Alexandria on the Caucasus

Alexandria on the Caucasus was a city founded by Alexander the Great in the Hindu Kush, established around 329 BC during his march toward Bactria. The epithet 'on the Caucasus' stems from the ancient Greek habit of calling the Hindu Kush range the Caucasus — a geographical conflation that persisted in classical sources for centuries. Its exact location remains one of the open questions of Hellenistic archaeology: scholars have proposed either the plain around Charikar or the ruins of Begram, later a major Kushan royal city. No confirmed ruins or marked site exist today; Alexandria on the Caucasus survives largely in the texts of Strabo and Arrian rather than in the physical landscape of modern Afghanistan.