Tarabya / Θεραπειά
- sophiafaaland
- Apr 1
- 5 min read
Tarabya, or Therapeia (Θεραπειά) in Greek, is a neighborhood and historic fishing village with a sizable Greek Orthodox population in northern Turkey. The neighborhood occupies a stretch of land along the Bosphorus in the Sarıyer district of the European continent.
In the ancient period, Tarabya is believed to have been named “Pharmakea” or “Pharmakeus” by Medea, the mythological daughter of King Aeëtes. According to myth, after Medea dropped poison along the Thracian coast, she named the historic neighborhood Pharmakea, derived from the word “pharmakon,” meaning poison in ancient Greek. During the term of Attikos as Archbishop of Constantinople from 405 to 425 CE, the name of the neighborhood changed to Therapeia, meaning “cure” or “healing” in ancient Greek due to the hot springs in the region. These sacred springs represent St. John the Baptist, St. Fotini, St. Paraskevi, St. Marina, St. Kyriaki, and St. Constantine and Helen. Later on, Evliya Çelebi, an Ottoman Turkish traveler, recorded the region was renamed Tarabiye by Sultan Selim II in the sixteenth century because of the fish he enjoyed. In Turkish, Tarabiye or Tarabya translates to “place of pleasure.”
Since 1655, Tarabya has remained the center of the Derkoi Greek Metropolitanate. From the nineteenth century up to the twentieth century, several patriarchs served as Metropolitan of Derkoi including Patriarch Germanos IV from 1835 to 1842, Patriarch IV Yoakim from 1875 to 1884, and Patriarch Konstantinos from May to December 1924.
Although historical demographic information of Tarabya remains scant, the recollections of travelers offer some insight. Eremya Çelebi Kömürciyan observed Tarabya in the seventeenth century, stating its majority Greek Orthodox population. Later on, Sarraf Hovanesian observed Tarabya as “an almost exclusively Greek Orthodox settlement with few Armenians and even fewer Muslims” in the eighteenth century. From 1873 to 1874, Professor Vasil Stavridis recorded 2500 Greek people and 442 families in Tarabya. Finally, Professor Vasil Stavridis later recorded a significant population decline, counting 1500 Greek families in Tarabya in 1905.
Phanariotes, or Greek bureaucratic families from Phanar, such as the Mourouzis and Ypsilantis families, owned summer homes in Tarabya whose climate especially protected people against cholera and the plague in the nineteenth century. The invention of the steamboat facilitated vacation to Tarabya making it a popular travel destination in the nineteenth century.
Many Phanariotes resided in Tarabya until the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Skarlatos Byzantios observed Tarabya “was until 1821 the summer dwelling of our aristocratic Greek families, while those who at times ruled Dacia would spend their days here in idleness, wasting their time on building and tree planting, farm from the Ottomans, who, before steamships became widespread, did not live along the European coasts of the Bosphorus beyond Sosthenion because it was a long way from the centre of political activities.” One famous Ottoman Greek banker, Hristaki Zoğrafos, owned a summer mansion along the Bosphorus in Tarabya.
In reaction to the Greek War of Independence, the Ottoman Empire violently executed the Metropolitanate of Derkoi, Gregorios, and confiscated multiple buildings from Greek Orthodox families including the current German embassy and the French embassy. Before 1821, the building of the German embassy belonged to the Soutsos family and the building of the French embassy belonged to the Ypsilantis, or Ypsilanti family, a leading Phanariote family. One of the most famous members of the Phanariot Soutsos family is Alexandros Soutsos, a poet known for creating the Greek Romantic school of poetry in the nineteenth century.
Church of St. Paraskevi (Εκκλησία Αγίας Παρασκευής)
According to Georgios Zarifis, the Mavrogenis family, a Phanariote family who settled in Tarabya in the nineteenth century, built the Church of St. Paraskevi in 1860. The memoir of Zarifis’ grandson memoirs details the legend of the beginning of the church. First, a Mavrogenis descendant “bad-mouthed” a wealthy Armenian living in Tarabya to the sultan. Afterwards, the sultan beheaded the Armenian person and gave some of their possessions to the Mavrogenis descendant. Later on, the sultan also killed the Mavrogenis descendant who was ousted by an enemy for a crime. While the widow of the Mavrogenis descendant grieved the sudden death of her husband, she sought refuge in the agiasma, or holy spring of St. Paraskevi by her home. She later built a church by the holy spring to atone for her husband’s sins.
Today, the domed basilica of the edifice remains one of the church’s most notable architectural features in addition to its three interior naves. At the center of the dome rests the Icon of Pantokrator, a common Orthodox icon of Jesus Christ, surrounded by four archangels. The church also features a marble iconostasis and Ionic columns. Outside of the church lies roughly twenty graves of Greek families and individuals including Stefanos Mavrogordatos, Pavlo Vegleris, Apostolos Manopulos, Troas Metropoliti Neofitos, and Alexander Mavrogenis Bey, a Greek Orthodox Ottoman bureaucrat and Neophanariote.
Greek Primary School (Ελληνικό Δημοτικό Σχολείο Θεραπείας)
After Aspasya Zanidu, Petros Sagredos, Stelyos Stilyanidis, Mateo and Eleni Nikolau, and the Ferikoy Fukaraperver Cemiyeti founded the school, the regional Greek Orthodox community of Tarabya funded the construction of the Greek Primary School in 1880. At the beginning, sessions for boys and girls were separately held in the backyard of the current building. The school’s population included 150 students and six teachers, offering instruction in Turkish and Greek. After the Greek Orthodox population of Tarabya declined later in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, the school combined sessions for boys and girls.
The current building enjoys a view of the Bosphorus from a hill, located at Ahu Çelebi Sokak, No: 27, Tarabya. Some notable architectural features of this building include Neo-Classical styles on the front with exposed stone masonry on the sides and brick in the center. The interior includes a hall for ceremonies and the cafeteria, and the courtyard hosts many trees. In recent years, the bad condition of the building due to cracks in its foundation has motivated several studies for conservation projects to maintain the cultural heritage of Tarabya’s Greek Orthodox community.
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