Kaymaklı Monastery 2.19

Kaymaklı Monastery is a ruined Armenian Apostolic monastery near Trabzon, Turkey.The monastery originally included a church, a bell tower at the northwest corner, and a small chapel near the southeast corner.Location, founding and nameThe monastery is located on top of Boztepe hill, three kilometres southeast of Trabzon. The site overlooks the Değirmendere Valley, the ancient river Pyxites, along which runs the main trade route into eastern Anatolia and beyond.An Armenian community existed in Trabzon as early as the 7th century. During the Mongol invasions of the 13th and 14th centuries, numerous Armenian families fled here from Ani. However, exact date of the monastery's foundation and origin remains unclear. A religious community was present at the site from at least the fifteenth century, and possibly as early as the eleventh. The oldest structure in the compound is dated to 1424. In 1461 it was pillaged and destroyed by Turks. In the 16th century, the rebuilt monastery became a center of Armenian manuscript production.It was named Ամենափրկիչ Վանք (Amenaprgič Vank) in Armenian, which translates as "Monastery of the All-Saviour". The Ottoman Sultan Murad III is said to have eaten a meal at the monastery consisting only of dairy products. He confirmed the monastery's possession of its lands, and the place came to be called in Turkish Kaymaklı, meaning "with/of kaymak", in memory of the occasion. Previously it had been called Yesil Manastir - the Green Monastery.