City
Spasinucara
Mohammere (Miller)
Listen to the story
Spasinucara hides the name Charax Spasinu, the town of Hyspaosines, near the mouth of the Tigris. Alexander the Great founded a harbour here as Alexandria. Floods destroyed it, Antiochus the Fourth rebuilt it as Antiochia, and when the waters struck again a local ruler, Hyspaosines, raised it on an artificial hill behind dams. The geographer Isidorus was born here, and the Roman writer Pliny noted how river silt pushed the coast ever farther away. The map splits the name around its symbol, and the copyist may have taken the final letter for a distance figure. It was long placed at Khorramshahr in Iran, but the exact site remains disputed.