tenedos, while sailing from Aulis to Troy. There his navy stormed the island, and Achilles fought Tenes, in this myth a son of Apollo, and killed him, not knowing Tenes's lineage and hence unaware of the danger of Apollo's revenge. Achilles would also later kill Tenes's father, Cycnus, at Troy. In Sophocles's Philoctetes, written in 409 BC, a serpent bit Philoctetes in the foot at Tenedos. According to Hyginus, the goddess Hera, upset with Philoctetes for helping Hercules, had sent the snake to punish him. His wound refused to heal, and the Greeks abandoned him, before going back to him for help later during the attack on Troy. Athenaeus quoted Nymphodorus's remarks on the beauty of the women of Tenedos.
Plutarch writes that the people of Tenedos prohibited both aulos-players from entering the sanctuary of Tenes and the mention of Achilles name within it because of events associated with Tenes. According to the tradition, an aulos-player named Molpus falsely testified that Tenes had attempted to seduce his stepmother, forcing Tenes to flee to Tenedos with his sister. Later, although Thetis had warned Achilles not to kill Tenes because he was especially honoured by Apollo, and had instructed one of his servants to remind him of this, Achilles unknowingly slew Tenes while he was defending his sister. Realizing his mistake only after Tenes had fallen, Achilles killed the servant who had failed to remind him of the warning and buried Tenes on the site where his sanctuary was later established.Plutarch, Greek Questions, 28 Diodorus Siculus preserves a similar tradition, likewise explaining that aulos-players were excluded from Tenes sacred precinct because one had borne false witness against him, and that Achilles name was forbidden because he had slain Tenes. Unlike Plutarch, however, Diodorus relates that Tenes reached the island after his father cast him into the sea in a chest, having believed his wife's false accusations, and he omits Plutarch's account of Thetis warning to Achilles and the servant who failed to remind him.Diodorus Siculus Library of History, 83
Callimachus talked of a myth in which Ino's son Melikertes washed up dead in Tenedos after being thrown into the sea by his mother, who killed herself too; the residents, Lelegians, built an altar for Melikertes and started a ritual of a woman sacrificing her infant child when the town's need was dire. The woman would then be blinded. The myths also added that the custom was abolished when Orestes' descendants settled the place.
Neoptolemus stayed two days at Tenedos, following the advice of Thetis, before he go to the land of the Molossians together with Helenus.Apollodorus, Library, e.6.12
Archaic period