Mürefte is a neighbourhood of the municipality and district of Şarköy, Tekirdağ Province, Turkey.Mahalle, Turkey Civil Administration Departments Inventory. Retrieved 19 September 2023. Its population is 2,412 (2022). Before the 2013 reorganisation, it was a town (belde). It is on the Sea of Marmara about 51 km southwest of Tekirdağ.
The early history of this town is not known. It is first mentioned in connection with an earthquake which destroyed it in the year 1063.Muralt, "Essai de chronologie byzantine", II, 8. It was visited by John Cantacuzene about 1350.Hist., III, 76. After the population exchange some Megleno-Romanian families were settled.
Ecclesiastical history The original diocese was in Thracia Prima, a suffragan of Heraclea Perinthos.
A diocese of Peristasis (modern Şarköy) was established by 1170.Parthey, "Hieroclis Synecdemus", 103. The see was later transferred to Myriophyton, and renamed Peristasis and Myriophyton, mentioned first in a Notitia episcopatuum of the end of the fifteenth century.Heinrich Gelzer, Ungedruckte ... Texte der Notitiae episcopatuum, 633. In the sixteenth century Myriophytum displaced Peristasis, and the diocese took the name of Myriophytum and Peristasis.Le Quien, Oriens christianus, I, 1151.
According to the Ottoman population statistics of 1914, the kaza of Mürefte had a population of 16,876 consisting of 14,146 Greeks (83.84%) and 2,730 Muslims (16.18%).Kemal Karpat (1985), Ottoman Population, 1830-1914, Demographic and Social Characteristics, The University of Wisconsin Press, p. 170–171
The Greek Orthodox diocese became in January 1909 an autocephalous metropolitan see, the Metropolitanate of Myriophyton and Peristasis. The Orthodox population of the metropolitanate was evacuated in October 1922, just before the Greco-Turkish population exchange, leaving no Orthodox population since then, but the church continues to appoint titular metropolitans to the see.
The last Roman Catholic holder of the titular see of Myriophytos or Miriofido died in 1932, and the see has been suppressed.
Agriculture The coastline between Tekirdağ and Şarköy, particularly Mürefte, are notable centers for viticulture and winemaking. A well-known wine producer, "Kutman", is located in the village, and maintains a wine museum also.
Notable people Aristotelis Kourtidis (1858 – 1928), Greek educator and writer. Vasilis Logothetidis (1897 - 1960), Greek actor.
References
Sources The entry cites: Drakos, Thrakika (in Greek, Athens, 1892), 72–93.