Kura (Caspian Sea) emptying into the Caspian Sea at Neftçala. Most of the Kura River runs in the broad and deep valley between the Greater Caucasus and Lesser Caucasus mountains, and the major tributary, the Aras, drains most of the southern Caucasus and the mountain ranges of the extreme northern Middle East. The entirety of Armenia and most of Azerbaijan are drained by the Kura River, but the Kura does not pass through Armenia at all. Also in the Kura watershed are Turkey, Georgia, and a bit of northern Iran. Most of the elevation change in the river occurs within the first .
Black Sea 1570 map of Asia titled from Abraham Ortelius's labels the sea ("Great Sea", compare Latin ). English-language writers of the 18th century often used the name "Euxine Sea" ( or ) to refer to the Black Sea. Edward Gibbon, for instance, calls the sea by this name throughout "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". During the Ottoman Empire period, the Black Sea was called either or , both meaning "the Black Sea" in the Ottoman Turkish. In the tenth-century geography book , which was written in Persian by an unknown author, the Black Sea is