HALICARNASSUS hăl’ ə kär năs’ əs (̔Αλικαρνασσός). City and trading center on the coast of Caria opposite the island of Cos.

Situated on the Ceramic Gulf astride a magnificent, natural harbor that extended on each side to fortified promontories, the city early gained great commercial importance. The surrounding country was unusually fertile and noted for its abundant olive, fig, and almond orchards.

The city was founded by Dorian colonists, but it was excluded from the confederacy of Carian states because of an ancient dispute, according to Herodotus (Herod 1:144). It was conquered by the Persians who allowed the city semi-autonomous rule. Because it sided with the Persians, Alexander, unable to capture the acropolis burned the city after a long siege, a catastrophe from which it never fully recovered. It was renowned as the birthplace of the historians Herodotus and Dionysius, and as the site of King Mausoleus’ tomb, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. From it the word “mausoleum” is derived.

Two references are made to it in extra-Biblical Jewish sources. It was one of the free cities to which the Romans sent letters in 139 b.c., which proclaimed the friendship of the Romans for the Jews and defended their rights (1 Macc 15:23). According to Josephus (Jos. Ant. XIV. x. 23), the people of the city passed an ordinance in the 1st cent. b.c. that Jewish men and women should be allowed to build prayer chapels by the sea as was their custom, to observe the Sabbath and to perform their sacred rites.

Bibliography C. T. Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, IV (1865), chs. 35-41, 45; Burchner in Pauly-Wissowa RE s.v. “Halikarnassos.”