Marash

MARASH, a city in Anatolia situated east of the Jihan river at the foot of Mt. Taurus : pop. 5o,000, of whom about half are Armenians. It is a prosperous town with a considerable trade in Kurd carpets and embroideries. The American mission has a col lege here and the Americans and Jesuits, churches and schools. The climate for the greater part of the year is good. A railway connect ing Marash with the Constantinople-Baghdad line is in process of construction.

History.

Marash was anciently a Hittite town and several Hittite monuments have been discovered including an inscribed lion and several stelae. As Marasi it appears in Assyrian records, but little or nothing is known of the town at that period. It reap pears in history in the 2nd century A.D. with the name Germanicia.

The identification of Germanicia with Marash has been questioned without any real justification. Nor is the attempt by Honigmann to distinguish two Germanicias in fairly close proximity likely to meet with favour. The Armenians have called Marash Kermanig since the 12th century at least. Heraclius visited the town in A.D.

64o. Before 700 it had passed into Muslim hands. The Khalif Mueawiya rebuilt it and it figured in the struggles with the Byzan tines ; after 770, however, it remained definitely in Muslim hands. Harian al-Rashed (786-809) strengthened its fortifications. The crusaders captured the town (1097), as did the Seljuks half a century later. It became part of the Turkish empire in the 16th century. In 1832 the Egyptian army in its march towards Con stantinople stayed its advance there at the bidding of the Powers. Marash was brought within the sphere of military operations con sequent on the Franco-Turkish dispute of 192o-21.

See G. Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems (189o), 37 seq., 502 seq. (for Arab texts) ; F. Cumont, Etudes Syriennes (1917) 169 seq.; E. Honigmann, Historische Topographie von Nord Syrien im Altertum (1923), Nos. 292, 193. (E. Ro.)