Bible Encyclopedias
Asia Minor

The Catholic Encyclopedia

Search for…

Enter query below:

or

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

Prev Entry
Asia

Next Entry
Asiongaber

Resource Toolbox

Print Article

Additional Links

Dictionaries
Holman Bible Dictionary
• Asia Minor, Cities of
1910 New Catholic Dictionary
• Asia Minor
Encyclopedias
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Asia Minor
• Sivas, Asia Minor (Town)
• Sivas, Asia Minor (Vilayet)
•   (only first 3 shown)
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
• Archaeology of Asia Minor
• Asia Minor
• Asia Minor, the Archaeology of
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
• Asia Minor
The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Asia Minor
The Jewish Encyclopedia
• Asia Minor

The peninsular mass that the Asiatic continent projects westward of an imaginary line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta (Issus) on the Mediterranean to the vicinity of Trebizond (Trapezus) on the Black Sea. It is washed by three great seas, the Euxine (Black Sea) on the north, the Mediterranean on the south, and the Ægean on the west. It is located between 36°-42° north latitude and 26°-40° east longitude. The extreme length is about 720 miles and the extreme breadth about 420, though the average is 650 and 300 miles respectively. At its extreme western limit it almost touches the European mainland, from which it is separated for several miles by the narrow straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (Hellespont) and by the small Sea of Marmora (Propontis) through which connecting waters the Mediterranean and the Black Sea are brought into mutual contact.

Name

In remote antiquity it had no common designation, being known variously after the races or kingdoms that it included. The term "Asia" was soon popularized by the Romans for whom it meant only the populous and cultivated western sea-board, organized by them into a province, together with neighbouring territory (Mysia, Lydia, Caria, Phrygia) more or less civilized after the Græco-Roman ideas. The first writer to use the term Asia Minor is the Christian Orosius (Hist., I, 2, 10), about the year 400. The early Byzantine writers often refer to it as ‘e mikrà ’Asía, "Little Asia". In Byzantine administration it came soon to be known under the somewhat elastic name of ’Anatolé or "rising sun", i.e. "the East". It was, politically speaking, "the Anatolic theme", one of the twenty-nine provinces of the Byzantine empire from the seventh century to the eleventh century, when it became a Turkish land. Since then it has become officially known as Anatolia (Anadoli, Natolia, Nadolia), and as such constitutes an important part of Asiatic Turkey, is in fact the chief political and religious mainstay of the present Moslem constitution as far as it is based on Constantinople. Asia Minor is also known as "the Levant", a Western (Italian and French) equivalent for Anatolia. This term, however, applies chiefly to the commercial and industrial centres of the southern and western coasts, though in ecclesiastical language and history it often includes both Egypt and the Holy Land. It was only gradually, and in response to divers influences and agencies, that under the name of Asia Minor were included the remote semi-Oriental territories of Cappadocia and Pontus, Cilicia and Lesser Armenia. Outside of Roman law and administration, their only element of earnest unity was in the Christian religion, and it is not at all insignificant that the first expression of a sense of close and solid relationship should come from a Christian philosopher historian, and precisely at the moment when the new religion had finally borne down in town and country all forms of opposition and apathy, and filled with a new spirit the exhausted races and now lifeless culture of past ages.

Geography

It is an elevated plateau, ranging in its surfaces from two to five thousand feet above the sea level, from which rise great mountain chains that run east and west with a certain regularity, while minor groups of mountains and isolated peaks of savage grandeur are widely scattered over the immense table-land. In extent Asia Minor covers about 270,000 square miles and is about the size of France, while in its main physical features it has often been compared with Spain. The mountains of the northern coast, or Pontic range, rise abruptly from the sea for a long distance, are broken by no good harbours, and fall gradually away towards the Bosphorus. Those of the southern or Taurus range run in an irregular line not far from the Mediterranean and form a natural barrier between the central highlands and the southern sea, broken only by the coastal plains of Pamphylia and Cilicia. Inland, the Anti-Taurus range and isolated peaks lift their huge walls from seven to ten thousand feet and render difficult the intercommunication of the inhabitants. Some of these peaks, like Mt. Argæus in Cappadocia (13,100) are of volcanic origin, and smaller cones with well-preserved craters are numerous. There are but few passes, usually at a great height, the most notable of them being the famous Gates of Cilicia (Pylæ Ciliciæ) at the easternmost extremity, a narrow gorge (3,300) between two lofty mountains, the only entrance from the plains of Syria, and therefore at all times the road followed by the Eastern conquerors of Asia Minor. At the extreme west the mountains descend gradually to the sea which they pierce with numberless headlands and projections that give rise to the system of bays and inlets in which Asia Minor has at all times found its chief resources and its most attractive charm.

Asia Minor is a rich field for the geologist. The immense central mass of Mt. Argæus in Cappadocia is largely cretaceous limestone, and elsewhere, south and west, calcareous rocks abound. The rivers carry off enormous quantities of this material which, as it hardens to travertine, forces them to shift their beds, petrifies vegetation, and sterilizes the surroundings. Igneous rocks are frequent, and there is still abundance of the Proconnesian and Phrygian marbles that once tempted the sculptors and builders of Pergamus and Rhodes. The mineral wealth is very great, but much neglected. The rivers are numerous and fall mostly into the Black Sea or the Mediterranean. But they are all sinuous and narrow, and as a rule very shallow. Moreover, falling from great interior heights, they become regularly torrential floods that carry away vast masses of alluvial matter, which they deposit in the sea, thereby filling up good harbours, converting into lakes ports once open, and pushing their deltas so far seaward that they become a menace to navigation. The lack of navigable rivers reaching well into the interior has always been a source of political and economic weakness for Asia Minor, and is perhaps the chief reason why in antiquity it never took on the character of a great united state. In later times this was much more deplorable, owing to the ruin of the once excellent system of Roman roads, the suspicions and unprogressive attitude of the Turkish authorities, and the decay of all the land-improvements made by the original native races, the Greeks of the coast and coastal valleys, the Romans of the imperial period, and the Byzantine population. The interior plateau has an average altitude of 3,500 feet, and stretches north-east by southwest a distance of 250 miles in length by 160 in breadth. Much of it is a treeless and barren waste covered with salt lakes or brackish pools, and with a stunted growth of saline brush, wormwood, sage, and fern. Yet it supports many nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of Turcomans and Yuruks, who wander at will over these lonely wastes and undulating downs in search of pasturage and water for their vast flocks of sheep and goats, though in the hot summer months they seek the higher levels for purer air and the welfare of their flocks.

There are twenty-six lakes on this great plateau, some of which compare favourably with the great lakes of Switzerland, both for size and beauty. Hot medicinal springs are very numerous and form one of the distinctive features of the land. In general the climate is colder than that of the European peninsula within the same degrees of latitude, and is subject to greater extremes of temperature. One cause of the great extremes of cold and heat is the general lack of moisture; that of the clouds is intercepted by the tall mountains, north and south, while the discharge of all the rivers is only about one-third of the united volume of the rivers of France. The northern coast, between Constantinople and Sinope, is exposed to the cold blasts of unimpeded polar winds and to sultry summer heats; on the other hand, to the north-east the lofty peaks of the Caucasus intercept the cold winds from the steppes of Russia and permit the growth of magnificent forests and of wild fruit-trees in abundance. The western coast has a temperature somewhat lower than that of Greece, owing to the atmospheric currents developed by the countless headlands and inlets of the Ionian coast. The southern coast, sheltered from the north winds by the Taurus range, enjoys a warm and genial climate comparable to that of southern France, though its summer is very dry. On the central plateau the climate is affected by the elevation and aspect of the land, but chiefly by the scanty rainfall; in some places the blue sky remains for six or seven months unflecked by a single cloud. As a rule, the summer is exceedingly hot and the winter equally cold. Even on the coast malaria is endemic, owing to the stagnant pools, swamps, and marshy tracts formed by the shifting of river beds, inundations, and the formation of deltas. Moreover, the deforestation of the interior permits the contaminated air of the low-lying pestilential plains to be wafted freely over the central plateau. In respect to climate Asia Minor has greatly deteriorated since Roman antiquity, owing chiefly to the low-grade civilization of its Turkish population and its inefficiency of the civil administration.

The flora of Asia Minor is very varied, apart from the scanty vegetation of the inland plateau. The oak is found there in fifty-two varieties, half of which occur nowhere else. On the northern slopes of the central plateau grow the walnut, box, beech, ash, and other trees; the great forest of Ajakh-Dagh (Sea of Trees) is 120 miles long by 40 broad, and its trees exhibit generally a much larger growth than those of other lands under the same latitude. There are also great forests on all the northern slopes of the Black Sea ranges. On the southern slope of the Taurus, to an altitude of 6,000 feet, noble cedar groves grow and tower above the pines, firs, and junipers, while below them, gradually dropping to the sea, are broad belts of palm groves and aloes and other sub-tropical growths. In the eastern Pontic region and elsewhere the apple, pear, plum, and cherry grow wild; indeed, Asia Minor is said to be the native home of these fruit-trees, usually looked on as of Western origin. Oriental plane and cypress, quasi-sacred symbols of domestic comfort and of human sorrow, are found everywhere. In the sheltered southern valleys the vine, fig, orange, lemon, and citron grow amid the rich aromatic shrubbery, and lend to the landscape the aspect of Sicily or the more favoured districts of southern France.

Several animal species, once indigenous to Asia Minor, have disappeared with the destruction of the inland forests. It is thought that like our domestic varieties of fruit trees, the sheep and the goat are also a gift of Asia Minor. The Angora goat, famous for its silky hair of which the mohair or so-called "cashmere" shawls are woven, is a Turkish importation of the eleventh or twelfth century (Tchihatcheff) and seems to have been unknown to the ancients. It is limited to the district of that name in Galatia, and the flocks, 400,000 to 500,000 head, are very difficult to acclimatize elsewhere than on these high plateaux; at any other place the quality of the fleece quickly deteriorates. The horses for which Asia Minor, particularly Cappadocia, was once famous have either disappeared or given way to another race, graceful, active, and hardy, but inferior to the present stock of Syria or Arabia; there are no longer any large cattle of fine breed. The one-humped camel is the chief means of transportation, especially on the uplands and in the remote eastern districts. Here he associates peaceably with the horse, and can bear with ease and security a pack of 250 pounds over the passes and rocky terraces. The introduction of the camel probably dates from the twelfth century and symbolizes the thorough substitution of Oriental life for the civilization of the West. A small debased breed of asses abounds, quite inferior to the fine donkeys of Syria or Egypt. Mules are also numerous, as pack-animals and means of transportation; according to an Homeric tradition the peninsula is the original home of the mule. [For a fuller account of the geography of Asia Minor see the classic work of Vivien de Saint Martin, quoted below, and Reclus-Keane, The Earth and its Inhabitants (New York, 1895), Asia Minor (Anatolia), IV, 241-343.]

History

From time immemorial Asia Minor has been the highway of nations crossing from east to west, and occasionally reversing their course. At the dawn of history, dimly seen Chalybes are working the iron ores of the Caucasus on the Black Sea, and close by are Iberians, Colchians and other tribes. At the other extremity Thracian tribes are flowing backward to their original haunts in Phrygia and Bithynia, while Semitic peoples begin the historical life of Cappadocia. From 1500 to 1000 B.C. the Hittites overran the land as far as the Halys and even as far as Smyrna and Ephesus; sculptures and rock-sanctuaries (Boghaz-Keuï in Cappadocia) still attest their presence. Before them Turanian peoples may have been long settled on the land. Inscribed and sculptured rock-surfaces and tombs in Lydia still puzzle the archeologist, historian, and philologist. From all such data it is impracticable to reconstruct, except in the broadest outline, "the periods of formation through which Asia Minor must have passed before it stands out in the full light of history with its division into numerous more or less independent states, its mixed population, its complicated combination of religions and cultures as different as the races which originated them" (Ragozin). The fable of the Amazon state in the Thermodon valley seems to have originated in the female priesthood of the Hittite nature-goddess, Mâ, that the Greeks of the western coast eventually changed into Artemis (Diana of Ephesus). The modern discoveries of Schliemann and Dörpfeld at Hissarlik, on the site of ancient Troy, go far to confirm the reality of the main incidents in Homer and the traditional date (1200-1100 B.C.) of the siege and capture of the city of Priam. But it was not the Argives of Agamemnon who were destined to conquer Asia Minor for the ideas of Hellas. About the year 1100 B. C., numerous Greeks, fleeing before the Dorian invasion from the uplands of Epirus and Thessaly, began to move southward. Driven by these rude warlike invaders, they soon took to the open sea, and so eventually settled in the islands of the Archipelago and along the southern coast of Asia Minor wherever the river-mouths or the plains offered tempting sites for trade and enterprise. They found before them the kingdoms of Lydia and Caria with whose history Herodotus (I, 7-14) begins his account of the wars of the Greeks and Persians; for Asia, he says, with all the barbarian tribes that inhabit it, is regarded by the Persians as their own (ibid., I, 4). Thenceforth, from the ninth to the sixth century B. C., it is a long procession of Greeks (Ionians, Æolians, Dorians) who descend regularly on the shores of Asia Minor as traders, colonists, adventurers; above all, men of Ionian race. They build their city and sanctuary of Miletus near the shrine of the Lydian sun-god; they adopt other local deities, intermarry with the natives and establish soon an over-sea Greece whose development is the first great chapter in the history of the Western mind. (Sayce, The Ancient Empires of the East, London, 1884; Grote, History of Greece.) The earliest known coins (square-punched, electron) are of Lydian origin, belong to the seventh century B. C., and are perhaps a result of the mercantile intercourse of Greeks and natives. The oracle of Delphi now attracted the Lydian kings, "the first of the barbarians", says Herodotus, "to send presents to that Greek temple", and so along the lines of a common religion there sprang up an ever closer intercourse of both races.

About the middle of the sixth century B. C., a certain hegemony over most of the peninsula was established by Cræsus, King of Lydia, but this petted child of antique fortune was soon overthrown (548-546 B.C.) by the Persian Cyrus, after which for two centuries the entire land was an outlying province of Persia. In those days the exactions of the "Great King" fitted in with the ambition and patriotism of the Greeks of the mainland to bring about sympathetic wars in defence of the Asiatic Greeks and then in defence of the Hellenic fatherland (500-449 B.C.). These immortal efforts of the Greeks arrested forever the repeated overflow of Oriental arrogance and oppression, and made ready the way for the career of Alexander the Great who was destined to revenge on the Orient all the wrongs, supposed or real, of the Greeks of Asia Minor, and to open the career of European grandeur and progress. An uneasy and disturbed period followed, during which the Seleucid successors of Alexander pretended to dominate from Antioch the rich and easy prey of Asia Minor that had fallen to Alexander after the battles of the Granicus and of Issus (334-333 B.C.), fought respectively at either end of the peninsula. In this time arose the new kingdoms of Pontus, Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pergamus, and Cilicia partly Greek and partly native, also the interesting Celtic kingdom of Galatia founded (280 B.C.) by warlike adventurers from Gaul, and so organized by them that for the next six or seven centuries it bore the stamp of many peculiar Celtic institutions of their distant fatherland. Greek art, that had already flourished admirably in the Ionian islands and mainland centres of the south and south-west, now took on a fresh development forever connected with the little mountainous kingdom of Pergamus and its Greek rulers known as the Attalids, from Attalus, a favourite name of its kings. Then came the wars with republican Rome (190-63 B.C.), ending in the latter year with the defeat and death of the great Mithradates VI, "the Oriental defender of Greek liberties", whereby Pontus and Bithynia, i.e. the shores of the Black Sea, were for a long time freed from the peril of Oriental domination. In general the first three centuries of Roman imperial administration were a period of peace and progress for Asia Minor. From the fourth to the seventh century the last long conflict of Eastern Rome with Persia went on, the vicissitudes of which were of no little importance to the great province across which the imperial armies and the warriors of Persia moved to and fro. The annihilation of Persian ambition by Emperor Heraclius (A.D. 610-641) only shifted the source of danger; henceforth the Arab and his successor, the Turk, take up the continuous challenge of the Orient, and finally make it good. Predatory Arab invasions from 672 to 717 were repelled with vigour from Constantinople, after which for over three centuries the land remained subject to the hereditary Byzantine rule, though during this period almost endless conflict with the Arab dynasties made the Christian buffer-state of Armenia a scene of unutterable woe, and even Asia Minor was constantly menaced by the children of the Prophet. In the end the bravery and military skill of the Macedonian emperors (867-1057) availed not against the continuous pressure of fresh hordes from the far East, and the middle of the eleventh century saw two fatal events, almost contemporaneous and intimately connected, the final separation of the Greek and Latin churches (1040), and the conquest of Asia Minor by Malek Shah and his Seljuk Turks (1058-71). After the death of Malek (1092) his children disputed and divided the splendid inheritance left by him. But Asia Minor, henceforth Rûm (i.e. Rome, the Turkish name of all Byzantine territory), did not pass from their control; they set up their thrones at Nicæa, Nicomedia, and eventually (1097) at Iconium (Koniah). The crusaders of the twelfth century usually took the great highway over Asia Minor, either entirely into Syria, or partly, to embark at ports on the southern coast. Here and there they set up a temporary rule, but could not sustain it against the inexhaustible multitude of the Turkish hordes and the treachery of the Greek emperors. For more than a century the Seljuks ruled Asia Minor, until the appearance of the Mongol hordes (1235). The over-lordship of the latter lasted for some sixty years, until about 1294, when the rule of the Ottoman Turk was inaugurated by the victories of Othman I, and the successful reigns of his three sons, Urkhan, Murad I, and Bajazet I. A ray of hope shone for the Christian Byzantines during the thirteenth century when the Empire of Nicæa (1204-1330) held Bithynia, Lydia, a part of Phrygia and the islands of the Archipelago, i.e. the western region of Asia Minor, and again in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when the Empire of Trebizond (1204-1461) on the Black Sea nourished feebly the hopes of Greek Christians for a return of independence under the cross. But Nicæa fell and became an outpost of Ottoman conquest, and Trebizond scarcely survived the fall of Constantinople (1453). Both weak states had arisen as a protest against the Latin conquest of Constantinople (1204), and though they made the coast line Christian for three centuries, they were unable to loosen the grip of the Turkish hordes of "the Black Sheep" and others on the table-land of the interior. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Genoese and Venetians established a commercial supremacy along the coasts of Asia Minor and in many of the islands. They left permanent memorials in military architecture (since then the Turks call ruins indiscriminately "Djenovessi kalessi" or Genoese castles), and especially in the commercial and maritime law, in business relations and methods, and in the class known henceforth as "Levantines". But the mutual jealousies and rivalries of the Italian commercial republics, and their predominating secular aims, prevented any serious attempt to oust the Seljuk Turk from the high table-lands and eastern border. Ottoman rule and life spread rapidly, threatened only for a brief while by a new Mongol invasion under Tamerlane (1386-1402), and by the disastrous battle of Angora in the latter year (Creasy, History of the Ottoman Empire, new ed., London, 1882). In the end, however, Turkish fortune and courage prevailed, and permanent dominion over the peninsula was secured to the Osmanli by the capture of Constantinople in 1453, since which time save for a partial occupation by the Egyptian Mohammed Ali (1831-39) the Turk has held in peace this richest jewel of Mediterranean empire. As a rule, the inland Turk has cared only for fresh pasturage for his flocks. Ever moving from place to place with his countless sheep and goats, he has despised agriculture and the life of towns. Heedless of the future he has ruined all cultivation of the land, allowed its once perfect development to decay completely, and driven the Christian peasant of the Byzantine age to the mountains or the sea, when he has not induced him to adopt, with the normal life, the law of the Koran. It is the low-grade civilization of the steppes of Turkestan made permanent on the former site of supreme Hellenic refinement of life and of Christian sublimity of teaching and virtue. And it is universally admitted that only a recolonization from Europe can restore its original felicitous conditions. (Vivien de Saint Martin, "Déscription historique et géographique de l'Asie Mineure", Paris, 1852; Heyd, "Geschichte des Levantenhandels", Stuttgart, 1879, tr. into French by Reynaud, Paris, 1880-86).

The Roman Province.—Under the Roman rule, republican and early imperial, the numerous political entities that had sprung up in Asia Minor after the death of Alexander the Great disappeared rapidly and made way for a unity and efficiency of administration, a peace and prosperity, hitherto unknown. The little Greek kingdoms of Pergamus and Bithynia were left to Rome by the wills of their last kings; Cilicia, freed by Pompey from the pirates that infested its waters, was only too grateful for imperial protection; Pontus alone was won from Mithradates VI in a memorable war during which the Celts of Galatia sided with victorious Rome and reaped the reward of their good fortune in governmental favour. With their kings Deiotadrus and Amyntas, the line of Celtic rulers of Asia Minor closed; after the death of Amyntas (25 B.C.) Galatia became a Roman province. The last king of Cappadocia died in the reign of Tiberius, and the land was forthwith annexed. In this way a practical uniformity of government was introduced over the entire peninsula. Without doing violence to local customs or traditions, the imperial government assured to the provincials an administration at once responsible and equitable, of swift and thorough justice, of continuous peace, easy communication, protection to life and property and the fruits of honest industry. The wool-grower and the weaver of Ancyra, the gold-embroiderer of Attalia, and the sculptor of Diana statuettes in Ephesus were henceforth assured of permanent prosperity, and with them all the other callings and occupations of the most highly civilized part of the Mediterranean world. Manufactures and industries increased, and before the end of the second century Asia Minor had touched the scene of temporal felicity. Taxation, as everywhere in the empire, was close and minute, but not intolerable. Occasionally the taxes were remitted and in periods of public calamity (earthquakes, inundations) the public treasury came to aid the unhappy provincials. The revenues of the peninsula, deeply impaired by republican misgovernment, the Mithradatic wars, and the campaigns against the pirates, increased with rapidity; the fertile islands of the archipelago together with Crete and Cyprus, centuries ago hellenized in polity, tongue and civilized institutions, were bee-hives of industry. Rhodes, e.g., was the great workshop of Greek sculptors who continued, though in a decadent way, the glorious traditions of the Ionian and Pergamene ages. Every available piece of ground on the coast was intensely cultivated, as the pitiful wreckage of agricultural engineering yet shows, while in the interior the plains of Galatia were covered with goats and sheep, and those of Cappadocia with the finest breed of horses known to the ancients. That all the industrial virtues were highly cultivated is shown by a list of occupations drawn from Christian inscriptions of the fifth century (Cumont). They exhibit among other callings oil-dealers, scribes, greengrocers, potters, coppersmiths, skinners, mariners, money-changers, and goldsmiths. In the imperial period few new cities were added to the five hundred busy urban hives of the western coast, but Greek civilization went hand in hand with Roman law through the interior and was welcomed, e.g. in the mountains of uncouth Cappadocia and of rugged warlike Issauria where the Attalids and Seleucids had never been able to acclimatize it. For the better administration of justice the land was divided into a certain number of judicial districts (conventus juridici) and assizes were regularly held in the chief towns of the same.

A certain unity of religion was reached in the worship of Rome and Augustus, i.e. of the dead and later of the living emperors, to whom temples were built in the metropolitan cities (Augusteum, Cæsareum), and in the celebration of whose festivals the Asiatic provincial proclaimed his gratitude, exercised his new Roman patriotism, and felt himself drawn nearer, if not to his fellow-Asiatics, at least to the marvellous darling of fortune enthroned upon the distant Tiber. The man of Asia Minor had long been subject to Persia without revolt, and then to the children of the brilliant marshals of Alexander; submission was natural to him, and this time it brought in its train all that was needed to make life perfect in so favoured a land, i.e. peace and prosperity. As high-priest of the provincial department of the imperial religion of Rome and Augustus his influence over all religious matters was great. The office seems at times to have been closely identified with that of the president of the emperor's festival, and was the formal source of much of the persecution directed against the Christians of the province, especially during the annual festival, when the deputies of the provincial cities met at the metropolis and manifested their patriotism, among other ways, by denouncing the followers of Jesus for refusing to adore the divinity (numen, genius) of the emperor. An ideal picture of the office, affected, however, by Christian institutions and experience, is given by Julian the Apostate in his famous letter to the Galatarch (Ep., xlix; cf. Eusebius, Church History VIII.14.9). With the honour of president of the annual festival of the emperor went other distinctions, a special title (Asiarch, Bithyniarch, Galatarch), in addition to various marks of honour. Only the rich could pretend to merit it, for the office carried with it the right and the duty to defray the expense of such festivals. But there were many to claim it, for provincial pride was strong in Asia Minor, and the rivalry of the metropolitan cities was very keen. The new worship of Rome and Augustus was not unlike a religion established by law, though it never interfered with the other forms of Greek or Oriental worship, or the numerous miraculous asylums, or even such individual careers as those of Apollonius of Tyana or Alexander of Abonoteichos. To the cities was left their ancient liberty of internal administration, the repartition of imperial assessments, and the preservation of local order. Only the wealthy could vote for the magistrates, and the time was yet far off when their descendants would try in vain to rid themselves of an hereditary dignity that in the end carried with it the heaviest of financial burdens. Occasionally the imperial government looked into the municipal book-keeping and even controlled the municipal decrees; more frequently it exercised a certain surveillance over the nomination of the chief of police (eirenarch). The public safety was assured in the early imperial times by a small army of 5,000 auxiliary troops in Galatia, and by the Black Sea fleet of forty ships stationed at Trebizond. In the time of Vespasian two legions were quartered in Cappadocia and along the upper waters of the Euphrates. A few soldiers scattererd here and there through the provinces served the Roman magistrates as messengers, sheriffs, bailiffs, and the like. Asia Minor, in which both the senate and the emperor exercised, in theory at least, a co-ordinate jurisdiction until the end of the third century, was too contented and loyal to call for other troops than were necessary for protection from the foreign enemy, or to repress brigandage. The latter was, unhappily, never quite suppressed in a land well fitted for the flight and concealment of the lawless. Up to the time of Justinian certain parts of Isauria and Cilicia were the home of bold freebooters, despite the ever tightening military cordons, the increase of civilization, and the growing influence of Christian principles. There were often in municipal life lack of integrity, corruption, and waste, coupled with intrigues, rivalries, and factions, but this is no more than might be expected amid such unexampled prosperity, in a land where no large political life existed, and where climate and the narrow municipal horizon conspired to diminish energy and magnify local and temporary interests. "The calm sea" says Mommsen, "easily becomes a swamp, and the lack of the great pulsation of general interest is clearly discernible also in Asia Minor".

A complete description of the cities of Asia Minor in the best days of the empire, their splendour and magnificence, partly inherited and partly to the credit of Rome, sounds to modern ears like exaggeration. Their ruins, however, are convincingly eloquent. Marble and granite, exquisitely and solidly worked, were the building materials of the countless temples, baths, assembly-rooms, gymnasia, deep-pillared porticoes and colonnades that graced even the smallest of its cities, and were very often the gifts of private individuals, who exhibited thus in their little "fatherland" (as the Christian Bishop Abercius calls his native city Hierapolis), a power of self-sacrifice and affection for the public weal for which no larger stage was open. Countless art-works in marble and bronze often replicas of incomparable Greek originals carried away in the republican period, decorated the public buildings and the open squares; even these copies seem at last to have been confiscated by Constantine for his new city by the Golden Horn. Aqueducts and reservoirs, embankments and levees, saved and controlled the useful waters that are now the ruin of the land. Terraces built with skill and art multiplied the productive power of the fertile soil. From the city gates there radiated numerous long lines of sculptured tombs, whose broken inscriptions now throw light on the rich and varied life of the antique world. In the fine arts the correct sense of the Greeks was the guide, but in commercial and industrial life the Roman seems to have been dominant. Latin mercantile words are often transliterated into Greek, and there are numerous other evidences of close commercial intercourse with Italy. Famous Greek teachers and physicians frequented the Italian cities (Tac., Ann., XII, 61, 67) somewhat as the Byzantine humanists frequented those of Northern Italy. The great municipal families and those well established on the vast estates of the central table-land seem to have clung to the ancestral soil with more fidelity than was shown elsewhere in the Orient. Education of the purely literary type was universal, and to some extent provided for by the cities and even by the imperial government. We read of principals and inspectors of schools, of teachers of writing and music, of masters of boxing, archery, and spear-throwing, of special privileges for teachers of rhetoric and grammar; in a word the ideal education of the Greek mainland as crystallized in the classic writers and in the still vigorous school of Athens, was in a large measure reproduced in Asia Minor. Homer and the Greek classics were the school books. The chief result of it all was a race of remarkable public orators known as sophists or rhetoricians, wandering academic lecturers on the glories of the past or on commonplaces of philosophy, poetry, and history. Often bilingual, they were admired by the provincials, whose favour they held by flattery and sympathy, and by careful attention to the mise en scene—voice, gesture, dress, attitude. Some of them, like Dio Chrysostom, exhibit genuine native patriotism, but in all of them there echoes a hollow declamatory note, the best evidence of the hopeless character of Greek paganism, of which they were now the chief theologians and philosophers. Their literary influence was deep and lasting, and though they were inimical to the Christian religion, this influence may yet be traced in not a few of the Greek Christian writers of their own and later times. Apart from this class the pagan society of Asia Minor seems to have contributed but a few great names to the annals of science and literature. Two of them come from Bithynia, the above-mentioned rhetorician Dio Chrysostom, moralist and philosopher, and Arrian of Nicomedia, historian of Alexander the Great and popularizer of Epictetus. Pergamus boasts the name of the learned physician Galen, like his earlier fellow-Asiatic, Xenophon of Cos, a man of scientific attainments in his own department, and also of general philosophic culture, but a stern enemy of the Christian religion. Nevertheless, just as Roman Asia Minor boasts of no first-class cities like Alexandria or Antioch, but only of a great many second and third class centres of population, so in literature the great names are wanting, while general literary culture and refinement, both of speech and taste, are widespread, and, in the near western section, universal. The cosmopolitan character of imperial administration, the diffusion of education, the facility of travel, and the free use of the two great civilized tongues, made the man of Asia Minor, in a certain sense, a citizen of the world and fitted him peculiarly to play an important part from the fourth century on in the spread of Christianity and the adaptation of its ideas to Græco-Roman society. Indeed, without some knowledge of the civilization that moulded their youth, the Basils and the Gregorys [of Nyssa and Nazianzus — Ed.] lose half their interest for us. (Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, New York, 1887, II, 345-97; Ramsay, The Historical Geography of the Roman Empire, London, 1890.)

Spread of Christianity in Asia Minor

As everywhere in the Roman empire, so in Asia Minor it was the numerous Jewries in which the Christian religion found its first adherents. In the last three pre-Christian centuries the Seleucid kings of Syria had transplanted from Palestine to Asia Minor thousands of Jewish families whose descendants were soon scattered along all the coasts and throughout a great part of the interior. On Pentecost day at Jerusalem (Acts 2:5, 9, 10) there were present among the disciples "Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven", also representatives of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. On his several missionary journeys, St. Paul visited many parts of Asia Minor and established there the first Christian churches; in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Acts there is a vivid and circumstantial description of all the chief phases of his Apostolic activity. His conversion of the Galatians, in particular, has a perennial interest for Western Christians, since at least a large portion of that province was composed of descendants of those Celts of Gaul who had settled there in the third century B.C. and in St. Paul's time, and for centuries afterwards, still retained their Celtic speech and many Celtic institutions (Lightfoot, Commentary on Galatians, London, 1896, 1-15; Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170, New York, 1893, 97-111; Idem, St. Paul, the Traveller and Roman Citizen, New York, 1898, 130-151). Asia Minor was the principal scene of the labours of St. John; he wrote his Apocalypse on the desolate island of Patmos, and his Gospel probably at Ephesus. He established firmly in the latter city a famous centre of Christian life, and an ancient tradition, as old as the Council of Ephesus (431), says that the Blessed Virgin spent her last years in the vicinity of Ephesus, and passed thence to her reward. From Ephesus St. John travelled much throughout Asia Minor and has always been credited with the first establishment of many of its episcopal sees; the story of the re-conversion of the young robber, touchingly told in the "Quis Dives" of Clement of Alexandria exhibits the popular concept of St. John in the mind of the average Christian of Asia Minor about the year 200. In the "Acts of Thecla" it is now recognized that we have a fragment of a life of St. Paul in Asia Minor, written about the middle of the second century, though without ecclesiastical approval, which throws no little light on several phases of the great Apostle's career but slightly touched on in the Acts and the Pauline Epistles. St. Peter, too, preached the Christian Faith in Asia Minor. His First Epistle, written from Rome (v, 13), is addressed "to the strangers dispersed through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia", i.e. in northern, western, and central Asia Minor. That the new religion spread rapidly is proved by the famous passage in the letter of Pliny (Ep. x, 97), Roman governor of Bithynia, addressed to the Emperor Trajan about 112, in which he says that the whole province is overrun with the contagion of Christianity, the temples are abandoned and the meat of the victims unsaleable, persons of every age, rank, and condition are joining the new religion. At this period also the Church History of Eusebius shows us the admirable figure of St. Ignatius of Antioch, of whose seven letters five are addressed to Christian churches of Asia Minor (Philadelphia, Ephesus, Smyrna, Tralles, Magnesia) and reveal an advanced stage of Christian growth. It was at this time that St. Polycarp of Smyrna and St. Irenæus of Lyons were born in Asia Minor, both prominent Christian figures of the second century, the latter being the foremost ecclesiastical writer of his period.

It is in Asia Minor that synods, or frequent assemblies of Christian bishops, first meet us as a working ecclesiastical institution; even in remote and uncouth Cappadocia they were not infrequent in the third century. It was therefore fitting that when the first general council of the Catholic Church was held (525) it should be called together at Nicæa (Isnik) in western Asia Minor, amid a population long stanchly Christian. Of the (traditional) 318 bishops who attended that council about one hundred were from Asia Minor; the semi-barbarous Isauria sent fourteen city bishops and four rural bishops (chorepiscopi), while remote Cilicia sent nine city bishops and one rural bishop. Indeed, the episcopal system of Asia Minor seems to have been almost completed by this time. (Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Asia Minor, in Histor. Geogr. of Asia Minor, London, 1890, 104-426.) In any case, there were in that territory in the fifth century some 450 Catholic episcopal sees. The institution of rural bishops (chorepiscopi) appears first in Asia Minor (Council of Ancyra, 314) and seems to be the origin of the later parochial system. It is in Asia Minor that arose, or were fought out, nearly all the great ecclesiastical conflicts of the early Christian period. The Church History of Eusebius, first published before 325, exhibits the Christian bishops of Asia Minor during the second and third centuries in conflict with semi-Oriental philosophic heresies like Gnosticism, that developed under the leadership of keen critical rationalists like Marcion of Sinope on the Black Sea, while the germs of the great christological heresies, e.g. Sabellianism, were first nourished on the same soil. Here, too, met the famous councils that overthrew these heresies (Nicæa in 325, Ephesus in 431, and Chalcedon in 451). Internal reform of the Christian Church was first undertaken from Asia Minor, where Montanus, a native of Phrygia, began the rigorist movement known as Montanism, and denounced the growing laxity of Christian life and the moral apathy of the religious chiefs of the society. He claimed for himself and certain female disciples the survival of the early Christian prophetic gifts, or personal religious inspiration, which seems to have been more frequent and to have survived longer in Asia Minor than elsewhere (Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, 287, 402). The immediate cause of the last great persecution, that of Diocletian (284-305), seems to have been the rapid growth of Christianity in all Asia Minor, particularly in the imperial capital, then located at Nicomedia (Ismid). Maximus Daza, the sympathetic colleague in Egypt of the persecuting Galerius (305-311), admitted (Eusebius, Church History IX.9) that nearly all the Orient had become Christian, and in this he was merely the echo of the dying words of the contemporary Christian scholar and martyr, Lucian of Antioch, who asserted (Rufinus, Hist. Eccl., IX, vi) that in his time the greater part of the Roman world had become Christian, even entire cities. Such a Christian city of Phrygia, Eusebius tells us (Church History VIII.11.1), was given to the flames by the pagans in the persecution of Diocletian; the inhabitants perished to a man with the name of Christ upon their lips. Apropos of this, Harnack recalls (op. cit., p. 466) the fact that eighty years earlier Thyatira in the same province was an entirely Christian city, though intensely Montanist in religious temper. The city of Apaneia in the same province seems to have become quite Christian before 250. The work of Cumont (Inscriptions Chrétiennes de l'Asie Mineure, Rome, 1895) exhibits undeniable epigraphic evidence that Phrygia was widely Christianized long before the conversion of Constantine (312). The words of Renan (Origines du Christianisme, III, 363, 364) are therefore eminently true: "Thenceforward (from A.D. 112) for three hundred years Phrygia was essentially a Christian land. There began the public profession of Christianity; there are found, from the third century, on monuments exposed to the public gaze, the terms Chrestianos or Christianos; there the formulas of epitaphs convey veiled references to Christian dogmas; there, from the days of Septimus Severus, great cities adopt biblical symbols for their coins, or rather adapt their old traditions to biblical narrations. A great number of the Christians of Ephesus and Rome came from Phrygia. The names most frequently met with on the monuments of Phrygia are the antique Christian names (Trophimus, Tychicus, Tryphenus, Papias, etc.), the names special to the apostolic times, and of which the martylrologies are full". The Acts of the Christian Bishop, Pionius of Smyrna, a martyr of the time of Decius (249-251), portray that city as largely Christian, and (with exception of the Jews) entirely devoted to its rhetorician-bishop. In the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa relates, apropos of Gregory of Cæsarea (c. 213-275), that during the thirty-five or forty years of his episcopal activity he had Christianized nearly all Pontus. It is an unfair exaggeration (Harnack, 475-476) to attribute his success to toleration of heathen customs, amusements, etc. So good a Christian theologian as Gregory of Nyssa could relate this condescension of the Wonder-worker without perceiving any real sacrifice of Christian principles in faith or morals; some concessions there must always be when it is question of conversions in bulk. His "Epistola Canonica" (P.G., X, 1019-48), one of the earliest and most venerable documents of diocesan legislation, presupposes many well-established Christian communities, whose captive ecclesiastics and citizens (c. 260) spread the first germs of Christianity among the piratical Goths of the Black Sea. Asia Minor was certainly the first part of the Roman world to accept as a whole the principles and the spirit of the Christian religion, and it was not unnatural that the warmth of its conviction should eventually fire the neighbouring Armenia and make it, early in the fourth century, the first of the ancient states formally to accept the religion of Christ (Eusebius, Church History IX.8.2). The causes of the rapid conversion of Asia Minor are not, in general, dissimilar to those which elsewhere favoured the spread of Christianity. It may be accepted, with Harnack, that the ground was already prepared for the new religion, inasmuch as Jewish monotheism was acclimatized, had won many disciples, and discredited polytheism, while on the other hand Christianity was confronted by no State religion deeply and immemorially entrenched in the hearts of a united and homogeneous people (the imperial worship being a late innovation and offering only a factitious unity). But much of this is true of other parts of the Roman empire, and it remains certain that the local opposition to the Christian religion was nowhere stronger than in the cities of Asia Minor where Antoninus Pius (138-161) had to check the illegal violence of the multitude (Eusebius, Church History IV.33); even if we do not accept as genuine his rescript "Ad commune Asiæ" (ibid., IV, xix), it is of ancient origin and exhibits an enduring Christian sense of intolerable injustice, already foreshadowed in 1 Peter 4:3-5, 13-19. The literary opposition to Christianity was particularly strong, as already said, among the rhetoricians and grammarians, i.e. among the public teachers and the philosophers, not to speak of the pagan imperial priesthood, nowhere so well organized and favoured as in every province of Asia Minor. Lactantius tells us that the last known anti-Christian pamphleteers were both from Bithynia in Asia Minor (Inst. V, 2), Hierocles, the governor of the province, and another whose name he withholds. The principal theologians of Asia Minor (Irenæus, Gregory the Wonder-worker, Methodius of Olympus, Basil of Neocæsarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) do not differ notably in their concepts of the Christian religion from those of Syria or Egypt or the West. It seems therefore quite incorrect to describe with Harnack the original conversion of Asia Minor as a gradual and rather peaceful transformation of the native heathenism and no real extirpation (keine Ausrottung, sondern eine Umformung, op. cit., 463). If this were so, it must always remain a great mystery how the Christianity of Asia Minor could present, on the eve of its political triumph, so remarkable a front of unity in sound doctrine and elevated morals when its alleged original pagan sources were so numerous and conflicting, so gross and impure.

Of the ecclesiastical administration of Asia Minor, after the triumph of the Christian religion, but little need be said. Like the rest of the Roman empire the land was divided into two administrative territories, known as "dioceses" (Gr. dioikéseis, districts to be supervised). They were Pontus and Asia, respectively an eastern and a western territory. In the first were twelve civil provinces, to which corresponded the ecclesiastical provinces of Cappadocia, Lesser Armenia, Pontus, Polemonium, Helenopontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Honorias, and Paphlagonia. The diocese of Asia included the provinces of Asia (proper), Hellespont, Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Lycaonia, and the Cyclades or islands of the Ægean. By the end of the fourth century these eighteen provinces were subject to the patriarch of Constantinople, while on the south-eastern coast, Isauria and Cilicia, with the island of Cyprus, were subject to the patriarchate of Antioch, Cyprus in a restless and discontented way. All were more easily reached from the mouth of the Orontes; yet other reasons, historical, national, and temperamental, co-operated with the ambition of the clergy of Constantinople to draw this line of demarcation between the two great ecclesiastical spheres of influence in the central Orient, whereby Armenia was drawn within the radius of Syro-Antiochene influence, to the great detriment, later on, of Catholic unity. (Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l'église, Paris, 1906, I, 433 sqq.) The ambition of the clergy of Constantinople, their jealousy of old Rome, and imperial favour, had won this pre-eminence for the royal city. It had never evangelized Asia Minor; that was done from Antioch, and in the third century the two ecclesiastical exarchates of Asia Minor, Cæsarea in Cappadocia and Ephesus in Asia proper, were subject to the patriarch of the great Syrian city. In the latter half of the third century, long before the founding of Constantinople (330), the bishops of Asia Minor were wont to attend the synods of Antioch and in turn that patriarch occasionally presided over the synods held in Asia Minor. It was from Antioch that the churches of Asia Minor got their liturgy; from them it radiated to Constantinople itself and eventually throughout the greater part of the Greek Church (Duchesne, Origins of Christian Worship, London, 1903, 71). Once established, however, the jurisdiction of Constantinople over most of the churches of Asia Minor remained unchallenged, especially after the Arab conquest of Syria (636) when the ancient influence of Antioch on eastern Asia Minor disappeared. Nevertheless, the ecclsiastical organization of Asia Minor was too solidly rooted in popular life to disappear except very slowly. If we had complete lists of the subscriptions to the Greek councils of the eighth and ninth centuries, we should know more about the survival of the episcopal system and its various modifications under Byzantine rule. As it is, not a little light is thrown on the medieval hierarchy of Asia Minor by a certain number of catalogues or lists of the patriarchates with their metropolitan and autocephalous archbishops, also of the suffragans of the metropolitans, which are extant under the Latin name of "Notitiæ Episcopatuum" (ed. Parthey, Berlin, 1866). These catalogues were originally known as Taktiká, some of them dating back to the seventh or eighth century (Pakaià Taktiká), while others underwent frequent correction, more or less scientific and thorough, even as late as the thirteenth century (Krumbacher, Gesch. der byzant. Litteratur, 2d ed., Munich, 1897, 415, 416; Ramsay, Hist. Geogr. of Asia Minor, 89, 427). Together with the geographies of Ptolemy and Strabo (the latter a native of Asia Minor and praised by Ramsay for his accurate and lucid work), the famous "Tabula Peutingeriana" (a fourth-century map of the imperial road-system radiating from Constantinople), and the "Synecdemos" of Hierocles, a sixth-century account of the sixty-four Byzantine provinces and their more than 900 cities, these episcopal lists enable us to follow the continuity of Christian public life in Asia Minor throughout the troubled centuries of political and economic decay that finally ended in the blank horror of Islamitic shepherdism. Krumbacher notes in these lists the strict adherence to ancient system and the recurrence of original diocesan names, long after they had ceased to correspond with the reality of things, somewhat as the Roman Church yet continues to use the titles of extinct sees located in countries now subject to non-Christian political control. The same author treats (op. cit., passim) in detail of the Byzantine writers of Asia Minor during the medieval period.

Present civil conditions

In the absence of a reliable census the population of Asia Minor is variously given. Larousse (1898) puts it at 9,235,000, of whom 7,179,000 are Moslems and 1,548,000 Christians. This does not include the small Greek Christian principality of Samos (45,000) nor the island of Cyprus (210,000) nor that of Crete (360,000), all three being frequently counted as parts of Asia Minor. Neher (Kirchenlex., VII, 775) puts the total population at 10,750,000. It is mostly composed of Ottoman Turks who still reproduce the primitive type, especially in the interior, where nomadic tribes, like the Turcomans and Yuruks, exhibit the characteristics of the original Ottoman conquerors. In general the term "Turk" is applied to all sedentary Mohammedans in Asia Minor, whatever be their origin; it is also applied to the officials, descendants of Georgian or Circassian captive women, to the numerous immigrants from Bosnia and Bulgaria (Slavs in blood, but Moslems in faith), and to the Albanian soldiers settled in Asia Minor. Similarly, the term applies to Moslem descendants of Arab and negro slaves. Some of the nomadic tribes (Yuruks) are Mohammedan only in name, though of ancient Turkish descent. They are generally known as Turcomans and live with their flocks in their own tent-encampments, primitive clans with no cohesion; they spend their lives in transit from the plains to the mountains, and vice versa, in search of pasturage, water, and pure air. With them may be classed the Chingani or gypsies, wandering tinkers, and horse dealers. There are also other small remnants of the original Turkish immigration that still affect the ways of their fierce ancestry, the Afshars and the Zeibeks, from whose ranks the government draws its most fanatical soldiers. The Mohammedan Kurds of Asia Minor, both sedentary and nomad, differ so much in features and social habits from the Turks that they are not classed with the latter; they resemble much their brethren of the Armenian highlands, are evidently of Medic origin, and speak dialects of Persian with some Syriac and Armenian words. Around the seaboard, in the numerous islands of the archipelago and in the large inland cities of Cappadocia and Pontus, the Greeks are numerous; on the southern coast and in the islands they are in the vast majority and, except politically, are the dominant race as of old, being the commercial and industrial element. Not a few of the sedentary Turks are of Greek origin, descendants of voluntary or compulsory apostates; on the other hand, not a few Greeks isolated in the interior yet speak Turkish, a stigma of hated subjection that Greek patriotism aims at effacing. There are many Armenians in Asia Minor, sometimes gathered in distinct settlements, and again scattered through the Turkish villages; the taxes are usually farmed out to them, for which reason they are bitterly hated by the Turkish peasant who complains of their rapacity. They retain usually their native tongue. On the Persian frontier of Asia Minor, in some secluded valleys, are found yet a few Nestorians, descendants of those Syrian Christians who fled in remote times to these fastnesses either to avoid the oppression of their Moslem masters in Mesopotamia or before the encroachments of nomad tribes.

Government

Asia Minor proper is divided into fifteen "vilayets" or administrative territories, two separate sanjaks (districts), and one principality (Samos). At the head of each is a "vali" or provincial governor, in whose council a seat is given to the spiritual head of each of the non-Moslem communities. Each vilayet is divided into sanjaks or districts, and these are again subdivided into communal groups and communes, presided over respectively by officers known as mutessarifs, kaimakams, mudirs, and mukhtars. The code is the common law of Islam, known as Nizam, and there is an appeal to the High Court at Constantinople from the civil, criminal, and commercial courts in each province. It is to be noted that in the conquered Roman provinces the Arabs first, and then the Turks, retained much of the Roman (Byzantine) Law, especially as regarded their Christian subjects, and in so far as it did not conflict with the Koran (Amos, History of the Civil Law of Rome, London, 1883). The chief cities of Asia Minor are Smyrna (300,000), Trebizond, Iskanderûn (Issus, Scanderoon), Adana, Angora (Ancyra), Sivas (Sebasteia), Sinope, Samsûn (Amisus), Komiah (Iconium), Kaisariyeh (Cæsarea in Cappadocia). Adalia is the largest seaport on the southern coast; Broussa (Prusa), magnificently situated at the foot of Mt. Olympus in Bithynia, is the seat of silk industries, and holds the tombs of the early Ottoman sultans. Kaisariyeh at the foot of Mt. Argeus, with its memories of St. Basil the Great, is one of the world's oldest trade-centres, recognized as such from the dawn of history under its Semitic name Mazaca; it is even now the most important commercial town in eastern Asia Minor. Sivas in the valley of the Kizil-Irmak (Halys) is a wheat centre. Trebizond on the Black Sea justifies even yet the foresight of its early Greek founders. Erzerûm in Lesser Armenia is an important mountain fortress.

Communication and education

There are no roads in the sense of our modern civilization; pack animals, including horses, have always been used by the Turks, both sedentary and nomad, for transportation, both of persons and goods. Recently carts have come somewhat into use. There are relays of horses at intervals on the main lines of communication and in the larger towns. A trans-Syrian railroad from Constantinople to Bagdad on the Persian Gulf has long been projected. It has reached Koniah and on its way passes Ismid (Nicomedia) and Eskeshir (Dorylæum). In all there are about 220 miles of railway in the vast peninsula. One of the principal Moslem schools is at Amasia in Galatia. The Greek communities in Asia Minor cherish no public duty more than that of education, and make many sacrifices in order to provide for their children, in primary and secondary schools, a high grade of the education they admire. It is in reality a genuine Hellenism based on the study of the ancient classic writers, the history of their ancestors both peninsular and continental, antipathy to Islam, a strong sense of mutual relationship, and a civil hope that they will again be called to the direction of public life throughout the peninsula. There is, however, a manifold opposition to this modern Greek ideal. If it were possible to bring about the re-union of the long separated Churches the ideal could be notably furthered.

Resources

Asia Minor is yet largely an agricultural and pastoral land. On the high plateaux immense flocks of sheep and goats are raised, whose wool is used for domestic purposes, for export, or for the manufacture of Turkish rugs and carpets. The silk manufactures of Broussa, in the sixteenth century a staple of Asia Minor, have greatly decreased. Viticulture, once the pride of Asia Minor, has almost perished. The use of wine is forbidden by the Koran; hence the grape is cultivated by the Turks only for the making of confections, and by the Greeks chiefly for personal use. The wines of Chios and Lesbos and Smyrna, famous in antiquity, are no longer made; their place is taken by dried raisins that form a principal article of export. Boxwood, salt-fish, barley, millet, wheat, oil, opium, rags, wool, and cotton, hides, galls, wax, tobacco, soap, liquorice paste, figure on the table of exports, but not at all in the proportions becoming the natural advantages of the land. It has already been stated that a few mines and marble quarries are worked, but in a feeble and intermittent way. The popular genius is foreign to all progress, the government is based on corruption and oppression, and the national religion is eminently suspicious and repressive. The inland Turk has the reputation of honesty, kindliness, hospitality, but he has no bent for the active and energetic Western life, loves dearly his "kief" or somnolent vegetative repose, and is hopelessly in the grasp of two rapacious enemies, the usurer and the tax-gatherer. The Greek and the Armenian are the dominant commercial factors, and are in several ways equipped to wrest from the Turk everything but political control of the country.

The islands

Leaving aside the great islands of Crete and Cyprus, no longer under immediate Turkish control, it may be noted that those of the Archipelago form a special administrative district. Their number is legion; some of them are very fertile, others are mere peaks and ridges of rock. They export fruit, some wine, raisins, olive oil, and mastic, and their sponge fisheries are very valuable. Among the islands famous in antiquity are Tenedos near the mouth of the Dardanelles, Lemnos between the Dardanelles and Mt. Athos, Lesbos, the native place of Alcæus and Sappho, between the Dardanelles and Smyrna. The island of Icaria recalls the legend of Icarus, and Patmos the sojourn of St. John and the composition of his Apocalypse. Cos awakens memories of the great healer Hippocrates, and the island of Rhodes has a history second to none of the small insular states of the world. Its strong fleets made it respected in Greek antiquity, and its maritime code was taken over by the Roman Law. Its bronze Colossus, astride the mouth of its harbour, was one of the seven wonders of the world. For nearly four hundred years it was the home of the Knights of St. John and its famous siege and capture by Suleiman I (1522) filled all Western Christendom with equal sorrow and admiration. Since 1832 the island of Samos is a quasi-independent principality, and forms a special sanjak by itself. In the full flood of ancient Ionian luxury, art, and science, Samos was foremost of the Hellenic colonies along the coast of Asia Minor. There Pythagoras was born, and Antony and Cleopatra once resided at Samos. In ancient times it was a favourite resort for those wearied of the agitated life of Rome.

Vicariate Apostolic of Asia Minor

In 1818 the Vicariate Apostolic of Asia Minor, founded in the seventeenth century, was confided by Pius VI to the Archbishop of Smyrna as Administrator Apostolic. Since then the Archbishop of Smyrna exercises jurisdiction over the Latin Catholics of the greater part of Asia Minor, a few places excepted. Smyrna itself is the chief centre of Catholicism in the peninsula. It was founded as a Latin see by Clement VI in 1346, became extinct in the seventeenth century, was restored and elevated (1818) to the archiepiscopal dignity by Pius VII. For about a century and a half, from 1618 to the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits exercised with success the pastoral ministry at Smyrna, for many centuries the chief resort of the once numerous Latin Christians (chiefly Italian and French) known as "Levantines". They were the traders, merchants, travellers, agents of all kinds in business at the various centres of commerce in the islands and along the coast of Asia Minor, which are known as "Scale" to the Italians and "Echelles" to the French. Here the famous "lingua franca", or jargon of a few hundred uninflected Provençal, Spanish, and French words, with some Greek and Turkish, was the principal medium of commercial communication. When the Jesuits first entered Smyrna they found there some 30,000 well disposed Christians and 7,000 to 8,000 Armenians. Lazarists and Capuchins were also active at Smyrna during this period. The Latin Catholics of Smyrna and vicinity are variously estimated from 15,400 to 18,000. There are in the city proper 8 churches and 8 chapels. The parishes are 3 in number and the clergy 61 (19 secular priests and 42 religious, Franciscans, Capuchins, Dominicans, Lazarists, Mechitarists). There are 15 schools (8 for boys, 7 for girls), with 3 boarding-schools or academies for girls, conducted respectively by the "Damesde Sion", the Sisters of Charity, and the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. The orphan asylums number 4, with about 290 orphans. There is also a hospital. Since 1839 the Sisters of Charity (87) and since 1840 the Christian Brothers have been active at Smyrna in works of charity and education; the latter had in their college (1901) 155 pupils. The Lazarists conduct a college known as the College of Propaganda, founded in 1841; it has about 100 pupils. The present Archbishop of Smyrna and Administrator Apostolic of Asia Minor is Monsignor Rafaele Francesco Marengo, a Dominican, from 1871 to 1904 parish priest of Galata (Constantinople), and since 1904 Ordinary of Smyrna. He has one suffragan, the Bishop of Candia, or Crete. Outside of Smyrna, there are very few Latin Catholics in Asia Minor. The "Missiones Catholicæ" for 1901 gives the names of 16 scattered missions. Since 1886 the Assumptionist Fathers of Constantinople and the Oblate Sisters of the same congregation have devoted themselves to missionary work along the line of the railway from Broussa to Koniah (Iconium). They have opened 8 schools for boys and 7 for girls, in which they care for about 1,200 children. Their services are mostly in demand for the Latin Catholics engaged business or in the construction of the railway. Moslem fanaticism and Greek jealousy are sources of opposition. In 1900 there were engaged in charitable and educational work on these temporary missions 100 Assumptionist Sisters. The few Catholic (Uniat) Greeks on the mainland have no special organization of their own but are subject to the Latin Archbishop of Smyrna as Administrator of the Vicariate Apostolic of Asia Minor. Formerly all Catholics in the Archipelago (Latin and Greek) were under the jurisdiction of Smyrna, but since 14 December, 1907, there has been a prefecture Apostolic for the island of Rhodes, including eleven other islands. In this prefecture the Catholics number about 360 in a population of 36,000, and are attended by 2 Franciscan missionaries. They have 6 churches and chapels, a college, with 60 pupils directed by the Christian Brothers, and an academy for girls (130) directed by Franciscan Tertiaries. The Catholic (Uniat) Armenians scattered through the peninsula have their own ecclesiastical organization dependent on Constantinople, where the Porte now recognizes the Catholic Armenian Patriarch of Cilicia, since 1867 officially resident in the Turkish capital. He is the successor of the Armenian archbishop-primate created at Constantinople in 1830 by the Holy See for the benefit of the Armenians, but ignored by the Porte until 1867, when Pius IX secured the recognition of the settlement just mentioned. There are episcopal sees for the Catholic Armenians of Asia Minor at Adana (3,000), Angora (7,000), Broussa (3,000), Kaisariyeh or Cæsarea (1,500), Melitene (4,000), Erzerûm (10,000), Trebizond (5,000), and Sivas (3,000). In all these places the Catholic Armenians are far outnumbered by their schismatic countrymen. The Mechitarist Fathers (Armenian monks) have stations at Broussa, Angora, and Smyrna, also at Aidin, the ancient Tralles in the valley of the Mæander, where there are about 3,000 Armenian Catholics in a population of 40,000 or 50,000. The Armenian Catholic patriarch at Constantinople has a jurisdiction over his people (16,000 in Constantinople), both civil and ecclesiastical, analogous to that of the Greek Orthodox patriarch and his own schismatic fellow-patriarch. The Catholic Armenian clergy of Constantinople numbered (1901) 85; of these 26 were Mechitarists (10 from Vienna, 16 from Venice), and 9 were Antonian monks. There were 5 schools for boys and 3 for girls, with 300 pupils, 2 colleges and 1 lyceum, 1 hospital, 1 asylum for the insane and 1 asylum for invalids. Their churches and chapels number 16, and the parishes 13. The present patriarch is Monsignor Sabbaghian (Peter Paul XII). Since 1869 the law of celibacy, that until then had not been observed by all the Armenian Catholic clergy, has been made obligatory. The "Missiones Catholicæ" for 1901 indicates the following Latin missionaries in Armenian centres of Asia Minor: Jesuits, Capuchins, Lazarists, and Trappists (in all about thirty) at Adana, Erzerûm, Sivas, Trebizond, and Kaiseriyeh.

Greek Orthodox Church and non-Catholic Armenians

The great majority of the Christians of Asia Minor belong to the so-called Greek-Orthodox or schismatic patriarchate of Constantinople. In ecclesiastical and ecclesiastico-civil matters they are subject to the patriarch according to the arrangement made on the fall of Constantinople (1453), variously modified since then, and known as the "Capitulations" (Baron d'Avril, La protection des Chrétiens dans le Levant, Paris, 1901). The power of the patriarch, both ecclesiastical and civil, regulated by and divided with the National Assembly and the Great Synod at Constantinople, is extensive. Of the twelve metropolitans who now compose his council three are from western Asia Minor (Cyzicus, Nicomedia, and Chalcedon) and are habitually resident in the capital, while the other nine are elective at fixed periods. These three, together with the metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace, hold the patriarchal seal that is divided into four parts. The Greek-Orthodox population, scattered through the islands of the Archipelago and along the whole coast-line of Asia Minor, is said to number about one million; in recent times it tends to increase and is now commercially dominant in the greater part of Asia Minor. There are several Greek (Basilian) monasteries in the peninsula, six on the coast of the Black Sea, near Samsun and near Trebizond. There is also one (Lembos) near Smyrna. In the islands the number is larger; there are 3 on Chios, 87 on Samos, 2 on Patmos, and several in the Princes Islands near Constantinople. Cyprus has 4 and Crete 50 (Silbernagl, 58, 59; Vering, "Lehrbuch des kathol. orient. und prot. Kirchenrechts", Freiburg, 1893, 3d ed., 623-630; Petit, "Règlements généraux des églises orthodoxes en Turquie", in Revue de l'orient chrétien, Paris, 1898; Neale, "The Holy Eastern Church", I, London, 1850; Pitzipios, "L'Église orientale", Rome, 1855). Non-uniat, or schismatic, Armenians have settled in large numbers in various parts of Asia Minor, sometimes in the cities and sometimes in their own villages, in some places among the Turkish populations. Since 1307 they have had a bishop resident at Constantinople, and since 1461 there has been in that capital a patriarch of the nation on the same political level as the Greek patriarch, recognized as the civil head of his people and their agent in all matters affecting their religion and in many civil matters. Until 1830 this schismatic patriarch was recognized by the Porte as the civil representative also of the Catholic Armenians. As stated above, it was only in 1867 that the latter obtained recognition of their own patriarch in the person of Monsignor, afterwards Cardinal, Anton Hassoun. There are about 40,000 Armenians resident in Constantinople, and in Asia Minor, as already stated, their number is quite large; of the 120 lay members who make up the National Assembly representative of the Armenians at Constantinople, one-third must be chosen from Asia Minor. They have the following metropolitan sees in the peninsula (most of them provided with suffragans); Kaisariyeh, Nicomedia, Broussa, Smyrna, Amasia, Sivas, Erzerûm, and Trebizond. The bishops of the schismatic Armenians usually reside in monasteries of their own nationality, which are thus centres both of national and ecclesiastical life. (Silbernagl-Schnitzer, Verfassung und gegenwärtiger Bestand sämtlicher Kirchen des Orients, 2d ed., Munich, 1904, 229-231.) See PERSECUTIONS, EARLY CHRISTIAN . For details of Moslem education, see TURKEY. For efforts of Protestant missionaries, and their influence on education, see CONSTANTINOPLE; TURKEY. For details of Greek-Orthodox ecclesiastical life and organization, see CONSTANTINOPLE, PATRIARCHATE OF; and GREEK CHURCH.