Founding
city in İzmir Province, Turkey
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
İzmir is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara, and the largest metropolitan area on the Aegean Sea. It is on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, and is the capital of İzmir Province. As of 2025 end of year estimate, İzmir Province has a total population of 4,504,184 while İzmir city is home to around 3.5 million inhabitants. It extends along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir and inland to the north across the Gediz River Delta; to the east along an alluvial plain created by several small streams; and to slightly more rugged terrain in the south. İzmir's climate is Mediterranean.
İzmir has more than 3,000 years of recorded urban history, and up to 8,500 years of history as a human settlement since the Neolithic period. In classical antiquity, the city was known as Smyrna – a name which remained in use in English and various other languages until around 1930, when government efforts led the Greek name to be phased out internationally in favor of its Turkish counterpart İzmir.
Lying on an advantageous location at the head of a gulf running down in a deep indentation, midway along the western Anatolian coast, İzmir has been one of the principal mercantile cities of the Mediterranean Sea for much of its history. Until 1923 population exchange, İzmir had a very large Greek-speaking (Rum Milleti) population. Present-day İzmir is an important port, and also home to large Balkan Turkish communities. It hosts the annual İzmir International Fair.
In ancient Anatolia, the name of a locality called Ti-smurna is mentioned in some of the Level II tablets from the Assyrian colony in Kültepe (first half of the 2nd millennium BC), with the prefix ti- identifying a proper name, although it is not established with certainty that this name refers to modern-day İzmir.
The modern name İzmir is the Turkish rendering of the Greek name Smyrna ( SMUR-nə; Greek: Σμύρνη, romanized: Smýrni/Smýrnē). In medieval times, Westerners used forms like Smire, Zmirra, Esmira, Ismira, which was rendered as İzmir into Turkish, originally written as ازمير with the Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The region of İzmir was situated on the southern fringes of the Yortan culture in Anatolia's prehistory, knowledge of which is almost entirely drawn from its cemeteries. In the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, it was in the western end of the extension of the still largely obscure Arzawa Kingdom, an offshoot and usually a dependency of the Hittites, who themselves spread their direct rule as far as the coast during their Great Kingdom. That the realm of the 13th century BC local Luwian ruler, who is depicted in the Kemalpaşa Karabel rock carving at a distance of only 50 km (31 mi) from İzmir was called the Kingdom of Myra may also leave grounds for association with the city's name.
The latest known rendering in Greek of the city's name is the Aeolic Greek Μύρρα Mýrrha, corresponding to the later Ionian and Attic Σμύρνα (Smýrna) or Σμύρνη (Smýrnē), both presumably descendants of a Proto-Greek form *Smúrnā. Some would see in the city's name a reference to the name of an Amazon called Smyrna said to have seduced Theseus, leading him to name the city in her honor. Others link the name to the Myrrha commifera shrub, a plant producing the aromatic resin called myrrh that is indigenous to the Middle East and northeastern Africa, which was the city's chief export in antiquity. The Romans took over this name as Smyrna, which is still the name used in English when referring to the city in pre-Turkish times. In Ottoman Turkish the town's name was ازمير Izmīr.
In English, the city was called Smyrna into the 20th century. Izmir (sometimes İzmir) was adopted in English and most foreign languages after Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet in 1928 and urged other countries to use the city's Turkish name. However, the historic name Smyrna is still used today in some languages, such as Italian (Smirne), and Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish (Esmirna).
The city is one of the oldest settlements of the Mediterranean basin. The 2004 discovery of Yeşilova Höyük and the neighboring Yassıtepe, in the small delta of Meles River, now the Bornova plain, reset the starting date of the city's past further back than previously thought. Findings from two seasons of excavations carried out in the Yeşilova Höyük by a team of archaeologists from İzmir's Ege University indicate three levels, two of which are prehistoric. Level 2 bears traces of early to mid-Chalcolithic, and Level 3 of Neolithic settlements. These two levels would have been inhabited by the indigenous peoples of the area, very roughly, between the 7th millennium BC and the 4th millennium BC. As the seashore receded with time, the site was later used as a cemetery. Several graves containing artifacts dating roughly from 3000 BC, and contemporary with the first city of Troy, were found.
The first settlement to have commanded the Gulf of İzmir as a whole was established on top of Mount Yamanlar, to the northeast of the inner gulf. In connection with the silt brought by the streams which join the sea along the coastline, the settlement to form later the core of "Old Smyrna" was founded on the slopes of the same mountain, on a hill (then a small peninsula connected to the mainland by a small isthmus) in the present-day neighborhood of Tepekule in Bayraklı. The Bayraklı settlement is thought to have stretched back in time as far as the 3rd millennium BC.
Archaeological findings of the late Bronze Age show a certain degree of Mycenaean influence in the settlement and the surrounding region, though further excavations of Bronze Age layers are needed to propose Old Smyrna of that time as a Mycenaean settlement. In the 13th century BC, however, invasions from the Balkans (the so-called Sea Peoples) destroyed Troy VII, and Central and Western Anatolia as a whole fell into what is generally called the period of "Anatolian" and "Greek" Dark Ages of the Bronze Age collapse.
At the dawn of İzmir's recorded history, Pausanias describes "evident tokens" such as "a port called after the name of Tantalus and a sepulcher of him by no means obscure", corresponding to the city's area and which have been tentatively located to date. The term "Old Smyrna" is used to describe the Archaic Period city located at Tepekule, Bayraklı, to make a distinction with the city of Smyrna rebuilt later on the slopes of Mount Pagos (present-day Kadifekale). The Greek settlement in Old Smyrna is attested by the presence of pottery dating from about 1000 BC onwards. The most ancient preserved ruins date back to 725–700 BC. According to Herodotus the city was founded by Aeolians and later seized by Ionians. The oldest house discovered in Bayraklı has been dated to 925 and 900 BC. The walls of this well-preserved house (2.45 by 4 metres or 8.0 by 13.1 feet), consisting of one small room typical of the Iron Age, were made of sun-dried bricks and the roof of the house was made of reeds. A house found in Old Smyrna with two floors and five rooms with a courtyard, built in the second half of the 7th century BC, is the oldest known house having so many rooms under its roof. Around that time, people started to build thick, protective ramparts made of sun-dried bricks around the city. Smyrna was built on the Hippodamian system, in which streets run north–south and east–west and intersect at right angles, in a pattern familiar in the Near East but the earliest example in a western city. The houses all faced south. The most ancient paved streets in the Ionian civilization have also been discovered in ancient Smyrna.
Homer, referred to as Melesigenes meaning "Child of the Meles Brook", is said to have been born in Smyrna in the 7th or 8th century BC. Combined with written evidence, it is generally admitted that Smyrna and Chios put forth the strongest arguments in claiming Homer and the main belief is that he was born in Ionia. The River Meles, still bearing the same name, is located within the city limits, although associations with the Homeric river is subject to controversy.
From the 7th century onwards, Smyrna achieved the identity of a city-state. About a thousand people lived inside the city walls, with others living in nearby villages, where fields, olive trees, vineyards, and the workshops of potters and stonecutters were located. People generally made their living from agriculture and fishing. The most important sanctuary of Old Smyrna was the Temple of Athena, which dates back to 640–580 BC and is partially restored today. Smyrna, by this point, was no longer a small town, but an urban center taking part in the Mediterranean trade. The city eventually became one of the twelve Ionian cities and was well on its way to becoming a foremost cultural and commercial center in the Mediterranean basin of that period, reaching its peak between 650 and 545 BC.
The city's port position near their capital drew the Lydians to Smyrna. The army of Lydia's Mermnad dynasty conquered the city sometime around 610–600 BC and is reported to have burned and destroyed parts of the city, although recent analyses on the remains in Bayraklı demonstrate that the temple had been in continuous use or was very quickly repaired under the Lydian rule.
Soon afterwards, an invasion from outside Anatolia by the Persian Empire effectively ended Old Smyrna's history as an urban center of note. The Persian emperor Cyrus the Great attacked the coastal cities of the Aegean after conquering the capital of Lydia. As a result, Old Smyrna was destroyed in 545 BC.
Alexander the Great re-founded the city at a new location beyond the Meles River around 340 BC. Alexander had defeated the Persians in several battles and finally the Emperor Darius III himself at Issus in 333 BC. Old Smyrna on a small hill by the sea was large enough only for a few thousand people. Therefore, the slopes of Mount Pagos (Kadifekale) were chosen for the foundation of the new city, for which Alexander is credited, and this act laid the ground for a resurgence in the city's population.
In 133 BC, Eumenes III, the last king of the Attalid Kingdom of Pergamon, was about to die without an heir. In his will, he bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman Republic, and this included Smyrna. The city thus came under Roman rule as a civil diocese within the Province of Asia and enjoyed a new period of prosperity. Towards the close of the 1st century, Smyrna was one of the seven churches of Asia mentioned in Revelation 2:9. John the Apostle urged his followers to remain Christians in Revelation 2:10: "Be faithful to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life".
Given the importance of the city, Roman emperors who came to Anatolia also visited Smyrna. In early 124, Emperor Hadrian visited Smyrna on his journeys across the Empire and possibly Caracalla came in 214–215. Smyrna was a fine city with stone-paved streets.
In 178, the city was devastated by an earthquake. Emperor Marcus Aurelius contributed greatly to its rebuilding. During this period, the agora was restored. Many of the works of architecture from the city's pre-Turkish period date from this period.
After the Roman Empire was divided into two distinct entities, Smyrna became a territory of the Eastern Roman Empire. It remained a notable religious center in the early Byzantine period but never returned to Roman levels of prosperity.
The Turkic peoples first captured Smyrna under the Seljuk commander Çaka Bey, called Tzachas by the Byzantines, in 1076, along with Klazomenai, Foça and a number of the Aegean Islands. Çaka Bey used İzmir as a base for his naval operations. In 1097, the Byzantine commander John Doukas recaptured the city and the neighboring region. The port city was then captured by the Knights of St John when Constantinople was conquered by the Crusaders during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, but the Nicaean Empire would reclaim possession of the city soon afterward, albeit by giving vast concessions to their Genoese allies, who kept one of the city's castles and the lordship of the towns of Old Phocaea and New Phocaea (now part of the İzmir Province) from 1275 to 1340.
Smyrna was captured again in the 14th century by Umur Bey, the son of the founder of the Beylik of Aydın who first took the upper fort of Mount Pagos (after that called Kadifekale), and then the lower port castle of Neon Kastron (called "St. Peter" by the Genoese and "Ok Kalesi" by the Turks). As Çaka Bey had done two centuries before, Umur Bey used the city as a base for naval raids. In 1344, a coalition of forces coordinated by Pope Clement VI took back the lower castle in a surprise attack in the Smyrniote crusades. Sixty years of uneasy cohabitation between the two powers, the Beyliks holding the upper castle and the Knights the lower, followed by Umur Bey's death in 1348.
Text from the Wikipedia article “İzmir”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.