Every city in today’s West Asia, from Cyprus and the Levant to Iraq and Iran, that became Greek between the first Greek settlers in Cyprus and the Arab conquest, and every bilingual city where Greek was spoken beside Aramaic, Phoenician, Arabic or another language that lived on: when Greek came, how, and when its last Greek speakers were gone. And what outlived the cities: the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch, and Cyprus, where Greek is spoken still.
Turkey and Egypt are not included. The Greek cities of present-day Turkey, Antioch, Edessa and Tarsus among them, have a page of their own: Greek Cities in Present-Day Turkey. Those of Sinai, the part of Egypt that lies in Asia, among them Pelusium, Rhinocorura (El-Arish) and Pharan, are listed with the rest of Egypt in Greek Cities in Present-Day Africa. Georgia, whose Greek cities lay on its Black Sea coast, is also left out. The Greek cities east of Iran, among them Alexandria in Arachosia (Kandahar), Alexandria in Areia (Herat) and Antioch in Margiana (Merv), are in Greek Cities of Central and South Asia.
Pick a period to see the cities that became Greek or bilingual in it, in colour; the cities that already had Greek speakers are grey, and a dark ring marks a city whose last Greek speakers were gone by the end of the period. Or drag the year slider to see which cities had Greek speakers in any year from 1100 BC to today. Hollow dots are doubtful as cities, and dashed rings can be placed only within their region. Small grey rings with names in italics are Greek cities just across the border in today’s Turkey; they are not counted here (see Greek Cities in Present-Day Turkey). Use the zoom buttons for the crowded Levant. Hover or tap a dot for its name; select it for the full record and, for some cities, their stories.
The philosophers, poets and scholars some of these cities gave the Greek world, and a few things that happened in them.
Greek speech left the cities of Syria and Palestine within about two centuries of the Arab conquest. The churches did not leave. The Orthodox Patriarchates of Jerusalem and of Antioch lived on under the caliphs, the Crusaders, the Mamluks and the Ottomans, while their flocks came to speak Arabic. Then the two went different ways. Jerusalem has had Greek patriarchs since the 1530s, at the head of the Greek Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, over a flock that speaks Arabic; the Arab Orthodox have asked for a share in the government of their church since 1908. Antioch, its seat in Damascus since the 14th century, had Greek patriarchs only from 1724 to 1898, named in Constantinople after part of its flock joined Rome; in 1898 its synod, with an Arab majority, deposed the last of them, and since 1899 its patriarchs and bishops have been Arabs, as they had been before 1724, and its liturgy is in Arabic. Since the Council of Chalcedon (451) Jerusalem has ruled the three provinces of Palestine and Antioch the rest of Syria; today Antioch ranks third and Jerusalem fourth in the Orthodox order, after Constantinople and Alexandria. In modern times Greeks came again: merchants and consuls to the cities of the Levant and Iran, and Pontic Greeks to the Caucasus.
Soviet censuses of 1926–1989 and Armenian censuses of 2001 and 2011. Greek miners from Gümüşhane in the Pontus came to the mines of Akhtala and Alaverdi in the mid-18th century, invited by King Erekle II; most of their descendants left for Greece and Russia after 1991.
Sources: the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch (their sees as listed in October 2026; titular sees are held by bishops who live elsewhere); Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque (2008); Noble and Treiger, The Orthodox Church in the Arab World (2014); Soviet censuses and the Armenian censuses of 2001 and 2011; the 1922 census of Palestine; Encyclopaedia Iranica; the Greek Foreign Ministry. Sizes of the communities are estimates, many of them for the whole country.
Cyprus is the one land in this set where Greek never stopped as the language of the people; in Jerusalem it never stopped among the clergy (see Jerusalem). Greek settlers came at the end of the Bronze Age; by the 7th century BC the island had Greek kingdoms, and Phoenician Kition and Eteocypriot Amathus came to speak Greek in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Arab raids from 649 began the decline of several old coastal cities, and over time their people moved to new towns nearby: Salamis to Famagusta, Kourion to Episkopi, Amathus to Limassol. Greek lived on under the Lusignan kings and Venice (1192–1571) and in the Ottoman centuries.
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Select a row for the full record. ? after a name: doubtful as a Greek city or as a site. Bilingual city: Greek spoken beside another language that lived on. † a Greek city with a bilingual period. ‡ in the north of Cyprus, under Turkish occupation since 1974. Grey names under Today are villages. Dates of fading are approximate.
The eleven images: the overview, one map per period, the rise and fade, the Patriarchates that outlived the cities, today’s West Asia, and the list by region.
A self-governing city, a royal or Roman foundation, or a bishop’s see, not a camp, fort, sanctuary or trading post, whose residents spoke Greek. The evidence: a polis in the Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, a foundation of Alexander, a Hellenistic king or a Roman emperor, Greek civic institutions or coins, a city in Hierocles’ list (c. 527), or a see with a bishop at the councils. There must be positive evidence of resident Greek speakers: officials, a garrison, a court, and Greek used only in the liturgy or in learning do not count. Resident Greek-speaking clergy and monks do count, as in Jerusalem, where they have lived without a long break (see Jerusalem). In the Levant, where Greek was the language of the church and of most inscriptions, every see of a town counts; sees of nomads and of imperial estates do not. Elsewhere a see needs Greek evidence of its own. A dynastic name alone (Antiochia, Seleucia, Epiphania) is not taken as evidence. The site must lie in present-day West Asia; Turkey, Egypt and Georgia are not included. The Greek cities of Turkey are on a page of their own, and those of Egypt, Sinai included, on the page for Africa.
When the place became Greek: its foundation for a Greek foundation; otherwise the first evidence of Greek-speaking residents, such as city coins with Greek legends, Greek inscriptions, a Greek writer from the city or its first bishop. A refoundation on the same site keeps the earlier date. The Greek kingdoms of Cyprus are dated by the first Greek evidence of each: the earliest by the archaeology of the 11th century BC, others by the Assyrian list of the kings of Cyprus (673/672 BC).
A bilingual city had many Greek-speaking residents, but another main language lived on beside Greek: Aramaic (Syriac, Palmyrene, Nabataean, Jewish or Samaritan Aramaic), Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, Babylonian or Elamite. That is the rule for the Hauran, the Nabataean and Arab towns of the south, the Jewish and Samaritan towns, Palmyra, Babylon, Uruk and Susa, and the towns the Sasanian kings built for Greek-speaking captives. A bilingual city has its own colour and its dates are when Greek was spoken there. A Greek city that had a second main language for a time is marked †.
The town on the site is the one whose built-up area covers the ancient city; ruins outside a town count as ruins. A first-level capital (a governorate, district, province or region) counts if it stands within about 2 km of the city or bears its name. Names are traced through Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian or Greek. In Cyprus the official names of the Republic are used; the north has been under Turkish occupation since 1974.
Eight research batches by region (Cyprus, Phoenicia and the Syrian coast, Israel and Palestine, southern Syria and Jordan, inner Syria, Iraq and Arabia, Iran, the Caucasus; Georgia, researched with the Caucasus, was later taken out of this set), then checks of the start dates, the end dates, the edge cases and completeness against Hierocles, the Notitia Antiochena and the lists of bishops, Cohen’s Hellenistic foundations and the Inventory of Poleis; then a second round with web searches that checked every city and the town on its site. The identifiers follow the Pleiades gazetteer. Every record keeps its sources and notes; the places considered and left out are listed with a reason. Each city’s “Who ended it” line names the act and the people closest to the end of Greek there.
The full table with every field, sources and notes, as a CSV table, as JSON, or as a spreadsheet with the places left out, the year-by-year series, the capitals on the sites, the sees of the two patriarchates and the Greek communities.
Sources: M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (2004); G. M. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa (2006) and in the East from Armenia and Mesopotamia to Bactria and India (2013); J. D. Grainger, The Cities of Seleukid Syria (1990); A. H. M. Jones, The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces; F. Millar, The Roman Near East (1993); Schürer, Vermes and Millar, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. II; the Tabula Imperii Romani: Iudaea–Palaestina; the Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie; Hierocles, the Notitia Antiochena and the lists of bishops; Encyclopaedia Iranica; S. H. Griffith (2008); R. Hoyland; L. Di Segni; the Pleiades gazetteer. Map: Natural Earth; today’s borders dashed.
These calls rest on thin or conflicting evidence. The map, the chart and the list follow the reading shown here; the alternative is given so that readers can weigh it themselves.