Cilicia

Ancient district of southern Asia Minor, bounded by the Taurus and Anti-Taurus Mountain Ranges, and the Mediterranean Sea.The area was conquered by Cyrus and became a satrapy of Persian empire, 6th-4th centuries BCE. In the 4th century it came successively under Macedonian and Seleucid rule. Cilicia was later conquered by Romans, becoming a Roman province in the first century BCE. Muslim Arabs occupied eastern Cilicia from the 7th century CE until 964, when Nicephorus II Phocas reconquered it for Byzantium. It became an independent Armenian principality known as Lesser Armenia; it joined the Crusaders against the Greeks. Conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1515. Part of Cilicia was awarded to French Syria after World War I by the Treaty of Sèvres but France abandoned its claims in 1921 in the face of Turkish resistance. The areas has many noteworthy early Christian monuments.