Maeander River

The Büyük Menderes River (historically the Maeander or Meander); Turkish: Büyük Menderes Irmağı, Ancient Greek: Μαίανδρος, Maíandros) is a river in southwestern Turkey. It rises in west central Turkey near Dinar before flowing west through the Büyük Menderes graben until reaching the Aegean Sea in the proximity of the ancient Ionian city Miletus. The word "meander" is used to describe a winding pattern, after the river (see below). The Maeander was a celebrated river of Caria in Asia Minor. It appears earliest in the Catalog of Trojans of Homer's Iliad along with Miletus and Mycale. The river has its sources not far from Celaenae in Phrygia (now Dinar), where it gushed forth in a park of Cyrus. According to some its sources were the...