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The Rise of Modern Smyrna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Extract

The sharp contrast which is apparent to-day between the fortunes of Smyrna and of her sister ‘Churches of Asia’ has long been brought into connection with the prophecies contained in the Revelation of S. John. While the apocalyptic messages to the other Churches are minatory or equivocal, Smyrna is favoured by the promise of a ‘crown of life’ on condition of ‘faithfulness to the end,’ a condition vaguely felt to have been fulfilled by the steadfastness under persecution of S. Polycarp and his companions in the second century of our era. Modern Smyrna is exuberantly prosperous: the other episcopal cities are either, like Ephesus, ruined and desolate, or, like Pergamus, reduced from international to purely local importance.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1919

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References

page 139 note 1 In Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. ‘Smyrna,’ p. 554.

page 139 note 2 Letters to the Seven Churches, p. 265.

page 140 note 1 In 1657, when, as we shall see, the predominance of Smyrna was. fully established, Scala Nuova is thought by a Smyrna merchant to be ‘in every way as capable to be the mart of Asia the less as Smyrna itself’ (B.M. Add. MS. 5489 f. 14).

page 140 note 2 Ducas, 106.

page 140 note 3 ‘Situata in un lunghissimo golfo e, molto lontana, dalla navigazione’ (Coriolano Cippico in Sathas, , Mon. Hist. Hell. vii. 274Google Scholar)

page 140 note 4 The first modem traveller known to have visited Smyrna is F. Arnaud (1602), for whose itinerary see Florilegium de Voguë, p. 471.

page 141 note 1 For the importance of Passagio as a commercial depot in 1472, see Cippico (loc. cit. 266). Earlier in the fifteenth century, Palatia (Miletus) seems to have held a somewhat similar position with regard to Chian trade (see Manuel Pilota Cretensis, ed. Reiffenberg, , Monuments pour servir à l'histoire de Namur, iv. 376Google Scholar).

page 141 note 2 For this incident in the history of Chios, see B.S.A. xiv. p. 138.

page 142 note 1 British Museum, MS. Cotton, Otho, C. ix.; for the early trade relations of the English with Chios, see Arber's, English Garner, i. 2023, 33–37, 50–56.Google Scholar

page 142 note 2 Dallam, in the Hakluyt Society's Early Voyages ana Travels in the Levant, ed. Bent, 44.

page 142 note 8 It appears from G. Sandys' Voyage that there was no English consul at Smyrna in 1610. Consul Markham was there in the following year, but removed to Chios, leaving a consul at Smyrna, in 1614; by 1622 he had returned as consul to Smyrna (M. Epstein, Levant Company, 214). The French consulate was removed from Chios to Smyrna in 1610 (Pillaut, , Consulats du Levant, i. (Nancy, 1902).Google Scholar

page 142 note 2 B.M. Add. MS. 5849, f. 14; cf. the somewhat similar contemporary estimate of Tavernier, , Six Voyages, i. vii.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that after the great earthquake of 1688, which threatened to be the end of Smyrna, Chios, among other candidates (Phocaea, Scala Nuova, and Magnesia) was proposed as an alternative port for the Turkey trade, and some forty French merchants actually left Smyrna for Chios (Rycaut, , Hist. of the Turks, iii. 301Google Scholar; Egmont, , Travels, i. 122Google Scholar).

page 143 note 1 Geographical conditions were doubtless not the only factor; presumably the dues collected on goods landed at Scala Nuova plus the octroi tolls on entering Smyrna figured out together at less than the customs and other dues levied on goods brought to Smyrna direct by sea. There was probably some ‘arrangement’ with the authorities at Scala Nuova. The scheme was put down only by official intervention as prejudicial to the trade of Smyrna, an appanage of the Empress-Mother (see Monconys, , Voyage, i. 431Google Scholar; Tavernier, , Six Voyages, i. vii.Google Scholar; Wheler, Journey into Greece, 267; Tournefort, letter xxii.; cf. B.M. Add. MS. 5489, f. 14). In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, under the government of its local beys, Scala Nuova revived, and became, if not a rival to Smyrna, at least a considerable port of shipment for the wheat and other products of the Maeander valley.

page 143 note 2 Tour in the Levant, iii. 360; cf. also Sonnini, , Voyage en Grèce, ii. 328.Google ScholarSestini, , Lettres à Ses Amis en Toscane (Paris, 1719), ii. 450Google Scholar, iii. 33. Turner had personal experience of the difficulty of leaving Smyrna bay (pp. cit. iii. 291 ff. ).

page 143 note 3 Tavernier, , Six Voyages, i. vii.Google Scholar

page 143 note 4 B.M. Add. MS. 5849, f. 14.

page 143 note 5 Tavernier, Six Voyages, 32.

page 144 note 1 French, Venetian, English, and Dutch factories are mentioned by Deshayes in 1621 ( Voyage de Levant, 343), and the four consuls a year later by Pacifique ( Voyage en Perse, 10).

page 144 note 2 Zinkeisen, , Gesch. des Osman. Reiches, iii. 666Google Scholar, iv. 54; Knolles, Turkish History, 887.

page 144 note 3 Sir Thomas Roe's Negotiations, 114. In the same year Gedoyn (Journal, ed. Boppe, 153) found the town ‘à demi ruinée et de peu d'importance,’ and it had evidently experienced a serious set-back, since Lithgow in 1611 gives a much more favourable account (Rare Adventures, 155).

page 144 note 1 It is mentioned already in 1611 by Lithgow, and in 1621 by Deshayes.

page 144 note 2 This restriction was relaxed by the terms of the Treaty of Kainardjik (1774), and in the following century the trade of Trebizond began to revive (de Laborde, Asie Mineure, 6; Paton, , Egyptian Revolution, ii. 418Google Scholar), affecting for the worse, as the latter author says, that of Smyrna.

page 145 note 1 See on this Cannemann, De Mercatura Levantica Batavorum, 130; and for arbitrary acts of the Turks at Aleppo, Rycaut's History, 130, 172 fr. (1662, 1665). D'Arvieux, (Mémoires, i. 44)Google Scholar makes the rapacity of the pashas the chief cause of the removal of Aleppo trade to Smyrna. Deshayes (Voyage, 343) singles out the extortionate customs. Yet the dues charged at Smyrna during the seventeenth century were by no means low (cf. Masson, Commerce Français dans le Levant, 419).

page 145 note 2 See Knolles, Hist. of the Turks, 922; Russell, P., Hist. of Aleppo, ii. 3Google Scholar; and P. Masson, Commerce Français dans le Levant, 371 ff. The English had a consul here at least as early as 1596 (in this year George Dorington, see Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, ii. 59), and as late as 1635 Aleppo seems to have been considered a better consular post than Smyrna (cf. Epstein, Levant Company, 216). Aleppo began again to prosper, at Smyrna's expense, in the fifties of the last century (Paton, , Egyptian Revolution, ii. 418Google Scholar).

page 145 note 2 Masson, loc. cit.; Pococke, (Deser., of the East, ii. 1, 151Google Scholar) attributes the decay of the Aleppo silk trade to the Persian wars, ‘when the silk formerly brought by the Armenians from Asia Minor to Aleppo began to go to Smyrna.’

page 145 note 4 For the development of the Persian silk trade under Shah-Abbas (1589–1628) and the Armenians' part in it, see Tavernier, , Six Voyages, iv. vi.Google Scholar Armenians are mentioned in connection with the Smyrna silk market by Deshayes (1621) and Pococke.

page 146 note 1 Sauli, Imprese dei Genovesi in Grecia, 250.

page 146 note 2 Tafel, and Thomas, , Urkunden der Repub. Venedig, iii. 71Google Scholar; Miklosich, and Müller, , Acta et Diplomata, iii. xx. 79.Google Scholar

page 146 note 3 For the history of this period, see Delaville le Roulx, L'Occupation chrétienne à Smyrne 1344–1402 in Florilegium de Voguë, 177–186 (also in Mélanges sur l'Ordre de S.Jean, art. xviii.); J. Gay, Le Pape Clément IV. et les Affaires d'Orient, 1342–52.

page 146 note 4 Cf. Pliny, , N.H. v. 31Google Scholar; Livy, xxxviii. 39.

page 147 note 1 The fate of Miletus threatened to overtake Smyrna in the last century and the silting of the harbour seems to have been regarded as inevitable in the sixties (Lennep, Van, Asia Minor, i. 16Google Scholar). The danger was averted by making a new artificial channel for the Hermus, the works being finished in 1590 (Kiepert, , Globus, li. (1887) 150–2Google Scholar; Cuinet, , Asie Mineure, iii. 446Google Scholar).