Antioch

Antioch: the city of the Syrian frontier. Its people made peace with Abu Ubayda on poll-tax and evacuation; then they broke it, and Iyad ibn Ghanm and Habib ibn Maslama conquered it again, according to al-Baladhuri. ¹ See the conquest of Antioch. It belongs to the district of Qinnasrin and the frontier cities.

al-Baladhuri reports that Umar ordered a garrison of Muslims to be arranged there, that Uthman granted estates in it, and that Mu'awiya moved to it in the year 42 AH people from Ba'labakk, Homs and other places. ¹

al-Mas'udi mentions in it a shrine known as al-Dimas, on the right of the congregational mosque, which the moon enters as it rises in some summer months. It is said that it was built by the Persians and that it was a fire-temple. ²

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), in the entry ANTAKIYA by M. Streck and H. A. R. Gibb, describes Antioch on the Orontes, fourteen miles from the Mediterranean, founded about 300 BC by Seleucus I and taken by Pompey in 64 BC. It became the largest and most important Roman city in Asia. Its decay began with the rise of the Sasanians, who attacked it repeatedly: Shapur I occupied and plundered it in 258 and 260, and Khusraw I destroyed it in 540 and deported its inhabitants. The Arabs occupied it in 16/637-8. It was the headquarters of the frontier organisation of al-'Awasim. ³

Antioch was annexed by Ahmad ibn Tulun in 265/878 and held by his successors until 285/898, was taken by Sayf al-Dawla in 333/944, and was recaptured by the Byzantine general Michael Bourtzes in 358/969 and governed by Byzantine dukes until 477/1084, when Sulayman ibn Qutlumush took it by treachery. Sulayman was killed by Tutush in 1086. Malikshah gave it in fief to Yaghi-Siyan, from whom the Crusaders took it on 2 June 1098. It was held by the Norman princes descended from Bohemond until the Mamluk sultan Baybars took it on 19 May 1268. After the First World War French troops occupied it in February 1919; it was the capital of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, and it was ceded to Turkey on 23 June 1939. ⁴

Its Byzantine and medieval remains are small, and the only Muslim monument of importance is the sanctuary below Mount Silpius, identified in Muslim tradition with the believer of the Quran (xxxvi. 12 ff.) and called after Habib al-Najjar, the Carpenter. In 1931 the kada had about 99,347 people. ⁴