SINOPE  , Turk . Sinub, a

town on the N. coast of Asia Minor in the vilayet of Kastamuni, on a low isthmus which joins the promontory of Boz Tepe to the mainland . Though it possesses the only safe roadstead between the Bosporus and Batum, the difficulties of communication with the interior, and the rivalry of Ineboli on the W_ and Samsun on the E. have prevented Sinope from becoming a great commercial centre . It is shut off from the plateau by forest-clad mountains; a carriage road over the hills to Boiavad and thence by Vezir-Keupru to Amasia was begun about 20 years ago, but has never been completed even as far as Boiavad . Consequently the trade is small; the annual exports are about £8o,000, and the imports £50,000 . Population, 5000 Moslems and 4000 Christians, chiefly Greeksand Armenians . On the isthmus, towards the mainland, stands a huge but for the most part ruined castle, originally Byzantine and afterwards strengthened by the Seljuk sultans; and the Mahommedan quarter is surrounded by massive walls . Of early Roman or Greek antiquities there are only the columns, architraves and inscribed stones built into the old walls; but the ancient local coinage furnishes a very beautiful and interesting series of types . See M . Six's paper in the Numismatic Chronicle (1885), and MM . Babelon & Reinach, Recueil des monnaies grecques d'Asie Mineure (1904) Sinope (Ecvunrrl), whose origin was assigned by its ancient inhabitants to Autolycus, a companion of Hercules, was founded 630 B.C. by the Ionians of Miletus, and ultimately became the most flourishing Greek settlement on the Euxine, as it was the terminus of a great caravan route from the Euphrates, through Pteria, to the Black Sea, over which were brought the products of Central Asia and Cappadocia (whence came the famous " Sinopic " red earth) . In the 5th century B.C. it received a colony of Athenians; and by the 4th it had extended its authority over a considerable tract of country .

Its

fleet was dominant in the Euxine, except towards the W., where it shared the field with Byzantium . When in 220 B.C . Sinope was attacked by the king of Pontus, the Rhodians enabled it to maintain its independence . But where Mithradates IV. failed Pharnaces succeeded; and the city, taken by surprise in 183 B.C., became the capital of the Pontic monarchy . Under Mithradates VI. the Great, who was born in Sinope, it had just been raised to the highest degree 9f prosperity, with fine buildings, naval arsenals and well-built harbours, when it was captured by Lucullus and nearly destroyed by fire (70 B.C.) . In 64 B.C. the body of the murdered Mithradates was brought home to the royal mausoleum . Under Julius Caesar the city received a Roman colony, but was already declining with the diversion of traffic to Ephesus, the port for Rome, and in part to Amisos (Samsun) . In the middle ages it became subject to the Greek Empire of Trebizond, and passed into the hands of the Seljuk Turks, and in 1461 was incorporated in the Ottoman Empire . In November 1853 the Russian vice-admiral Nakhimov destroyed here a division of the Turkish fleet and reduced a good part of the town to ashes . (J . G . C .