Sudak (Ukrainian & Russian: Судак; ; ; sometimes spelled Sudac or Sudagh) is a town, multiple former Eastern Orthodox bishopric and double Latin Catholic titular see. It is of regional significance in Crimea, a territory recognized by most countries as part of Ukraine but annexed by Russia as the Republic of Crimea. Sudak serves as the administrative center of Sudak Municipality, one of the regions Crimea is divided into. It is situated to the west of Feodosia (the nearest railway station) and to the east of Simferopol, the republic's capital. Population: A city of antiquity, today it is a popular resort, best known for its Genoese fortress, the best preserved on the northern shore of the Black Sea. History Foundation and early Middle Ages The date and circumstances of the city's foundation are uncertain. The first written reference to the city dates to the 7th century (in the Ravenna Cosmography), but later local tradition places its foundation in 212 CE, and archaeological evidence supports its foundation in Roman times. The city was in all likelihood founded by the Alans, as its name in Greek sources, Sougdaia is a cognate of the adjective sugda ("pure, holy") or derives from the word sugded/sogdad in the Ossetian language. In the early Middle Ages, the city appears to have been under very loose Byzantine control, like other cities in the region. Archaeological remains indicate considerable construction activity near the shore in the 6th century. Under Byzantine influence, the city was subject to Christianization, and became the seat of a bishopric under the Patriarch of Constantinople, attested for the first time in the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. Bishop Stephen, who attended the council, was an iconophile persecuted by Emperor Constantine V. He was later canonized (St. Stephen of Surozh; ), and buried at the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Sougdaia, which according to later tradition was built in 793. Although a Greek-speaking population was probably settled in the city, the area remained dominated by the Alans: a 9th-century hagiography of Apostle Andrew places "Upper Sougdaia" elsewhere, between Zichia and the Cimmerian Bosporus, "in the land of the Alans", while the hagiographer of Constantine the Philosopher mentions the tribe of Sougdoi, situated between the Iberians and the Crimean Goths, which the historian Francis Dvornik identifies as the Alans. The period between the 8th and 11th centuries is obscure, but the available evidence points to a