Antiochian Greek Christians
Antiochian Greek Christians are an ethnoreligious Eastern Christian group native to the Levant. They are either members of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch or the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, and they have ancient roots in what is now Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, the southern Turkish province of Hatay, which includes the city of Antakya —one of the holiest cities in Eastern Christianity, and Israel. Many of their descendants now live in the global Near Eastern Christian diaspora. They primarily speak Levantine Arabic, with Maaloula near Damascus being one of the few places where a Western Aramaic dialect is still spoken.
Founders of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America (left to right: then-Archdeacon Anthony Bashir, Metropolitan Gerasimos Messara, and Archimandrite Victor Abo-Assaley)
John Chrysostom
Greek Orthodox priest sprinkling holy water on Epiphany Day, Syria 1914
Church of the Dormition of Our Lady, Greek Orthodox, Aleppo (the belfry)
Rūm, also romanized as Roum, is a derivative of Parthian (frwm) terms, ultimately derived from Greek Ῥωμαῖοι. Both terms are endonyms of the pre-Islamic inhabitants of Anatolia, the Middle East and the Balkans and date to when those regions were parts of the Eastern Roman Empire.
A view showing several floors of an underground Rûm city in Turkey.
A Rûm architect from Konya built the Gök Medrese (Celestial Madrasa) of Sivas while it was a capital of the Sultanate of Rûm.
Abandoned Rûm churches carved into a solid stone cliff face, Cappadocia, Nevşehir/Turkey.