Rhodes, an island in the Mediterranean, near the coast of Asia Minor, celebrated from the remotest antiquity as the seat of commerce, navigation, literature, and the arts, but now reduced to a state of abject poverty by the devastations of war and the tyranny and rapacity of its Turkish rulers. It is of a triangular form, about forty-four leagues in circumference, twenty leagues long from north to south, and about six broad. It was famed in ancient times, and is still celebrated, for its delightful climate and the fertility of its soil. It contains two cities—Rhodes, the capital, inhabited chiefly by Turks, and a small number of Jews; and the ancient Lindus, now reduced to a hamlet, peopled by Greeks, who are almost all engaged in commerce. Besides these there are five villages occupied by Turks and a small number of Jews; and five towns and forty-one villages inhabited by Greeks. The whole population is estimated at 20,000. The city of Rhodes is famous for its huge brazen statue of Apollo, called Colossus, which stood at the mouth of the harbor, and was so high that ships passed in full sail between its legs. There is not a single vestige of this celebrated work of art now remaining. St. Paul appears to have visited Rhodes while on his journey to Jerusalem, A.D. 58 ().
The antiquities of Rhodes reach no farther back than the residence of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The remains of their fine old fortress, of great size and strength, are still to be seen. In modern times Rhodes has been chiefly celebrated as one of the last retreats of this military order, under whom it obtained great celebrity by its heroic resistance to the Turks; but in the time of Solyman the Great a capitulation was agreed upon, and the island was finally surrendered to the Turks, under whom it has since continued.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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