Ionia

Ionia

Ionia was the central stretch of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, in modern western Turkey, together with the islands of Samos and Chios, settled in antiquity by Ionian Greeks. Its cities, among them Miletus, Ephesus, Colophon and Phocaea, formed the Ionian League, and Smyrna, first an Aeolian town, later became Ionian. Sixth-century BCE Miletus was home to Thales and Anaximander, the first Greek natural philosophers. Ionia came under Lydian and then Persian rule, revolted around 500 BCE, and became part of the Roman province of Asia in 133 BCE; the satirist Lucian of Samosata went there for his education. Under Ottoman rule Sephardi Jews, arriving after 1492, made Smyrna (Izmir) one of their principal urban centres.

9 teachers