Caria

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For other uses, see Caria (disambiguation).

Image:Turkey ancient region map caria.JPG Caria (Turkish:Kariye, Greek Καρία; see also List of traditional Greek place names) was a region of Asia Minor, situated south of Ionia, and west of Phrygia and Lycia. The eponymous inhabitants were known as Carians, who had settled in Caria before the Greeks. The name of Caria appears in a number of early languages: Hittite Karkija (a member state of the Assuwa league, ca. 1250 BC), Babylonian Karsa, Elamite and Old Persian Kurka. According to some accounts, the land was originally called "Phoenicia", because a Phoenician colony settled there in early times. Afterwards it is said to have received the name of Caria from Car, a legendary early king of the Carians.

Independent Caria arose as a "Neo-Hittite" kingdom around the 11th century BC, and was incorporated into the Persian Achaemenid empire as the satrapy of Karka in 545 BC. The most important town was Halicarnassus, where its sovereigns reigned. Other major towns were Heraclea, Antiochia, Myndus, Laodicea, Alinda and Alabanda.

Homer's Iliad records that at the time of the Trojan War, the city of Miletus belonged to the Carians, and was allied to the Trojan cause.

Halicarnassus was the location of the famed Mausoleum of Maussollos, one of the Seven Wonders of the World and from which the Romans named any grand tomb a mausoleum. Caria was conquered by Alexander the Great in 334 BC.

Lemprière notes that "As Caria probably abounded in figs, a particular sort has been called Carica, and the words In Care periculum facere, having been proverbially used to signify the encountering of danger in the pursuit of a thing of trifling value."

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