The Gulf of Alexandretta or İskenderun ( tr, İskenderun Körfezi) is a

gulf A gulf is a large inlet from the ocean into the landmass, typically with a narrower opening than a bay, but that is not observable in all geographic areas so named. The term gulf was traditionally used for large highly-indented navigable bodie ...

of the

eastern Mediterranean Eastern Mediterranean is a loose definition of the eastern approximate half, or third, of the Mediterranean Sea, often defined as the countries around the Levantine Sea. It typically embraces all of that sea's coastal zones, referring to commun ...

Levantine Sea The Levantine Sea (Arabic: بحر الشام, tr, Levanten Denizi, el, Θάλασσα του Λεβάντε) is the easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea. Geography The Levantine Sea is bordered by Turkey in the north and north-east ...

. It lies beside the southern Turkish

provinces A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Adana Adana (; ; ) is a major city in southern Turkey. It is situated on the Seyhan River, inland from the Mediterranean Sea. The administrative seat of Adana province, it has a population of 2.26 million. Adana lies in the heart of Cilicia, wh ...

and

Hatay Hatay Province ( tr, Hatay ili, ) is the southernmost province of Turkey. It is situated almost entirely outside Anatolia, along the eastern coast of the Levantine Sea. The province borders Syria to its south and east, the Turkish province ...

Names

The gulf is named for the nearby Turkish city of

İskenderun İskenderun ( ar, الإسكندرونة, el, Αλεξανδρέττα "Little Alexandria"), historically known as Alexandretta and Scanderoon, is a city in Hatay Province on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Names The city was founded as Ale ...

, the classical Alexandretta. It was also formerly known as the Sea or ( la, Mare Issicum or ') ( grc, Ἰσσικὸς κόλπος).

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria (Italy). He is known fo ...

and

Stephanus of Byzantium Stephanus or Stephan of Byzantium ( la, Stephanus Byzantinus; grc-gre, Στέφανος Βυζάντιος, ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD), was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethn ...

also records it as the ( grc, Μυριανδικὸς κόλπος), after the nearby town of Myriandus.. In IX-XII centuries the gulf was known as the Armenian Gulf or the Armenian Bay ( hy, Հայկական ծոց).

Geography

The Gulf of Alexandretta forms the easternmost

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

inlet An inlet is a (usually long and narrow) indentation of a shoreline, such as a small arm, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea. Overview In marine ...

of the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

. It lies beside the southern coast of Turkey, near its border with

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

. In antiquity, the adjacent

Nur Mountains The Nur Mountains ( tr, Nur Dağları, "Mountains of Holy Light"), formerly known as Alma-Dağ, the ancient Amanus ( grc, Ἁμανός), medieval Black Mountain, or Jabal al-Lukkam in Arabic, is a mountain range in the Hatay Province of south ...

were usually thought to separate the regions of

Cilicia Cilicia (); el, Κιλικία, ''Kilikía''; Middle Persian: ''klkyʾy'' (''Klikiyā''); Parthian: ''kylkyʾ'' (''Kilikiyā''); tr, Kilikya). is a geographical region in southern Anatolia in Turkey, extending inland from the northeastern co ...

and

, although

at one point places the division further south at Ras al-Bassit (the classical Posidium).

Pollution

There is a lot of

heavy industry Heavy industry is an industry that involves one or more characteristics such as large and heavy products; large and heavy equipment and facilities (such as heavy equipment, large machine tools, huge buildings and large-scale infrastructure); o ...

around Iskenderun Bay, including five cement factories, ten steel factories, and three coal-fired power stations: İsken Sugözü,

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geogra ...

and Emba Hunutlu. The mountains around the bay trap air pollution, but because smokestack details are sent to the government unpublished, it is difficult to apportion responsibility for deaths and illnesses caused by air pollution in the area. The water too is polluted by land-based, shipping and fish farming activities.

References

Citations

Bibliography