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Bible Encyclopedias
Smyrna
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Smyr´na, a celebrated commercial city of Ionia, situated near the bottom of that gulf of the Aegean Sea which received its name from it, at the mouth of the small River Meles, and 320 stades north of Ephesus. It is in N. lat. 38° 26′, E. long. 27° 7′. Smyrna was a very ancient city, but having been destroyed by the Lydians it lay waste 400 years, to the time of Alexander the Great. It was rebuilt at the distance of twenty stades from the ancient city, and we soon find it flourishing greatly; and in the time of the first Roman emperors it was one of the finest cities of Asia. It was at this period that it became the seat of a Christian church, which is noticed in the Apocalypse, as one of the seven churches of Asia' (; ). It was destroyed by an earthquake in A.D. 177; but the emperor Marcus Aurelius caused it to be rebuilt with even more than its former splendor. It afterwards, however, suffered greatly from earthquakes and conflagrations, and must be regarded as having declined much from its ancient importance, although from the convenience of its situation it has still maintained its rank as a great city and the central emporium of the Levantine trade. The Turks call it Izmir. It is a better built town than Constantinople, and in proportion to its size there are few places in the Turkish dominions which have so large a population. It is computed at 130,000, of which the Franks compose a far greater proportion than in any other town of Turkey; and they are generally in good circumstances. Next to the Turks the Greeks form the most numerous class of inhabitants, and they have a bishop and two churches. The unusually large proportion of Christians in the town renders it peculiarly unclean in the eyes of strict Muslims, whence it has acquired among them the name of Giaour Izmir, or Infidel Smyrna. There are in it 20,000 Greeks, 8000 Armenians, 1000 Europeans, and 9000 Jews: the rest are Muslims.
The prosperity of Smyrna is now rather on the increase than the decline.
It stands at the foot of a range of mountains, which enclose it on three sides. The only ancient ruins are upon the mountains behind the town, and to the south. But nearly the whole of the relics of antiquity have been carried away. The stadium, of which the ground-plot only remains, is supposed to be the place where Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, and probably 'the angel of the church of Smyrna' (), to whom the Apocalyptic message was addressed, suffered martyrdom. The Christians of Smyrna hold the memory of this venerable person in high honor, and go annually in procession to his supposed tomb, which is at a short distance from the place of martyrdom.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Smyrna'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/s/smyrna.html.
