Online Encyclopedia

Make a correction

Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.

Back to article: ANTAKIA

Your email: Article name: Article content:

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 Though superseded by Aleppo (q.v.) as capital of N. Syria, it is still the centre of a large district, growing in wealth and productiveness with the draining of its central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. H.)