Road station

Calcida

Qinnasrin, قنسرين

Calcida is Chalcis on the Belus, at Qinnasrin, one of the Syrian cities credited to Seleucus Nicator. Qinnasrin, the eagle's nest, is the older native name, and it returned after the Arab conquest, when the town became the capital of northern Syria and a great military colony, until Aleppo outgrew it; the Turks called it Old Aleppo. Earlier the Persian king Chosroes had made it buy itself free with two hundred pounds of gold. The map shows it twice, and its twenty-nine miles on to Beroea are too many: the Roman register of routes has eighteen.

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