AMU
DARYA
Amu
Darya, Oxus, Jayhoun, de Amu Sind, Vaksu, Amu River :
![](640px-Amudaryasunset.jpg)
Looking
at the Amu Darya from Turkmenistan
![](640px-Aral_Sea_watershed.jpg)
Map
of area around the Aral Sea. Aral Sea boundaries are c. 2008. The
Amu Darya drainage basin is in orange, and the Syr Darya basin in
yellow
Etymology
: Named for the city of Amul (now Türkmenabat)
Location :
Countries : AfghanistanTajikistanTurkmenistanUzbekistan
Region : Central Asia
Physical characteristics :
Source : Pamir River/Panj River
• location : Lake Zorkul, Pamir Mountains, Tajikistan
• coordinates : 37°27'04 N 73°34'21 E
• elevation : 4,130 m (13,550 ft)
2nd source : Kyzyl-Suu/Vakhsh River
• location: Alay Valley, Pamir Mountains, Kyrgyzstan
• coordinates : 39°13'27?N 72°55'26?E
• elevation : 4,525 m (14,846 ft)
Source Confluence : Kerki
• location : Tajikistan
• coordinates : 37°06'35 N 68°18'44 E
• elevation : 326 m (1,070 ft)
Mouth : Aral Sea
• location : Amudarya Delta, Uzbekistan
• coordinates : 44°06'30 N 59°40'52 E
• elevation : 28 m (92 ft)
Length : 2,620 km (1,630 mi)
Basin size : 534,739 km2 (206,464 sq mi)
Discharge :
• average : 2,525 m3/s (89,200 cu ft/s)[1]
• minimum : 420 m3/s (15,000 cu ft/s)
• maximum : 5,900 m3/s (210,000 cu ft/s)
Basin features :
Tributaries :
• left : Panj River
• right : Vakhsh River, Surkhan Darya, Sherabad River,
Zeravshan River
The Amu Darya[a] (also called the Amu, Amo River, or Jay-hoon, and
historically known by its Latin name Oxus) is a major river in Central
Asia and Afghanistan. Rising in the Pamir Mountains, north of the
Hindu Kush, the Amu Darya is formed by the confluence of the Vakhsh
and Panj rivers, in the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve on the border
between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and flows from there north-westwards
into the southern remnants of the Aral Sea. In its upper course,
the river forms part of Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. In ancient history, the river was
regarded as the boundary of Greater Iran with "Turan",
which roughly corresponded to present-day Central Asia.
Names
:
![](615px-Amu_darya_delta.jpg)
Amu
Darya delta from space
In classical antiquity, the river was known as the Oxus in Latin
and Ôxos in Greek — a clear derivative of Vakhsh, the
name of the largest tributary of the river. In Vedic Sanskrit, the
river is also referred to as Vaksu. The Brahmanda Purana refers
to the river as Chaksu. The Avestan texts too refer to the River
as Yakhsha/Vakhsha (and Yakhsha Arta ("upper Yakhsha")
referring to the Jaxartes/Syr Darya twin river to Amu Darya). In
Middle Persian sources of the Sassanid period the river is known
as Wehrod (lit. 'good river'). Amu Darya, has a flow of about 70
cubic kilometres per year on average.
The
name Amu is said to have come from the medieval city of Amul, (later,
Chahar Joy/Charjunow, and now known as Türkmenabat), in modern
Turkmenistan, with Darya being the Persian word for "river".
Medieval Arabic and Islamic sources call the river Jayhoun (Romanized:
Jayhun; also Jaihun, Jayhoon, or Dzhaykhun) which is derived from
Gihon, the biblical name for one of the four rivers of the Garden
of Eden. River Amu Darya passes through one of the world's highest
deserts.
As
the river Gozan :
Western travelers in the 19th century mentioned that one of the
names by which the river was known in Afghanistan was Gozan, and
that this name was used by Greek, Mongol, Chinese, Persian, Jewish,
and Afghan historians. However, this name is no longer used.[citation
needed]
"Hara
(Bokhara) and to the river of Gozan (that is to say, the Amu, (called
the Oxus by Europeans )) ..."
"the Gozan River is the River Balkh, i.e. the Oxus or the Amu
Darya ..."
"... and were brought into Halah (modern day Balkh), and Habor
(which is Pesh Habor or Peshawar), and Hara (which is Herat), and
to the river Gozan (which is the Ammoo, also called Jehoon) ..."
Description :
![](640px-Amudaryamap.jpg)
Map
of the Amu Darya watershed
The
river's total length is 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) and its drainage
basin totals 534,739 square kilometres (206,464 sq mi) in area,
providing a mean discharge of around 97.4 cubic kilometres (23.4
cu mi) of water per year. The river is navigable for over 1,450
kilometres (900 mi). All of the water comes from the high mountains
in the south where annual precipitation can be over 1,000 mm (39
in). Even before large-scale irrigation began, high summer evaporation
meant that not all of this discharge reached the Aral Sea –
though there is some evidence the large Pamir glaciers provided
enough meltwater for the Aral to overflow during the 13th and 14th
centuries.
Since
the end of the 19th century there have been four different claimants
as the true source of the Oxus :
•
The Pamir River, which emerges from Lake Zorkul (once also known
as Lake Victoria) in the Pamir Mountains (ancient Mount Imeon),
and flows west to Qila-e Panja, where it joins the Wakhan River
to form the Panj River.
• The Sarhad or Little Pamir River flowing
down the Little Pamir in the High Wakhan
•Lake Chamaktin, which discharges to the
east into the Aksu River, which in turn becomes the Murghab and
then Bartang rivers, and which eventually joins the Panj Oxus branch
350 kilometres downstream at Roshan Vomar in Tajikistan.
• An ice cave at the end of the Wakhjir valley,
in the Wakhan Corridor, in the Pamir Mountains, near the border
with Pakistan.
![](Afghanistan_-_Tajikistan_Bridge_Completion.jpg)
Afghanistan
- Tajikistan bridge over the Darya
A glacier turns into the Wakhan River and joins the Pamir River
about 50 kilometres (31 mi) downstream. Bill Colegrave's expedition
to Wakhan in 2007 found that both claimants 2 and 3 had the same
source, the Chelab stream, which bifurcates on the watershed of
the Little Pamir, half flowing into Lake Chamaktin and half into
the parent stream of the Little Pamir/Sarhad River. Therefore, the
Chelab stream may be properly considered the true source or parent
stream of the Oxus. The Panj River forms the border of Afghanistan
and Tajikistan. It flows west to Ishkashim where it turns north
and then north-west through the Pamirs passing the Tajikistan–Afghanistan
Friendship Bridge. It subsequently forms the border of Afghanistan
and Uzbekistan for about 200 kilometres (120 mi), passing Termez
and the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge. It delineates
the border of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan for another 100 kilometres
(62 mi) before it flows into Turkmenistan at Atamurat. It flows
across Turkmenistan south to north, passing Türkmenabat, and
forms the border of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan from Halkabat. It
is then split by the Tuyamuyun Hydro Complex into many waterways
that used to form the river delta joining the Aral Sea, passing
Urgench, Dasoguz, and other cities, but it does not reach what is
left of the sea any more and is lost in the desert. Use of water
from the Amu Darya for irrigation has been a major contributing
factor to the shrinking of the Aral Sea since the late 1950s. Historical
records state that in different periods, the river flowed into the
Aral Sea (from the south), into the Caspian Sea (from the east),
or both, similar to the Syr Darya (Jaxartes, in Ancient Greek).
Watershed
:
![](640px-Bridge.Amu.Darya.Urgench.jpg)
Pontoon
Bridge on the Amu River near Urgench, in 2014 it was replaced by
the stationary bridge
The 534,769 square kilometres (206,475 sq mi) of the Amu Darya drainage
basin include most of Tajikistan, the southwest corner of Kyrgyzstan,
the northeast corner of Afghanistan, a narrow portion of eastern
Turkmenistan and the western half of Uzbekistan. Part of the Amu
Darya basin divide in Tajikistan forms that country's border with
China (in the east) and Pakistan (to the south). About 61% of the
drainage lies within Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, while
39% is in Afghanistan.
The
abundant water flowing in the Amu Darya comes almost entirely from
glaciers in the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan, which, standing above
the surrounding arid plain, collect atmospheric moisture which otherwise
would probably escape somewhere else. Without its mountain water
sources, the Amu Darya would not exist—because it rarely rains
in the lowlands through which most of the river flows. Of the total
drainage area only about 200,000 square kilometres (77,000 sq mi)
actively contribute water to the river. This is because many of
the river's major tributaries (especially the Zeravshan River) have
been diverted, and much of the river's drainage is arid. Throughout
most of the steppe, the annual rainfall is about 300 millimetres
(12 in).
History
:
![](635px-BactriaMap.jpg)
Ancient
Bactria
![](512px-Homage.jpg)
Baqi
Chaghanyani pays homage to Babur beside the Amu Darya river, AD
1504
The ancient Greeks called the Amu Darya the Oxus. In ancient times,
the river was regarded [by whom?] as the boundary between Greater
Iran and Turan. The river's drainage lies in the area between the
former empires of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, although
they occurred at very different times. When the Mongols came to
the area, they used the water of the Amu Darya to flood Konye-Urgench.
One southern route of the Silk Road ran along part of the Amu Darya
northwestward from Termez before going westwards to the Caspian
Sea.
It
is believed that the Amu Darya's course across the Karakum Desert
has gone through several major shifts in the past few thousand years.
Much of the time – most recently from the 13th century to
the late 16th century – the Amu Darya emptied into both the
Aral and the Caspian Seas, reaching the latter via a large distributary
called the Uzboy River. The Uzboy splits off from the main channel
just south of the river's delta. Sometimes the flow through the
two branches was more or less equal, but often most of the Amu Darya's
flow split to the west and flowed into the Caspian.
People
began to settle along the lower Amu Darya and the Uzboy in the 5th
century, establishing a thriving chain of agricultural lands, towns,
and cities. In about AD 985, the massive Gurganj Dam at the bifurcation
of the forks started to divert water to the Aral. Genghis Khan's
troops destroyed the dam in 1221, and the Amu Darya shifted to distributing
its flow more or less equally between the main stem and the Uzboy.
But in the 18th century, the river again turned north, flowing into
the Aral Sea, a path it has taken since. Less and less water flowed
down the Uzboy. When Russian explorer Bekovich-Cherkasski surveyed
the region in 1720, the Amu Darya did not flow into the Caspian
Sea anymore.
![](640px-KarazinNN_PereprTurkOtrARTM.jpg)
Russian
troops crossing Amu Darya, c. 1873
By the 1800s, the ethnographic makeup of the region was described
by Peter Kropotkin as the communities of "the vassal Khanates
of Maimene, Khulm, Kunduz, and even the Badakshan and Wahkran."
An Englishman, William Moorcroft, visited the Oxus around 1824 during
the Great Game period. Another Englishman, a naval officer called
John Wood, came with an expedition to find the source of the river
in 1839. He found modern-day Lake Zorkul, called it Lake Victoria,
and proclaimed he had found the source. Then, the French explorer
and geographer Thibaut Viné collected a lot of information
about this area during five expeditions between 1856 and 1862.
![](vine.jpg)
French
geographer Thibaut Viné
The question of finding a route between the Oxus valley and India
has been of concern historically. A direct route crosses extremely
high mountain passes in the Hindu Kush and isolated areas like Kafiristan.
Some in Britain feared that the Empire of Russia, which at the time
wielded great influence over the Oxus area, would overcome these
obstacles and find a suitable route through which to invade British
India – but this never came to pass. The area was taken over
by Russia during the Russian conquest of Turkestan.
The
Soviet Union became the ruling power in the early 1920s and expelled
Mohammed Alim Khan. It later put down the Basmachi movement and
killed Ibrahim Bek. A large refugee population of Central Asians,
including Turkmen, Tajiks and Uzbeks, fled to northern Afghanistan.
In the 1960s and 1970s the Soviets started using the Amu Darya and
the Syr Darya to irrigate extensive cotton fields in the Central
Asian plain. Before this time, water from the rivers was already
being used for agriculture, but not on this massive scale. The Qaraqum
Canal, Karshi Canal, and Bukhara Canal were among the larger of
the irrigation diversions built. However, the Main Turkmen Canal,
which would have diverted water along the dry Uzboy River bed into
central Turkmenistan, was never built. The 1970s, in the course
of the Soviet–Afghan War, Soviet forces used the valley to
invade Afghanistan through Termez. The Soviet Union fell in the
1990s and Central Asia split up into the many smaller countries
that lie within or partially within the Amu Darya basin.
During
the Soviet era, a resource-sharing system was instated in which
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan shared water originating from the Amu
and Syr Daryas with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in
summer. In return, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan received Kazakh, Turkmen,
and Uzbek coal, gas, and electricity in winter. After the fall of
the Soviet Union this system disintegrated and the Central Asian
nations have failed to reinstate it. Inadequate infrastructure,
poor water-management, and outdated irrigation methods all exacerbate
the issue.
Siberian
Tiger Introduction Project :
The Caspian tiger used to occur along the river's banks. After its
extirpation, the Darya's delta was suggested as a potential site
for the introduction of its closest surviving relative, the Siberian
tiger. A feasibility study was initiated to investigate if the area
is suitable and if such an initiative would receive support from
relevant decision makers. A viable tiger population of about 100
animals would require at least 5,000 km2 (1,900 sq mi) of large
tracts of contiguous habitat with rich prey populations. Such habitat
is not available at this stage and cannot be provided in the short
term. The proposed region is therefore unsuitable for the reintroduction,
at least at this stage.
Literature
:
But the majestic River floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
Into the frosty starlight, and there moved,
Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste,
Under the solitary moon: — he flowed
Right for the polar star, past Orgunjè,
Brimming, and bright, and large: then sands begin
To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
And split his currents; that for many a league
The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles —
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere,
A foiled circuitous wanderer: — till at last
The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
~ Matthew Arnold, Sohrab and Rustum
The
Oxus river, and Arnold's poem, fire the imaginations of the children
who adventure with ponies over the moors of the West Country in
the 1930s children's book The Far-Distant Oxus. There were two sequels,
Escape to Persia and Oxus in Summer.
Robert
Byron's 1937 travelogue, The Road to Oxiana, describes its author's
journey from the Levant through Persia to Afghanistan, with the
Oxus as his stated goal.[citation needed]
George
MacDonald Fraser's Flashman at the Charge, (1973), places Flashman
on the Amu Darya and the Aral Sea during the (fictitious) Russian
advance on India during The Great Game period.[citation needed]
![](Amu_Darya_Panorama.jpg)
Panorama
of Amu Darya River from 2016-04-06
Source
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Amu_Darya