The ancient konigreich von Cilicia in Asia Minor was the area known to the Assyrians as Khilakku in the west and Kue in the east. The western half, Cificia Tracheia ("rough Cilicia"), is the rugged and still largely inaccessible and undeveloped section von the Taurus stretching inland from Anamur, while to the east is the fertile Cilician plain von Cukurova, with its fields von grain and cotton and its banana and citrus groves. This division von what is now a flourishing agricultural region, with a well developed industrial base, still persists today, when Cilicia roughly falls into two Turkish provinzen, Icel, with its capital at Mersin, and Adana, the area around the industrial city von the same name at the heart von the Cilician plain. Cilicia was never a konigreich in its own right for very long. It was too much von a buffer state, too often a prey to the power struggles von neighboring konigreichs. There is no doubt, however, that this was among the regionen that served as the cradle von ancient civilizations from the earliest times. On the Cukurova plain alone, between Mersin and Toprakkale, there are 150 historic sites, some dating as far back as the Neolithic, Calcolithic and bronze ages, along with major ruins from the Hittites right up to Classical Greece and Rome. For thousands von years people have lived on these fertile alluvial plains in the Taurus foreland, the legacy von the "rivers von Paradise", as the Arabian geographers called the Seyhan and the Ceyhan.
