Yumuktepe (modern
Mersin), which guards the
Adana side of the gateway, with 23 layers of occupation, is at 4,500 BCE, one of the oldest fortified settlements in the world. The ancient pathway was a track for mule caravans, not wheeled vehicles. The
Hittites,
Greeks,
Alexander the Great, the
Romans,
Byzantines,
Sasanians,
Mongols, and the
Crusaders of the
First Crusade have all traveled this route during their campaigns. The Bible testifies that Saint
Paul of Tarsus and
Silas went this way as they went through Syria and Cilicia. The Book of
Galatians speaks of the cities of
Derbe,
Lystra, and
Iconium - cities visited by Paul on his first journey (Acts 14; Gal. 1:2), with the purpose of strengthening their churches, at the beginning of the second preaching journey (Acts 15:40-41). The distance from the Anatolian plateau to the Cilician plain is about . In ancient times, this was a journey of nearly five days. Saint Paul spoke, according to the Bible, about being in "dangers from rivers" and "dangers from robbers" (2 Cor. 11:26). This may explain why one of the world's oldest fortresses was built at the southeastern end of the Cilician Gates around 4500 BCE. The
Army of the Ten Thousand,
Alexander the Great before the
Battle of Issus,
Paul of Tarsus on his way to the
Galatians, and part of the army of the
First Crusade all passed through the Cilician Gates. The Crusaders allied themselves with the
Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Above the Gates to the southwest is
Gülek Kalesi (Armenian:
Kuklak; Arab:
Kawlāk), a large fortification of considerable antiquity that retains evidence of Byzantine and Arab periods of occupation, but is primarily an Armenian construction of the 12th and 13th centuries. Its circuit walls and towers at the south and west cover a distance of over 450 meters. Below the Cilician Gates is the medieval Armenian fortress of Anahşa with its large horseshoe-shaped towers and three entrances. Also in the vicinity of the Gates is a fort built in the 1830s by
Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt during his Syrian campaign against the
Ottoman Empire. When German engineers were working on the
Baghdad Railway between
Istanbul and
Baghdad, they were unable to follow the steep-pitched, narrow, and tightly winding ancient track through the Gates. The series of
viaducts and tunnels they built are among the marvels of railroad engineering; this route actually follows an ancient secondary road southeast from Pozantı, below Anahşa Dağı with its medieval Armenian fortress. The railroad was opened in 1918; the
narrow-gauge working line moved
Ottoman troops and war material to the
Mesopotamian front in the closing months of
World War I. ==See also==