Salonica (SALONIKI ancient Turkish)

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

or SALONIKI (ancient Turkish, Selanik), a large Thessalonica; ; seaport, formerly belonging to Turkey, nd awarded to Greece by the treaty with Turkey, following the World War; on a gulf ulf of the Ægean Sea, 315 miles W. S. W. of Constantinople, rising from the sea in the form of an amphitheater, and forming a mixture of squalor and splendor. In Salonica may still be seen vestiges of Cyclopean and Hellenic walls, triumphal arches, and remains of Roman temples, Byzantine structures, and Venetian castles. Its harbor is excellent and its roadstead well sheltered. The principal exports are cotton, corn, tobacco, timber, and wool; imports, sugar, coffee, indigo, calicoes, etc. The manufactures include cotton, silk, leather, carpets, s, etc. Thessalonica was founded on the site of an older town in 315 B. c., and had a somewhat eventful history. St. Paul preached the Gospel here, and addressed two of his epistles to the Christian converts of the place. In the first Balkan War the Turks surrendered the city and an army of 29,000, to the Greeks on May 8, 1912. During the World War, Greece, having failed to fulfill the terms of her treaty with Serbia against Bulgaria, Salonica was occupied by the Allies. In August, 1917, a disastrous fire ruined two-thirds of the city and made 100,000 persons homeless. Salonica became the military base for the Allies in the Balkans for their operations against the Bulgars which culminated in the surrender of Bulgaria in 1918. See WORLD WAR. Pop. (1919) 250,000 civilians.