Antioch was a city located in northern Syria at the site of modern Antakya, Turkey. Founded in 300 BC, Antioch became one of the most important cities of the ancient eastern Mediterranean. The capital of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, it remained significant under the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and during the Crusades was the centre of the Principality of Antioch.
Seleucus I Nicator, a successor of Alexander the Great, founded Antioch alongside three other cities to secure the surrounding region, which he had recently conquered. He chose a site on the Orontes River in the southwest Amuq plain, a fertile lowland which provided valuable resources for Antioch; the city was strategically located and came to dominate trade routes. It served as the Seleucid capital from 240 BC until 63 BC, when the Romans took control; it was thereafter the capital of Roman Syria. Antioch may have been inhabited by over 500,000 inhabitants at its peak, making the city the third largest in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria.
The city was the main center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. As one of the cities of the pentarchy, Antioch was called "the cradle of Christianity" as a result of its longevity and the pivotal role that it played in the emergence of early Christianity. The Christian New Testament asserts that the name "Christian" first emerged in Antioch. From the early 4th century, Antioch was the seat of the comes Orientis, head of the Diocese of the East. The city declined to relative insignificance during the Middle Ages due to warfare, repeated earthquakes, and a change in trade routes. The remains of the ancient city of Antioch are mostly buried beneath alluvial deposits from the Orontes River.
The city still lends its name to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, one of the most important modern churches of the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean. The city also attracts Muslim pilgrims who visit the Habib-i Nejjar Mosque, which they believe to contain the tomb of Habib the Carpenter, mentioned in surah Yā-Sīn of the Quran.
The ruins of the ancient city of Antioch today lie underneath Antakya, located in Hatay Province in south Turkey. Like the modern city, Antioch was located in the southwest Amuq plain, a lowland plain watered by three rivers. The Kara Su and Afrin rivers flowed into the Lake of Antioch at the plain's centre, but the Orontes River, flowing northwards from Syria, skirted the plain's southern edge and, joined by the lake's outflow, cut westward through the mountains to reach the Mediterranean Sea. The plain was, and remains, extremely fertile: the cereal crops wheat and barley were farmed alongside olives, olive oil, and wine, while Antioch was renowned for the quality of its cucumbers, cabbages, and medicinal plants such as Oenanthe. Other resources, such as the valuable cypress wood and building stone, were also abundant, while the city's residents drew upon the seafood of the lake, the river, and the sea, in addition to their domesticated livestock. In antiquity, the wild animals of the region included Asiatic lions, Caspian tigers, ostriches, and fallow deer, alongside the scorpions and gnats still present today.
Antioch was built at an elevation of 90 metres (300 ft) above sea level between the slopes of the 560 metres (1,840 ft)-tall Mount Silpius to the southeast, and the left bank of the Orontes, which here flowed from northeast to southwest. Although an island in the river was also urbanised, Antioch was generally hemmed in by its local topography. The area's hydrography presented significant challenges, especially during the rainy season, when the Orontes and the streams descending from Mount Silpius regularly flooded the city and surrounding farmland. Attempts to control the water through a complex network of drains, conduits, aqueducts, and dams failed over centuries; the deposition of alluvial material became so great that the island in the river disappeared and the city itself was buried metres-deep. Antioch, straddling the northern Dead Sea Rift fault line near to the Marash Triple Junction, has also suffered more than sixty notable earthquakes, of which around ten had a magnitude greater than 7.
Antioch was connected to the Mediterranean Sea by the Orontes, which was likely navigable up to the city in antiquity; the city's rulers devoted great energy to keeping the river free for trade and transport. The walls, rebuilt at least eight times between the city's foundation and the Crusader era, originally enclosed an area of around 90 hectares (0.35 sq mi), which may have grown to 500 hectares (1.9 sq mi) by 540 AD. Roads radiated in all directions from the walls, including towards the renowned suburb of Daphne, located 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of the city at modern Harbiye. Regarded as inextricably linked to Antioch until it was abandoned in the late Middle Ages, Daphne contained numerous springs which provided a regular source of water for Antioch, especially during the dry summer months when no rain fell. One quirk of the city's local climate was an intense wind which continues to be funnelled up the Orontes valley between May and October.
The Amuq plain, a key link in connecting Anatolia, Syria, the Mediterranean Sea, and the deserts of the Middle East, had been inhabited for thousands of years before the foundation of Antioch. Tell Kurdu, the earliest site yet excavated, was inhabited from the Halaf-Ubaid periods until well into the Chalcolithic. Later Bronze Age sites include the regional powerhouses of Tell Atchana and Tell Tayinat, which continued to be influential into the Iron Age, and smaller settlements such as Çatal Höyük (unrelated to the Anatolian site of the same name) and Tell Judaidah. Large palaces, fortifications, and other structures have been excavated at multiple sites, while ceramic evidence shows commercial links with the city-states of Archaic Greece, such as Corinth, Rhodes, and Athens, which grew as the Iron Age neared its close in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. The region of Syria, including the Amuq plain, was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in the mid-sixth century, and remained under the control of Cyrus's Achaemenid Empire until Alexander the Great invaded in 333 BC. By this time, most of the Metal Age tells had been abandoned and replaced with a intricate network of small farms and fields.
The fourth and sixth century writers Libanius and John Malalas connected the site of Antioch with Greek mythology and legends in order to glorify the city's origins. According to Libanius, three settlements preceded Antioch: Iopolis, founded by Argives under Triptolemus who were searching for their lost princess Io; Kasiotis, a joint settlement of Cretans and Cypriots; and Herakleia, established by the descendants of the hero Heracles. He also recorded that the Persian king Cambyses II gave his blessing to the Greek settlements in the area. Malalas provided different aetiological linkages, writing that the hero Perseus had visited Iopolis and that Herakleia was founded where the nymph Daphne was turned into a tree to escape the god Apollo. Libanius also held that Alexander, renowned for his city foundations, had intended to establish one at Antioch but, prevented by a lack of time, instead founded a shrine to Zeus and a small citadel named Emathia. There is no proof for any of these claims or connections.
The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC precipitated the division of the territories he had conquered amongst his leading generals, termed Diadochi, such as Seleucus, who by 301 BC had established his power over the eastern provinces, up to Babylonia. In that year, his victory over Antigonus I Monophthalmus at the Battle of Ipsus gave him control of northern Syria, but many inhabitants of the region were still loyal to Antigonus's son Demetrius. Meanwhile, the Diadochi Pleistarchus and Lysimachus controlled territories to the north and west respectively, and Ptolemy I of Egypt had taken possession of southern Syria up to the Eleutheros river. To secure his hold on his newly-conquered territory, Seleucus ordered the foundation of four settlements between 301 and 299 BC: Seleucia Pieria and Laodicea on the coast, paired with Antioch and Apamea inland. The settlement was so intense that the area which connected the coast and the Euphrates came to be known as the Seleucis; Seleucia was originally designated as the capital of this Tetrapolis.