Nearchus (360-300 BC) was a Macedonian admiral in the service of Alexander the Great. He was the first Greek to visit Bahrain, doing so during a famed voyage from the Indus River to the Persian Gulf.
Biography[]
Nearchus was born in Lato, Crete, Ancient Greece in 360 BC, and his family settled in Amphipolis, Macedonia shortly after Philip II of Macedon's conquest of the city in 357 BC. Nearchus became close friends with Alexander the Great, who appointed him Satrap of Lycia and Pamphylia in 334-333 BC. In 328 BC, he was relieved of his post in order to bring reinforcements to Alexander in Bactria, and, after the siege of Aornus, he was sent into the Indian Subcontinent to find out about Indian elephants. In 326 BC, he was made admiral of the fleet that Alexander had built at Hydaspes, and he took part in a voyage from the Indus to the Persian Gulf, which he recorded in detail. He was the first Greek to visit Bahrain, which he named Tylos, and he founded the town of Arbis; Bahrain's elite soon came to speak Greek and worship Zeus. Nearchus then rejoined Alexander during his crossing of the Gedrosian desert, and he was preparing to lead an invasion fleet to Arabia when Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC. During the Wars of the Diadochi, he served as an advisor to Demetrius I Poliorcetes before retiring to write his history.