The trade between Anatolia and the West had diminished in importance when Constantinople became the seat of Roman government in the fourth century and Smyrna had declined.

The Seljuk commander Tzachas had seized Smyrna in 1084 and used it as a base for naval raids, but the city was recovered by the general John Doukas.

The city was several times ravaged by the Turks, and had become quite ruinous when the Nicaean emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes rebuilt it about 1222.

Ibn Batuta had found Smyrna still in great part a ruin when the homonymous chieftain of the Beylik of Aydın had conquered it about 1330 and made his son Umur governor.

It has become the port of the emirate.

Piracy in the Aegean threatens the commercial welfare of the Venetians; with their support, Pope Clement VI in 1344 succeeds in reorganizing the maritime league whose operations had been prevented by the war between France and England.

Genoa, the Hospitallers, and King Hugh IV of Cyprus contribute contingents and on October 28, 1344, the crusaders seize Smyrna, ending that city’s piratical raids in the eastern Mediterranean and confiding it to the care of the Hospitallers.

Establishing themselves in the town but failing to conquer the citadel, the Hospitallers will hold Smyrna until 1402.