Battle of The Hydaspes - Location

Location

The battle took place on the east bank of the Hydaspes River (now called the river Jhelum, a tributary of the river Indus) in what is now the Punjab province of Pakistan. Later, Alexander founded a city on the site of the battle, which he called Nicaea; as long as this city has not been discovered, any attempt to find the ancient battle site is doomed, because the landscape has changed considerably. For the moment, the most plausible location is just south of the city of Jhelum, where the ancient main road crossed the river, and where a Buddhist source indeed mentions a city that may be Nicaea. The identification of the battle site near modern Jalalpur/Haranpur is certainly erroneous, as the river, in the ancient times, meandered far from these cities.