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, τὸ ‘ΗρακλέωΣ Κάστρον des (Theophanes, i. 482, de Boor; ἡ τοῦ ‛ΗρακλέοΣ ΚωμόπολιΣ of Michael Attaliata, p. 136 (ed. Bonn); ‘Ηράκλεια or Χώρα τοῦ ‘ΗρακλέοΣ in the epic of Digenis Acritas; the Hiraḳla of the Arabs ed. Houtsma, Recueil etc. iii. 11; iv. 5, 249, 260, Turk. and occasionally archaised , , the Reclei, Erachia of the Crusaders (Tomaschek, Zur histor. Topographie von Kleinasien, p. 84, 88, 92), Araclie in Bertrandon de la Broquière, p. 104 et seq., ed. Ch. Schefer, was a fortress on the Byzantine frontier on the road from Cilicia to Iconium and was repeatedly tak…

(the ancient Iconium), a town in Asia Minor on the railway from Bag̲h̲dād, the capital of the province of the same name, in a barren plain. It is 5,000 feet above sea level; of its 44,000 inhabitants, 39,3000 are Muslims, 1,500 Greeks, 3,000 Armenians, 50 Protestants, 150 Catholics. The streets are broad and unpaved. The houses are built of terre pisée, except public and special buildings, 44 mosques, 147 masd̲j̲ids, 5 libraries, 42 medreses, the Greek church, the Armenian church, 68 schools, 7…

is the name of a dynasty in Egypt, Syria and Yemen, one of the most powerful of the mediaeval east, so called after Aiyūb b. S̲h̲ādī, the father of Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn). The latter was its actual founder, but after his death the realm was divided into various isolated principalities, which were only temporarily reunited into a vast dominion. The separate branches of the race flourished in Egypt till 650 (1252), in Damascus and Ḥalab (Aleppo) till 658 (1260), in Mesopotamia till 643 (1245), in…

, a town in the interior of Anatolia, with 47,286 inhabitants according to the last census (1930), capital of a wilāyet, the ancient Iconium (’Ικόνιον) in Lycaonia, Τοκόνιον of the Byzantines (Chalkok., ed. Bonn, p. 243), Yconium, Conium, Stancona (< ’Σ τὰν Εἰκόνα), Cunin of the Crusaders, Conia of the Italian portulans and of Marco Polo (cf. Tomaschek, Zur hist. Topographie v. Kleinasien im Miltelalter, Vienna 1891); so, or Konia in European authors of more recent times. Konya(Arab. Ḳūnīya) is, according to the Arab geographers of the middle ages, situated in the fifth Ptolemaic zone ( iḳ…

(the classical antiochia), a town in Northern Syria, situated in the very productive and beautiful plain of the lower Orontes valley, not very far from the rivers mouth, (about 14 miles in a straight line) under 36° 10′ North. Lat. and 36° 6′ East. Long. (Greenw.) Anṭākiya was founded in B. C. 300 by Seleucus I in place of two unimportant older Greek colonies; as the residence of art-loving rulers and as an important emporium of trade, it soon became the capital of Syria, and was later regarded as the most important and most populous city o…