- On these Tablets, see a note under Bk. II. ch. vii.
NOTE 2. - AYAS, called also Ayacio, Aiazzo, Giazza, Glaza, La Jazza, and
Layas, occupied the site of ancient Aegae, and was the chief port of
Cilician Armenia, on the Gulf of Scanderoon. Aegae had been in the 5th
century a place of trade with the West, and the seat of a bishopric, as we
learn from the romantic but incomplete story of Mary, the noble
slave-girl, told by Gibbon (ch. 33). As Ayas it became in the latter part
of the 13th century one of the chief places for the shipment of Asiatic
wares arriving through Tabriz, and was much frequented by the vessels of
the Italian Republics. The Venetians had a Bailo resident there.
Ayas is the Leyes of Chaucer's Knight, -
("At LEYES was he and at Satalie") -
and the Layas of Froissart. (Bk. III. ch. xxii.) The Gulf of Layas is
described in the xix. Canto of Ariosto, where Mafisa and Astolfo find on
its shores a country of barbarous Amazons: -
"Fatto e 'l porto a sembranza d' una luna," etc.
Marino Sanuto says of it: "Laiacio has a haven, and a shoal in front of it
that we might rather call a reef, and to this shoal the hawsers of vessels
are moored whilst the anchors are laid out towards the land." (II. IV. ch.
xxvi.)
The present Ayas is a wretched village of some 15 huts, occupied by about
600 Turkmans, and standing inside the ruined walls of the castle.