Saleph

Saleph is the classical name given to a river in Cilicia, a region of southern Anatolia in what is today Turkey. The name appears in ancient Greek and Latin texts under variations such as Saleph, Salph, or Salep. In modern scholarship, Saleph is generally identified with the river that is now called the Ceyhan, a major watercourse that runs across the Cilician Plain and empties into the Mediterranean. Although the identification with the Ceyhan is widely accepted, some scholars have proposed alternative identifications with other Cilician rivers.

In antiquity, the Saleph river lay within a culturally diverse and geopolitically active area that saw Hellenistic kingdoms, Roman administration, and later Byzantine governance. The river valley supported agriculture and acted as a corridor for movement between inland routes and coastal towns, contributing to the economic life of the region. The name Saleph also appears in Crusader and medieval Islamic sources, where it was used to reference the river itself or nearby fortifications and settlements that were part of frontier zones.

Today, Saleph survives mainly in historical and geographers’ writings. The modern geographic reference remains the river known today as the Ceyhan in present-day Turkey, although exact identifications can differ across scholarly works. The term continues to appear in discussions of classical geography, Cilician history, and the patchwork of cultural influences that characterized ancient and medieval Anatolia.