Description : Dorylaeum or Dorylaion (Greek: Δορύλαιον), called Şarhöyük in Turkish language, 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. The city existed under the Phrygians but may have been much older. It 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. 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. (see Mitchell - crisis and continuity (1993) page 236) After the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 it was taken by the Seljuk Turks. Dorylaeum was the site of two 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 defeat, which effectively ended the German contribution to the crusade. Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus fortified Dorylaeum in 1175, but according to some authorities the Turks recaptured it in 1176 after the Battle of Myriokephalon. However, 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 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 (died 1215) as a place of medicinal hot springs on the frontier at the end of Christian territory.
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