The city of Alexandretta was founded by Alexander the Great around 330 BC. Just under a thousand years later the Arabs conquered it and translated its name to Iskenderun.
Antakya is a city in south Turkey and the capital of Hatay Province. Founded in 300 BC by Seleucus I, it earned the title ‘queen of the east’. It was taken by Pompey in 64 BC.
Hatay was the subject of an international dispute between Turkey, to which it belonged from 1516 until 1918, and France which occupied it at the end of World War I and later under the terms of the Franklin-Bullion Agreement in 1921, incorporated it into Syria as an autonomic district.
Iskenderun was occupied by the English in 1918, turned over to the French in 1919, and incorporated into French Protectorate of Syria as the Sanjak of Alexandretta. In 1938 Ataturk reclaimed it for the Turkish Republic.
Hatay Province, Turkey
