|Αλαβάνδα (Ancient Greek)|
Remains of Alabanda's bouleuterion
|Alternate name||Antiochia of the Chrysaorians|
|Location||Doğanyurt, Aydın Province, Turkey|
The city is located in the saddle between two heights. The area is noted for its dark marble and for gemstones that resembled garnets. Stephanus of Byzantium claims that there were two cities named Alabanda (Alabandeus) in Caria, but no other ancient source corroborates this.
According to legend, the city was founded by a Carian hero Alabandus. In the Carian language, the name is a combination of the words for horse ala and victory banda. In the early Seleucid period, the city was part of the Chrysaorian League, a loose federation of nearby cities linked by economic and defensive ties and, perhaps, by ethnic ties. The city was renamed Antiochia of the Chrysaorians in honor of Seleucid king Antiochus III who preserved the city's peace. It was captured by Philip V of Macedon in 201 BC. The name reverted to Alabanda after the Seleucid defeat at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC. The Romans occupied the city shortly thereafter.
In 40 BC, the rebel Quintus Labienus at the head of a Parthian army took the city. After Labienus's garrison was slaughtered by the city's inhabitants, the Parthian army stripped the city of its treasures. Under the Roman Empire, the city became a conventus (Pliny, V, xxix, 105) and Strabo reports on its reputation for high-living and decadence. The city minted its own coins down to the mid-third century. During the Byzantine Empire, the city was a created a bishopric.
The ruins of Alabanda are 8 km west of Çine and consist of the remains of a theatre and a number of other buildings, but excavations have yielded very few inscriptions.
The names of some bishops of Alabanda are known because of their participation in church councils. Thus Theodoret was at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Constantine at the Trullan Council in 692, another Constantine at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, and John at the Photian Council of Constantinople (879). The names of two non-orthodox bishops of the see are also known: Zeuxis, who was deposed for Monophysitism in 518, and Julian, who was bishop from around 558 to around 568 and was a Jacobite. No longer a residential diocese, Alabanda is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.
- Michel Lequien, Oriens christianus in quatuor Patriarchatus digestus, Paris 1740, Vol. I, coll. 909-910
- Sophrone Pétridès, v. Alabanda, in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. I, Paris 1909, col. 1285
- Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013, ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1), p. 828
- Turkey: The Aegean and Mediterranean Coasts, Blue Guides ISBN 978-0-393-30489-3, pp. 349–50.
- J. Ma, Antiochos III and the Cities of Western Asia Minor, ISBN 978-0-19-815219-4, p. 175
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