Aynabakhti (Naupaktos, Lepanto)

Aynabakhti is the Turkish name for Lepanto, or Naupaktos, in Greece. The town lies on the Gulf of Corinth and has a picturesque position, but it is an impoverished small town. Its people call it Epaktos and the Italians Lepanto. It is surrounded by crumbling walls from the period of Venetian rule and dominated by a fortress. ¹

In the Middle Ages Aynabakhti ruled over the Gulf of Corinth. It came under Venetian rule in 1407. The Ottomans besieged it unsuccessfully in 1483 and took it in 1499, as the separate article on the siege of 1499 records. ¹

Don Juan of Austria, at the age of 26, won a bloody sea battle near the Oxia islands on 7 October 1571. He commanded 250 ships, partly Venetian and partly Spanish, supported by the Pope, and met a Turkish fleet of equal strength, of which the article says he sank 200 vessels. This is the battle of Lepanto. ¹

The town remained the seat of a Turkish sanjak-bey until the Venetians retook it in 1687, and they kept it until the Peace of Karlowitz (26 January 1699). It then became Turkish again, and on 12 March 1829 it became Greek. Opposite the bay of Aynabakhti the Gulf of Corinth narrows to about two kilometres. The Venetian fortifications there, called Kastro Moreas in the south and Kastro Roumelias in the north, were known as the Small Dardanelles. Today the town has about 2,000 inhabitants and is the seat of a bishop. ¹

The article's bibliography cites Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname, Hammer's history of the Ottomans, and modern studies of the battle by Kretschmayr, Manfroni, Hartlaub and Anderson. ¹