Toponym
The city was founded as Alexandria (Ἀλεξάνδρεια) to commemorate Alexander the Great’s victory over the Persian Darius III at Issus (Cilicia) in (333 B.C.). Starting in the Middle Ages, Western pilgrims used the diminutive Romance form Alexandretta.
After the Muslim conquest of Syria, it was named al-ʼIskandarūn (Arabic الإسكندرون), the Arabic rendering of the original ‘Alexandrou’; this name was further turkified into Ottoman Turkish as İskenderūn (إسكندرون), which in turn was preserved in its current modern Turkish form as İskenderun.
Armenian Population
According to the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Constantinople, there lived 14,000 Armenians in 16 localities of the two kazas Iskenderun and Belen on the eve of the First World War, maintaining six churches and twelve (?) schools.[1]
“Although there were more than 14,000 Armenians in the kazas of Iskenderun/Alexandretta and Beylan [Belen], there were only two important colonies, found in the principal towns of the two kazas, Alexandretta and Beylan, as well as a number of scattered rural communities. There were some 2,000 Armenians in the city of Alexandretta, but the kaza boasted several Armenian villages: Nargellik (pop. 180), Kışla (pop. 60), and Fartınlı (pop. 200).”[2]
History
İskenderun preserves the name, but probably not the exact site, of Alexandria ad Issum. The settlement was founded by Alexander the Great in 333 BC to supersede Myriandus as the key to the Syrian Gates, about 37 km south of the scene of his victory at the Battle of Issus against the Persian King Darius III. Alexander camped in the highlands of İskenderun, around Esentepe, and then ordered the city to be established and named Alexandria. İskenderun is one of many cities founded on Alexander’s orders, including Alexandria, Egypt.
The importance of the place comes from its relation to the Syrian Gates, the easiest approach to the open ground of Aleppo.
Ecclesiastical history
The bishopric of Alexandria Minor was a suffragan of Anazarbus, the capital and so also the ecclesiastical metropolis of the Roman province of Cilicia Secunda. Greek menologia speak of Saint Helenus, and the martyr saints Aristio and Theodore as early bishops of the See. But the first documented one is Hesychius, who took part in the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and in a synod at Antioch in 341. Philomusus participated in the First Council of Constantinople in 381. Baranes is mentioned in connection with a synod at Antioch in 445. At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Julianus was represented by his metropolitan, Cyrus of Anazarbus. Basilius was at the synod in Constantinople in 459 that condemned simoniacs. In 518, Paulus was deposed by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian for supporting the Jacobite Severus of Antioch.
Ottoman era
The Ottomans continued to fortify the city. In the later Ottoman period the city developed as the main port on the Mediterranean for the overland trade from Baghdad and India, which had great importance until the establishment of the Egyptian overland route. Iskenderun served as a base, first for Genoese and Venetian merchants, then Western and Northern European merchants. The British Levant Company maintained an agency and factory here for 200 years, until 1825, in spite of high mortality among its employees because of regional disease, some due to lack of sanitation systems. During the 19th century the port grew, and the road to Aleppo was improved. The railway was built in 1912.
At the outset of World War I, when Britain was contemplating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, Lord Kitchener considered the conquest of Alexandretta to be essential in providing Britain with a port and railhead from which to access Iraq. He proposed a new railway be built to the east from Alexandretta, which would greatly reduce the time for reaching India from the UK. The De Bunsen Committee (8 April – 30 June 1915), a British inter-departmental group which was set up to discuss the issue in greater detail, preferred Haifa for this purpose.
Ultimately the British decided not to attack the Ottoman Empire via Alexandretta.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, most of Hatay including İskenderun was occupied by French troops. In July 1920 the San Remo conference assigned the Alexandretta sancak to Turkey, although it connected to south Syria with its north-western corner. Between 1921 and 1937, the city was part of the autonomous Sancak of Alexandretta within French-controlled Syria, under the League of Nations French Mandate of Syria and the Lebanon.
The Republic of Hatay was founded in 1938 and, in 1939, it joined the Republic of Turkey after a referendum. The referendum was, and still is, regarded as illegitimate by Syria, as the Turkish government moved supporters into the city and the Turkish Army “expelled most of the province’s Alawite Arabs and Armenian majority” to decide the referendum result.
In the 2010s Syria still claimed against Turkey its sovereignty on the Alexandretta region.
Destruction
Armenians, who have maintained a cultural and economic presence in Iskenderun for centuries, most notably due to trade, were wiped out in the Hamidian Massacres, Adana Massacres, and the Armenian genocide, after centuries of discrimination.
Although the Armenians in the coastal areas of the Aleppo vilayet were initially to have been exempted from deportation, the authorities ultimately issued an order to deport them as well in late July 1915.[3]