Alexandria Eschate

Alexandria Eschate, meaning Furthest Alexandria, was a city founded by Alexander the Great in August 329 BC at the south-western end of the Fergana Valley, in what is now Tajikistan. It stood on the south bank of the Jaxartes, today called the Syr Darya, at or close to the site of modern Khujand, and it was the most northerly outpost of Alexander's empire in Central Asia. The foundation probably re-used and renamed an earlier Persian settlement, Cyropolis, and Alexander settled retired or wounded veterans there alongside the Greek exiles already living in the region. Because the city was surrounded by Sogdian tribes and about three hundred kilometres from the nearest Greek settlement, its builders raised a wall of roughly six kilometres around it in a matter of days. The Roman writer Curtius indicates that it kept its Greek culture as late as 30 BC.