The Darial Gorge is found in the Caucasus in modern day Georgia near the border with Russia. It is at the east base of Mount Kazbek, pierced by the river Terek for a distance of 8 meters between vertical walls of rock (5900 feet). It is mentioned in the Georgian annals under the names of Ralani, Dargani, Darialani; the Persians and Arabs knew it as the Gate of the Alans; Strabo calls it Porta Caucasica and Porta Cumana; Ptolemy, Fortes Sarmatica; it was sometimes known as Portae Caspiae (a name bestowed also on the "gate" or pass beside the Caspian Sea at Derbent); and the Tatars call it Darioly. Being the only available passage across the Caucasus, it has been long fortified -- at least since 150 B.C. In Russian poetry it has been immortalized by Lermontov. The Russian fort, Darial, which guarded this section of the Georgian Military Road, is at the northern end of the gorge, at an altitude of 4746 feet. The Entholinguistic patchwork of the modern Caucasus - CIA map The Caucasus, a region bordering Asia Minor, is located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands. ... Mount Kazbek, one of the chief mountains of the Caucasus, is located in modern-day Georgia, dominating the town of Kazbegi near the border with North Ossetia. ... The Terek (Те́рек) is a major river in the Northern Caucasus, flowing through Georgia and Russia into the Caspian Sea. ... Claudius Ptolemaeus, given contemporary German styling, in a 16th century engraved book frontispiece. ... Caspian Sea viewed from orbit Caspian redirects here. ... Darband is built around a Sassanid fortress, the only one preserved in the world. ... Tatar dance - Tatar (left) fighting with the soldier of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (right). ... Mikhail Lermontov in 1837 Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов), (October 15, 1814–July 27, 1841), a Russian Romantic writer and poet, sometimes called the poet of the Caucasus, was the most important presence in the Russian poetry from Alexander Pushkins death until his own four years later, at the age... The Georgian Military Road (Военно-Грузинская дорога in Russian, or Voyenno-Gruzinskaya doroga) is a historic name of the main route through the Caucasus from Georgia to Russia. ...

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This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. Supporters contend that the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910-1911) represents the sum of human knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century; indeed, it was advertised as such. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...