Anti-Taurus Mountains in the context of "Sam'al"

Moschia (Meskheti, possibly related to Mushki) is a mountainous region of Georgia between Iberia, Armenia, and Colchis. The Moschian Mountains were the connecting chain between the Caucasus and Anti-Taurus Mountains. The people of that area were known as the Moschi. They may have been connected to the Mushki.

Wilhelm Gesenius suggested that the Moschi were descended from the Biblical Meshech tribe.

Tur Abdin (Arabic: طور عبدين; Kurdish: Tor; Latin: Turabdium; Syriac: ܛܽܘܪ ܥܰܒ݂ܕܺܝܢ or ܛܘܼܪ ܥܲܒ݂ܕܝܼܢ, Ṭūr ʿAḇdīn) is a hilly region situated in southeastern Turkey, including the eastern half of Mardin Province, and Şırnak Province west of the Tigris, on the border with Syria and famed since Late Antiquity for its Christian monasteries on the border of the Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire. The area is a low plateau in the Anti-Taurus Mountains stretching from Mardin in the west to the Tigris in the east and delimited by the Mesopotamian plains to the south. The Tur Abdin is populated by more than 80 villages and nearly 70 monastery buildings and was mostly Syriac Orthodox with a Syriac Catholic minority until the early 20th century. The earliest surviving Christian buildings date from the 6th century.

The name "Tur Abdin" is Syriac: ܛܘܪ ܥܒܕܝܢ, lit. 'Mountain of the Servants [of God]'.‌ Tur Abdin is of great importance to the Syriac Orthodox, for whom the region used to be a monastic and cultural heartland. The Assyrian community of Tur Abdin natively refer to themselves as Sūryāyê/Sūryōyê or Sūrāyê/Sūrōyê (Syriac: ܣܘܪ̈ܝܐ), and traditionally speak a central Neo-Aramaic dialect called Turoyo.

In the Byzantine Empire, a kleisoura (Greek: κλεισούρα, "enclosure, defile") was a term traditionally applied to a fortified mountain pass and the military district protecting it. By the late 7th century, it came to be applied to more extensive frontier districts, distinct from the larger themata, chiefly along the Empire's eastern border with the Caliphate along the line of the Taurus-Anti-Taurus mountains (in the West, only Strymon was in its early days termed a kleisoura). A kleisoura or kleisourarchia was an autonomous command, under a kleisourarches (Greek: κλεισουράρχης). Eventually, most kleisourai were raised to full themata, and the term fell out of use after the 10th century (in late Byzantine times, droungos had a similar meaning). Its Islamic counterpart in Cilicia and Mesopotamia was the al-thughūr.