Qualla: Chios https://qualla.com/chios en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:08 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Chios https://qualla.com/chios Chios: Introduction https://qualla.com/chios/ Snap the bark of a squat evergreen shrub in the south of this island and it begins to weep. The teardrops that form are clear, then milky, then hardening to a brittle crystal that smells faintly of pine and tastes, when chewed, of something between cedar and the sea. This is mastic, and it grows in commercial quantity nowhere else on Earth but the southern villages of Chios. The Greeks have a word for it, mastiha, and from it comes the English verb 'to masticate.' For two thousand years, the wealth of an entire island has dripped, drop by drop, from the wounded bark of these trees.

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/d/chios-wp/swfd-chios-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Chios: The Mastic Villages https://qualla.com/chios/ Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, a crescent of arid mountains in the northern Aegean, separated from the Turkish coast by a narrow strait. The terrain is rugged, ridged with peaks, but the island's fortune was always concentrated in its dry, sun-baked south, in th...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/d/chios-wp/swfd-chios-the-mastic-villages.mp3 0:06 2 full Chios: Homer's Island https://qualla.com/chios/ Chios is one of seven places that claimed Homer as a native son, and it pressed the claim harder than most. The suburb of Vrontados, north of the main town, still calls itself the poet's birthplace, and points to a rock-cut seat by the sea known traditionally as Daskalopetra, the...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/d/chios-wp/swfd-chios-homers-island.mp3 0:06 3 full Chios: The Genoese Centuries https://qualla.com/chios/ For seven hundred years after Rome divided, Chios belonged to Byzantium. Then, in 1304, a Genoese adventurer named Benedetto Zaccaria seized it, and the island entered a long Latin chapter. From 1346 to 1566, Chios was effectively a corporation: the Maona, a Genoese chartered com...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/d/chios-wp/swfd-chios-the-genoese-centuries.mp3 0:06 4 full Chios: The Great Destruction https://qualla.com/chios/ That long prosperity ended in 1822. When the Greek War of Independence reached Chios, the island's cautious leaders wanted no part of it; they were too close to the Anatolian coast, too exposed. But revolutionaries from neighboring Samos landed and forced the issue, and the Ottom...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/d/chios-wp/swfd-chios-the-great-destruction.mp3 0:06 5 full Chios: Out of the Ashes https://qualla.com/chios/ What happened next was improbable. From the ruins of 1822, and despite a devastating earthquake in 1881, Chios became the cradle of modern Greek shipping. The numbers tell the story: 6 vessels on record in 1764, 104 ships by 1875, 440 by 1889. Chian families scattered by the mass...

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]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/f/d/chios-wp/swfd-chios-out-of-the-ashes.mp3 0:06 6 full