Thyati´ra, a city on the northern border of Lydia, about twenty-seven miles from Sardis, the seat of one of the seven Apocalyptic churches (; ). Its modern name is Ak-hissar, or the white castle. According to Pliny, it was known in earlier times by the names Pelopia and Euhippa (Hist. Nat. v. 29). Strabo asserts that it was a Macedonian colony (xiii. p. 928). The Roman road from Pergamus to Sardis passed through it. It was noted for the art of dyeing, as appears from . It still maintains its reputation for this manufacture, and large quantities of scarlet cloth are sent weekly to Smyrna. The town consists of about two thousand houses, for which taxes are paid to the government, besides two or three hundred small huts; of the former 300 are inhabited by Greeks, 30 by Armenians, and the rest by Turks. The common language of all classes is the Turkish; but in writing it, the Greeks use the Greek, and the Armenians the Armenian characters. There are nine mosques and one Greek church.
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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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