Latakia

Latakia, also spelled Lattakia, is Syria’s main port city and the capital of the Latakia Governorate, sitting on the Mediterranean coast. In the past, it was called Laodicea in Syria or Laodicea ad Mare. Beyond its role as a port, the city is a major manufacturing hub for nearby farming communities. As of a 2023 estimate, its population stands at 709,000, a number that swelled due to an influx of internally displaced people from rebel-held areas during the Syrian Revolution. It ranks as Syria’s fifth-largest city, after Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, and Hama. Cape Apostolos Andreas, the northeastern tip of Cyprus, lies roughly 109 kilometers away.

People have lived on this site since the 2nd millennium BC, but the city was formally founded as a Greek settlement in the 4th century BC under the Seleucid Empire. It later passed through Roman and Byzantine hands, then came under Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid rule between the 7th and 10th centuries AD. Byzantine forces frequently attacked and sometimes recaptured it, only to lose it again to Arab powers like the Fatimids. After that, control shifted to the Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mamluks, and finally the Ottomans. Following World War I, Latakia fell under the French mandate of Syria and became the capital of the autonomous Alawite territory. That territory became the Alawite State in 1922, which declared independence several times before rejoining Syria in 1944.

The city’s name, like many Greek Seleucid foundations, honored a member of the ruling dynasty. Seleucus I Nicator first called it Laodikeia on the Coast after his mother, Laodice. In Latin, it became Laodicea ad Mare. The original name survives in Arabic as al-Lāḏiqiyya, from which the French Lattaquié and English Latakia (or Lattakia) come. The Ottomans knew it as Lazkiye.

The promontory of Ras Ziyarah, where Latakia stands, has a long history of occupation. The Phoenician city of Ramitha was located here. Stephanus of Byzantium records that the city was first called Ramitha, then Leukê Aktê (“white coast”), and later Laodicea. Strabo described the city in his *Geographica*.

Pompey the Great conquered Latakia along with most of Syria in the 1st century BC, and Julius Caesar declared it a free polis. In the 2nd century AD, Emperor Septimius Severus granted it the title of “Metropolis,” exempted it from imperial taxes, fortified it, briefly made it the capital of Roman Syria, and built its famous Tetraporticus. Under Augustus, some Roman merchants moved there, but the city remained culturally Greek. A Roman road later connected southern Anatolia to Berytus and Damascus, boosting trade through Laodicea’s port. In the 4th century, the heretic Apollinarius served as its bishop. The city minted coins early on, but its importance in coinage declined as Alexandria and Antioch overshadowed it. Latakia was also known for the wine produced on its coastal hills, exported across the empire. When the Roman Empire split, it belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire. An earthquake damaged it in 494, but Justinian I rebuilt it and made it the capital of the Eastern Roman province of Theodorias from 528 AD until the Muslim conquest around 637 AD.

During the Muslim conquest of Syria in the 7th century, the caliphate general ‘Ubadah ibn al-Samit attacked the region, and all of Syria, including Laodicea, fell under Muslim rule. The city was renamed al-Lāḏiqiyya and passed from the Rashidun Caliphate to the Umayyads and then the Abbasids over nine centuries, attached to the province of Bilad al-Sham. The Arab geographer Al-Muqaddasi, who died in 991, listed Latakia as part of the district of Homs.

In 705, the Mardaites controlled the area from Jebel Aqra to northern Palestine, including Latakia, but withdrew after an agreement with Umayyad caliph Al-Walid I. They sacked the city again in 719, and Umar II rebuilt it. From 750 to 968, its border location between the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate caused it to lose importance. The poet Al-Mutanabbi led a millenarian revolt there in 930. The Byzantine Empire recaptured it in 970 under John I Tzimiskes, but lost it to the Fatimids in 980. The Banu Munqidh then controlled it until the Seljuks took over in 1086 during Malik-Shah I’s reign, despite a brief Byzantine recapture in 1074. During the First Crusade, Guynemer of Boulogne raided the city with 28 ships from Cyprus on 19 August 1097. In 1098, Raymond of Saint-Gilles captured it with the help of the Byzantine fleet, leading to a contest between Crusaders and Byzantines for control of Latakia and Baniyas. After failed attempts by Bohemond I of Antioch to take it from the Byzantines in 1099, and a brief Genoese fleet occupation in 1101, Tancred of Hauteville’s forces seized the city in 1103.