ANTAKIA  , the

modern town, is still of considerable importance . Pop. about 25,000, including Ansarieh, Jews, and a large body of Christians of several denominations about 8000 strong . Though superseded by Aleppo (q.v.) as capital of N . Syria, it is still the centre of a large district, growing in wealth and productiveness with the draining of its central lake, undertaken by a French company . The principal cultures are tobacco, maize and cotton, and the mulberry for silk production . Liquorice also is collected and exported . In 1822 (as in 1872) Antakia suffered by earthquake, and when Ibrahim Pasha made it his headquarters in 1835, it had only some 5000 inhabitants . Its hopes, based on a Euphrates valley railway, which was to have started from its port of Suedia (Seleucia), were doomed to disappointment, and it has suffered repeatedly from visitations of cholera; but it has nevertheless grown rapidly and will resume much of its old importance when a railway is made down the lower Orontes valley . It is a 132 centre of American mission enterprise, and has a British vice-consul . See C . O . Muller, Antiquitates Antiochenae (1839); A .

Freund, Beitrage zur antiochenischen . . Stadtchronik (1882) ; R . Forster, in Jahrbuch of Berlin Arch . Institute, xii . (1897) . Also authorities for SYRIA . (D . G .