A town on the Romanian side of the Chilia branch of the Danube, now known as
Chilia Veche or "Old Chilia", was founded by the
Greek Byzantines – κελλία,
kellia in
Greek being the equivalent of "granaries", a name first recorded in 1241, in the works of the
Persian chronicler
Rashid-al-Din Hamadani. Kiliia is therefore sometimes referred to as
Nova Kiliia meaning "New Kiliia". In the place that is now Kiliia, a large colony was established by the
Republic of Genoa, known as "Licostomo" and headed by a consul (a representative of the Republic in the region). From that time, only the defensive ditches of a Genoese fortress remained. The city was founded by
Stephen the Great of
Moldavia, in order to counteract the
Ottoman Empire which had taken control over
Chilia Veche in the 15th century. It was a major
Moldavian port. However,
it was eventually conquered by the Ottomans in 1484. In 1570 (
Hijri 977) the town of Kilia was inhabited by Muslims and Christians. It had 298 Muslim households in 13 neighbourhoods and 316 Christian households in 5 neighbourhoods and it was a "has" of the
Sultan, a land property that was directly owned by the Sultan. One of the Muslim neighbourhoods was recorded as a
Circassian neighbourhood. Kiliia was taken by the
Russian army under the command of the general
Ivan Gudovich during
Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792). The
Times of London reported that "35,000 of the inhabitants were involved in a general massacre," an incident that had "been celebrated in prose and poetry." The city was given back to the Ottomans in 1792, but retaken by the Russians in 1806 and awarded to them officially in 1812. After being bombarded by the Anglo-French fleet in July 1854 during the
Crimean War, it was given to Romania in the
Treaty of Paris (1856). In 1878 (
Congress of Berlin), Kiliia was transferred back to Russia together with
Budjak. Between 1918 and 1940 (
Interwar period,
Greater Romania) it was again part of Romania. In July 1940, after a Soviet ultimatum, Romania agreed to give up
Bessarabia and
northern Bukovina; the Soviet Union
occupied it and came to the
Ukrainian SSR (it was
held yet again by Romania, from 1941 to 1944, in
World War II, time during which it was the capital of the
Chilia County), and passed on to independent
Ukraine after the
dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Jews were deported to Transnistria (the area between the Dniester and Bug rivers) by the Romanian authorities in 1941, where a large majority of the 316 deported Jews died. According to the Yad Vashem website, 199 Jews who had lived before the war in Kiliia whose names are listed died in Ukraine. The oldest building in Kiliia is the semi-subterranean church of St. Nicholas, which may go back to 1485, although an old inscription in the church claims that it was founded on 10 May 1647. Until 18 July 2020, Kiliia was the administrative center of
Kiliia Raion. The raion was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of
raions of Odesa Oblast to seven. The area of Kiliia Raion was merged into Izmail Raion. ==Demographics==