The Payas River, in southern

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The ...

near today's

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

— Syria border, is believed to be the Pinarus River of antiquity, where

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...

defeated

Darius III of Persia Darius III ( peo, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 ; grc-gre, Δαρεῖος ; c. 380 – 330 BC) was the last Achaemenid King of Kings of Persia, reigning from 336 BC to his death in 330 BC. Contrary to his predecessor Artaxerxes IV Arses, Dariu ...

in the First Battle of Issus, and the likely site of the second and third battles of the same name. The identification is made based on distances measured by Alexander's

bematist Bematists or bematistae (Ancient Greek βηματισταί (''bēmatistaí'', 'step measurer'), from βῆμα (''bema'', 'pace')), were specialists in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt who measured distances by pacing. Measurements of Alexa ...

s and observations of the local topography compared to the descriptions in ancient sources. It was previously thought that the Pinarus was the modern Deli Çay. Nicholas G. L. Hammond, "Alexander's Charge at the Battle of Issus in 333 B.C.", ''Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte'' 41:4:395-406 (1992) While historically important, the stream itself is not much more than a brook a few metres across, running westerly from the steep mountains and foothills to the east.

Notes

Rivers of Turkey {{MEast-hist-stub