he new religion was born in Roman Palestine but it was in Anatolia that it quickly took root. This was, to a considerable degree, the work of St.Paul, a native of Tarsus, in his early missionary journeys through southern and western Anatolia between A.D.45 and 58. Three of his epistles were written to cities in Anatolia and he preached his first sermon at Perge. Between A.D.54 and 57, St.Paul lived for 27 months at Ephesus. His travels in Anatolia are vividly recorded in the Bible's Acts of the Apostels and some apocryphal work. The cities he visited are uncannily familiar to the modern traveler in Turkey: Antakya, Perge, Konya, Antalya, Ephesus, Miletus and Assos.

Other apostles followed him into Anatolia. St. Philip is said to have gone to Pamukkale (Hierapolis) and was subsequently martyred there. St. John the Evangelist spent the later years of his life in the region around Ayasuluk Hill (Ephesus).

Christianity probably spread quickest among the mixed communities of Hellenized Jews and Judaizing Romans who existed in Anatolia at this date. It evolved from a Jewish sect into a Gentile religion in A.D.70 when the destruction of Jerusalem caused the dispersion of Christian Jews into nearby lands where the religion gained more followers.

By A.D.100, Anatolia's Christians, banded into communities in the big cities, were among groups stretching across the Roman world. One of the powerhouses of early Christian thought was at Antioch, which had been St.Peter's base before he transferred to Rome. It remained the seat of one of the four chief bishoprics of the early church until the Arab conquest in A.D.642.

Mentions of Christianity became frequent in Anatolia after A.D.110 when the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, wrote to the Emperor Trajan(A.D.98-117 Pergamum) requesting for advice on how to handle the Christians in his province.

Holy Cloth. Icon. Eighteenth century.
Hagia Sophia Museum. Istanbul

This signaled the start of persecutions against Christians. In A.D.115, the bishop of Antioch, St. Ignatius, wrote seven letters to churches in western Anatolia as he was taken by guards on a slow journey to Rome to be thrown to the lions in the arena. In A.D.155 the 86-year-old bishop of Izmir(Smyrna), St. Polycarp, was burned alive in the arena, as was his successor, St. Pionius, 95 years later.

The really severe persecutions, however, came under Diocletian in A.D.303. Ancyra(Ankara) was the most vivid place of terror; in three separate trials, the young bishop of the town, St. Clement, and his deacons were executed. So, too, was a wealthy citizen called Plato and his brother, a doctor, Antiochus, and an elderly priest, Theodotus, along with seven virgins. All subsequently became famous local saints.

Most towns had similar lists. But when Constantine converted, the turnabout propelled Christianity, in two decades, from a persecuted faith into a virtual state religion.

The major break with paganism came during the civil wars of the early fourth century, when Constantine adopted the cross as his symbol before the decisive battle of Milvisan Bridge in A.D.312. A decade later, he made the decision to leave the traditional seat of power (and pagan worship) at Rome and establish a new, Christian city in Asia.

No sooner was the city established in A.D.324 than courtiers and senators from Rome on the Tiber moved to the New Rome on the Bosphorus; dedicated in A.D.330 and the city soon became the seat of Christianity and the venue of the acrimonious fights over the nature of the True Faith.

While the west was wracked by invading Goths, Vandals, Franks and other sundry barbarians, the eastern realm of the Romen empire thrived, largely unaffected by the chaos in the west. In Anatolia, by contrast, the fifth and sixth centuries were periods of great splendor under emperors such as Theodosius I (A.D.378-395), Theodosius II (A.D.408-450) and Justinian I (A.D.527-565). Greek began to replace Latin, though only slowly, as the language of the court and eventually of the administration.

The church had now become both the major institution of every city and also its chief builder. When Justinian I rebuilt the cathedral church of Constantinople, St. Sophia, in the middle of the sixth century, he produced one of the architectural masterpieces of all time.

The Arab invasion were the beginning of the story of Islam in Anatolia-To the Byzantines, the Arabs at first appeared to be only wild and primitive tribesman. They were quickly stripped of this notion at the battle of Yormuk in present-day Jordan, when the Byzantine host was routed by the Muslim horsemen under Khalid Ibn Walid, the "Sword of Islam".

In A.D. 654, the Arab armies swept through Anatolia, taking Ankara and other cities.Twenty years later, the Arabs began the first great siege of Istanbul which lasted for four years. Thanks, largely, to the walls of the capital, the Arab siege was repulsed, as was the second one in A.D.717-718.

Around the same time, Anatolia saw a further development which influenced its history until modern times: the rise of monks and ascetics. For the first 250 years of Christianity, there had been no monks. Gradually, however, the "holy man" who set himself apart from the rest of the community by refraining from sex and living of fasting and prayer crystalized into the idea of the monk-literally, the monachos, or solitary one.

Detail from a manuscript
showing the martyrdoms of Sts Peter and Paul.

The Byzantines lost most of their eastern provinces including eastern Anatolia to the Arabs. Their new frontier stretched from east of Silifke on the south coast, past Kayseri (the great Byzantine frontier defense station of central Anatolia) to a point east of Trabzon on the Black Sea. Tarsus, Malatya, and Erzurum became Arab garrison towns from which annual raids were made on Byzantine territory.

Islam brought a different civilization and a different script to Byzantine. It was a radical discontinuity in an area which had been basically Greek-speaking since the days of Alexander. The new religion had some common points with Christianity but it stressed the oneness of God and the supreme importance of His message as revealed in the (Kur'an) Koran. Islam also tolerated people of other Bible-based religions, provided they accepted inferior status and paid special taxes.

As a result, those parts of Anatolia under Muslim rule were multi-ethnic and multi-religious until this century.