İskenderun in the context of "Gulf of Alexandretta"

Hatay Province (Turkish: Hatay ili, pronounced [ˈhataj]) is the southernmost province and metropolitan municipality of Turkey. Its area is 5,524 km (2,133 sq mi), and its population is 1,686,043 (2022). It is situated mostly outside Anatolia, along the eastern coast of the Levantine Sea. The province borders Syria to its south and east, the Turkish province of Adana to the northwest, Osmaniye to the north, and Gaziantep to the northeast. It is partially situated on the Cilician Plain, a large fertile plain along the Cilicia region. Its administrative capital is Antakya (ancient Antioch), making it one of the three Turkish provinces not named after its administrative capital or any settlement. The second-largest city is İskenderun (formerly Alexandretta). Sovereignty over most of the province was disputed with neighbouring Syria, which claimed that the province had a demographic Arab majority, and has separated from its territory in violation of the terms of the French Mandate for Syria that was established on the heels of World War I; however, the issue has remained largely dormant since the thawing of Syrian-Turkish relations in the 2000s.

The Nur Mountains (Turkish: Nur Dağları, "Mountains of Holy Light"), formerly known as Alma-Dağ, the ancient Mount Amanus (Ancient Greek: Ἄμᾱνος), medieval Black Mountain, or Jabal al-Lukkam in Arabic, is a mountain range in the Hatay Province of south-central Turkey. It begins south of the Taurus Mountains and the Ceyhan river, runs roughly parallel to the Gulf of İskenderun, and ends on the Mediterranean coast between the Gulf of İskenderun and the Orontes (Asi) river mouth.

Issus (Latin; Phoenician: Sissu) or Issos (Ancient Greek: Ἰσσός, Issós, or Ἰσσοί, Issoí) was an ancient settlement on the strategic coastal plain straddling the small Pinarus river (a fast melt-water stream several metres wide) below the navigationally difficult inland mountains towering above to the east in the Turkish Province of Hatay, near the border with Syria. It can be identified with Kinet Höyük in the village of Yeşilköy near Dörtyol in Turkey's Hatay Province. Excavations on the mound occurred between 1992 and 2012 by Bilkent University. It is most notable for being the place of no fewer than three decisive ancient or medieval battles each called in their own era the Battle of Issus:

1. The Battle of Issus (333 BC) or the First Battle of Issus, in which Alexander the Great of Macedonia defeated Darius III of Persia
2. Battle of Issus (194) or the Second Battle of Issus, in which P. Cornelius Anullinus defeated Septimius Severus's rival Pescennius Niger
3. Battle of Issus (622) or the Third Battle of Issus, in which the Byzantine emperor Heraclius defeated the Sassanid shah Shahrbaraz

Whether Issus is still present within a modern settlement is hotly debated among researchers. Regardless of which mountain brook was the locus of the battles, the old town was situated close to present-day İskenderun, Turkey, in the Gulf of İskenderun. Today, no town exists on both sides of the Pinarus river, which may or may not have been called Issus.