page_title: Alexandria in the Caucasus
section_title: Alexander the Great
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandria in the Caucasus / Alexander the Great
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Alexander's campaigns in India. Personal creation 2007. Reference "Diodorus of Sicily", Harvard University Press.
context_page_description: Alexandria in the Caucasus was a colony of Alexander the Great. He founded the colony at an important junction of communications in the southern foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, in the country of the Paropamisadae.
  In Classical times, the Hindu Kush were also designated as the "Caucasus" in parallel to their Western equivalent, the Caucasus Mountains between Europe and Asia.
context_section_description: Alexander populated the city with 7,000 Macedonians, 3,000 mercenaries and thousands of natives (according to Curtius VII.3.23), or some 7,000 natives and 3,000 non-military camp followers and a number of Greek mercenaries (Diodorus, XVII.83.2), in March 329 BC. He had also built forts in what is now Bagram, Afghanistan, at the foot of the Hindu Kush, replacing forts erected in much the same place by Persia's king Cyrus the Great c. 500 BC, Alexandria being in fact a refoundation of an Achaemenid settlement called Kapisa.
  The deity of the city seems to have been Zeus, as suggested by coins of the Greco-Bactrian king Eucratides.
caption: Ancient cities founded by Alexander the Great in Central and South Asia
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "26"}