Who ruled Antakya?

Antakya, the ancient Antioch on the Orontes, sits in a fertile stretch of the Orontes valley, some 20 kilometres inland from the Mediterranean, in Hatay province in southern Turkey. Founded around 300 BC as a royal city of the Seleucid kings, it became one of the largest cities of the Roman Empire and one of the great centres of early Christianity. Repeated wars, earthquakes and shifting trade routes later reduced it to a modest town, and in February 2023 much of the modern city was destroyed by earthquakes.

The surrounding plain has been settled since the sixth millennium BC. After Alexander the Great defeated the Persians at Issus in 333 BC, the region fell to the Macedonians, and after Alexander's death his general Seleucus I Nicator founded Antioch as one of four new cities meant to secure northern Syria. Laid out on a grid between the river and Mount Silpius, the city was expanded by later kings into four walled quarters, and from about 240 BC it was the chief capital of the Seleucid Empire.

As the dynasty weakened, the Antiochenes invited the Armenian king Tigranes the Great in 83 BC, and in 64 BC the city passed with Syria to the Roman Republic. As capital of the province of Syria it was favoured by emperors who saw it as a natural capital for the East, and it gained a forum, colonnaded streets, aqueducts and a vast circus. Its population at its peak is often put at over half a million, though ancient figures vary. Earthquakes struck repeatedly, notably in 115, and in the 250s the Persians under Shapur I sacked the city and deported many of its people.

Antioch had a large Jewish community and became a leading centre of the early church: according to the Acts of the Apostles, the followers of Jesus were first called Christians there. It was the seat of one of the five great patriarchates, and five churches still use the title of patriarch of Antioch.

Earthquakes in 526 and 528 caused enormous damage, and in 540 the Sasanian king Khosrow I captured the city and deported its population to Persia; Justinian repaired the walls, but Antioch never regained its former size. The Sasanian Empire took it again in 613. In 637 the Rashidun Caliphate conquered it after the Battle of the Iron Bridge, and as a frontier town between the caliphates and Byzantium it declined over the next three centuries. Byzantine forces retook it in 969, and it became the headquarters of the empire's eastern frontier until the Seljuk Turks captured it in 1084.

During the First Crusade the crusaders besieged Antioch from October 1097 until June 1098, massacring many of its Christian and Muslim inhabitants when they took it. It then became the capital of the Principality of Antioch under Bohemond I and his successors for nearly two centuries. In 1268 the Mamluk sultan Baybars captured it after another siege and razed it, killing or enslaving almost all its people. With trade routes moving north after the Mongol conquests, Antioch never recovered its importance.

The Ottoman Empire annexed the town with the rest of Syria in 1516, governing it as part of the province of Aleppo. Earthquakes struck again in 1822 and 1872, and when Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt made it his headquarters in the 1830s it had only about 5,000 inhabitants. After the First World War it belonged to the Sanjak of Alexandretta within the French Mandate for Syria. Under Turkish pressure the sanjak became the Hatay State in 1938, and the Turkish army entered Antakya that July; Turkey annexed the territory in 1939, prompting many Christians and Alawites to leave for Syria.

Antakya grew into the capital of Hatay province, a mixed city where Turkish and Arabic are both spoken and Sunni, Alevi, Alawite and Christian communities live side by side; its Jewish community, present for more than two thousand years, had dwindled to a handful by the 2010s. The district had around 400,000 people in 2022.

On 6 February 2023 two powerful earthquakes centred on Kahramanmaraş devastated the city. Whole neighbourhoods collapsed, and historic buildings including the Church of St Paul, the synagogue and the old Hatay State assembly were destroyed. The death toll in Hatay province was estimated at more than 20,000, and reconstruction was still in its early stages months afterwards.