Antioch

Antioch, on the Orontes River in northern Syria, was founded around 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator and served as the Seleucid capital. One of the earliest strongholds of Christianity, it was where the New Testament records that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians; Saint Peter is said to have preached in its cave church.

Paul of Samosata, patriarch from 260 to 268, taught an adoptionist, nontrinitarian doctrine, and later Byzantine writers linked the Paulician sect to his name. Constantine began the Great Church in 327.

Arab armies took Antioch in 637 and the Byzantines recovered it in 969. The First Crusade captured it in 1098 after an eight-month siege and made it the seat of the Principality of Antioch. Mamluk forces under Baibars sacked it in 1268, ending Latin power in northern Syria; the Ottomans absorbed it in 1516.