Siderocausa Sidirokafsia (Σιδηροκαυσία), Sidrekapsi, Sidre kapsi, Sidre qapsi, Sidrekaisi, Sidrekapisi, or Siderocapsa was a Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

 and gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

 mine

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 and Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 mint

Mint (coin)

A mint is an industrial facility which manufactures coins for currency.The history of mints correlates closely with the history of coins. One difference is that the history of the mint is usually closely tied to the political situation of an era...

 east of Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...

.

It was located in northeastern Chalcidice

Chalcidice

Chalkidiki, also Halkidiki, Chalcidice or Chalkidike , is a peninsula in northern Greece, and one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Macedonia. The autonomous Mount Athos region is part of the peninsula, but not of the regional unit...

, in a group of twelve villages later called the Mademochoria (< Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

 maaden 'mine' + Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 χωριά 'villages'), including Stratoniki

Stratonicea (Chalcidice)

Stratonicea was an ancient city of Hellenistic foundation on the west coast of the Akte peninsula , a few km northwest of Cleonae; its site is at the modern village of Stratoni, Chalkidiki, Greece...

 and Stagira

Stagira

Stagira is a Greek village lying on a picturesque plateau on the Chalcidice peninsula, and standing at the foot of the Argirolofos hill. The village stands approximately 8 kilometers south southwest of the ancient Stageira, the birthplace of Aristotle, and a statue of him stands in it. In Byzantine...

.http://www.ierissos.gr/en/perioxh_stratonikh.htm

At some periods, the whole of the Chalcidice peninsula was called Siderocausa.

Ottoman mint

The Sidrekapsi mine (Ottoman

Ottoman Turkish language

The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...

 ma‘den-i Sidrekapsi) was very large:

...by far the most productive of the Balkan mines during the first
half of the sixteenth century...employing as many as 6,000 miners... Its total output has been estimated at about six tons per year...

The mint was active from about 1530 to the 18th or perhaps the 19th century, and produced silver akçe

Akçe

thumb|250px|AkçeA silver coin, the akçe was the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. The word "akçe" is derived from the Greek "" , the name of a Byzantine silver or billon coin, current in the region that eventually became the Ottoman Empire. The akçe is hence often called asper in English...

 and gold sultani

Sultani

The Sultani is an Ottoman gold coin. It was first minted during the reign of Mehmed II, weighing about 3.45 grams. The Sultani is the classic Ottoman gold coin also known as altın .-External links:**...

.http://www.turknumismatik.org.tr/turkce/yayinlar/bultenler/bulten032/tekst_makale02_tr.html For the sultani, it was one of the three main mints, along with Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

 and Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

.