Feodosia (Ukrainian: Феодосія, Теодосія, Feodosiia, Teodosiia; Russian: Феодосия, Feodosiya[1]), also called in English Theodosia (from Greek: Θεοδοσία), is a city on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea.

Noted for its rich agricultural lands, on which its trade depended, the city was destroyed by the Huns in the 4th century AD.

A settlement named Kaphâs (alternate romanized spelling Cafâs, Greek: Καφᾶς) existed surrounding Theodosia prior to the penetration of Genoese into the Black Sea.

[2] In the late 13th century, traders from the Republic of Genoa arrived and purchased the city from the ruling Golden Horde.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia also adds that the city of Caffa was established during the times when the area was ruled by the Khan of the Golden Horde Mengu-Timur.

The papal bull of appointment of the first bishop attributed to him a vast territory: "a villa de Varna in Bulgaria usque Sarey inclusive in longitudinem et a mari Pontico usque ad terram Ruthenorum in latitudinem" ("from the city of Varna in Bulgaria to Sarey inclusive in longitude, and from the Black Sea to the land of the Ruthenians in latitude").

The thriving, culturally diverse city and its thronged slave market have been described by the Spanish traveler Pedro Tafur, who was there in the 1430s.

[15] However, Poland did not offer significant help due to reinforcements sent being massacred in Bar fortress (modern day Ukraine) by Duke Czartoryski after a quarrel with locals.

[citation needed] Following the fall of Constantinople, Amasra, and lastly Trebizond, the position of Caffa had become untenable and attracted the attention of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II.

On 8 July, the final blow was struck when all inhabitants of Latin origin were ordered to relocate to Istanbul, where they founded a quarter (Kefeli Mahalle) which was named after the town they had been forced to leave.

It was a major center of the Crimean slave trade until the late 18th-century, referred to by the Lithuanian Mikhalon Litvin as: "not a town, but an abyss into which our blood is pouring".

The city was occupied by the forces of Nazi Germany during World War II, sustaining significant damage in the process.

On December 4, 1941, in the morning, all the Jews, including my father, my mother and my sister were taken to an anti-tank trench where they were executed by German shooters.

On Passover eve, 7 April 2012, unknown persons desecrated the monument for the sixth time in what was allegedly an anti-Semitic act.

Feodosia was the city where the seascape painter Ivan Aivazovsky lived and worked all his life, and where general Pyotr Kotlyarevsky and the writer Alexander Grin spent their declining years.

An early 14th-century bishop of Caffa appears in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose, making several sharp replies in a long, tempestuous debate within a group of monks and clerics; he is portrayed as aggressive and somewhat narrow-minded.