Siderocausa
- Siderocapsa is also a genus of iron bacteria in the family Siderocapsaceae.
Siderocausa (Σιδηρόκαυσα), Sidirokafsia (Σιδηροκαυσία), Sidrekapsi, Sidre kapsi, Sidre qapsi, Sidrekaisi, Sidrekapisi, or Siderocapsa was a Byzantine silver and gold mine and Ottoman mint east of Thessaloniki.
It was located in northeastern Chalcidice, in a group of twelve villages later called the Mademochoria (< Turkish maaden 'mine' + Greek χωριά 'villages'), including Stratoniki and Stagira.
At some periods, the whole of the Chalcidice peninsula was called Siderocausa.[1]
Ottoman mint
The Sidrekapsi mine (Ottoman ma‘den-i Sidrekapsi) was very large:
...by far the most productive of the Balkan mines during the firsthalf of the sixteenth century...employing as many as 6,000 miners... Its total output has been estimated at about six tons per year...[2]
The mint was active from about 1530 to the 18th or perhaps the 19th century, and produced silver akçe and gold sultani. For the sultani, it was one of the three main mints, along with Cairo and Istanbul.
References
- O. Davies, "Ancient Mines in Southern Macedonia", The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 62 (Jan.-Jun., 1932), p. 140 doi:10.2307/2843882
- Sevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, 2000, ISBN 0-521-44197-8.
- Speros Vryonis, Jr., "The Question of the Byzantine Mines", Speculum 37:1:13-14 (Jan., 1962) doi:10.2307/2850595