to the death of the local strategos George, is recorded during the early reign of Constantine VIII (r. 1025–28). In 1040, the town did not take part in the uprising of Peter Delyan, and although attacked by the rebel army, alone among the towns of the theme of Nicopolis, it resisted successfully. St. Nicholas of Trani is recorded as having departed for Otranto in 1094 from the port. The history of the town over the next two centuries is obscure; during the visit of Benjamin of Tudela in 1165, there was a Jewish community of about 100 in the town. Following the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade, it became part of the Despotate of Epirus. Under its metropolitan, John Apokaukos, the see of Naupactus gained in importance and headed the local synod for the southern half of the Epirote domains. In 1294, the town was ceded to Philip I, Prince of Taranto as part of the dowry of Thamar Angelina Komnene. The ruler of Thessaly, Constantine Doukas, attacked Epirus in the next year and captured Naupactus, but in 1296 handed most of his conquests back to the Angevins, and Naupactus became a major Angevin base on the Greek mainland. In 1304 or 1305, the Epirotes recovered Naupactus during a war with the Angevins, but handed it back when peace was concluded in 1306. The town briefly became part of the Serbian Empire during the 1350's. In 1361 the town was captured by the Catalans of the Duchy of Athens. In 1376 or 1377 it fell to John Bua Spata, an Albanian despot of Arta. It was briefly occupied Knights Hospitaller in 1378, and, now wedged between the expanding lands of the Count of Cephalonia Carlo I Tocco and the Ottoman possessions, sold to the Republic of Venice by Paul Spata in 1407. After 1449, the town was an isolated Venetian exclave in Ottoman territory, as the Ottomans completed their conquest of the rest of Epirus and Aetolia-Acarnania. The town was important to Venice, as it secured their trade through the Corinthian Gulf, and the Republic took care to erect strong fortifications to secure its possession. In the end, the fortress fell to the Ottomans in 1499, during the Second Ottoman–Venetian War. Under the Ottomans, Naupactus was known as Aynabahtı, İnebahtı and was the seat of an Ottoman province. The mouth of the Gulf of Lepanto was