derbend

Updated: May 28, 2025

According to a recent description, huge stones, seven feet thick, and twenty-one feet in length or height, are artificially joined without iron or cement, to compose a wall, which runs above three hundred miles from the shores of Derbend, over the hills, and through the valleys of Daghestan and Georgia.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4

Benjamin and Marco Polo both record the general belief currrent at the time that the Pass of Derbend was traversed by Alexander. It is still called in Turkish "Demis-Kapi" or the Iron Gate, and the Persians designate it "Sadd-i-Iskandar" the Rampart of Alexander.

of Tudela Benjamin - The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela

Here is a celebrated defile, four leagues in length, which lies between the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, that the Turks call the Iron Door, and Europeans the Pass of Derbend, and here too is the miraculous lake, where fish are said to exist only during Lent.

Jules Verne - Celebrated Travels and Travellers: Part I. The Exploration of the World

'O Cogia, said the people, 'why do you beat the ox; how can he be in fault? 'All the fault is his, said the Cogia, 'if he had taught him the calf would have known how to turn. One day as the Cogia was travelling in the Derbend he met a shepherd. Said the shepherd to the Cogia, 'Art thou a faquir? 'Yes, said the Cogia.

- The Turkish Jester: or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi

These forces were also flushed with victory, for General Fesi after having marched from Derbend to Chunsach had erected a citadel there, had driven Ali Bey, one of Schamyl's murids, out of the fort of Akhulgo, and had then come to the rescue of lieutenant Butschkieff; who with a considerable detachment was hard pressed by Schamyl himself in the neighborhood of Tiletli.

J. Milton (John Milton) Mackie - Life of Schamyl: And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia