Everything about Jaxartes totally explained
Syr Darya (; ; ;
, also transliterated
Syrdarya or
Sirdaryo) is a
river in
Central Asia, sometimes known as the
Jaxartes or
Yaxartes from its
Ancient Greek name ὁ Ιαξάρτης. The Greek name is derived from
Old Persian, Yakhsha Arta ("Great Pearly"), a reference to the color of the river's water. In medieval Islamic writings, the river is uniformly know as Sayhoun (سيحون) - after one of the four rivers of Paradise. (
Amu Darya was likewise known as Jayhoun, the name of another one of the four).
The name, which comes from
Persian and has long been used in the East, is a relatively recent one in western writings; prior to the early 20th century, the river was known by various versions of its ancient Greek name. It marked the northernmost limit of
Alexander of Macedon's conquests. Greek historians have claimed that here in
329 BC he founded the city
Alexandria Eschate (literally, "Alexandria the Furthest") as a permanent garrison. The city is now known as
Khujand. In reality, he'd just renamed (and possibly, expanded) the city of
Cyropolis founded by king
Cyrus the Great of
Persia, more than two centuries earlier.
The river rises in two headstreams in the
Tian Shan Mountains (ancient
Mount Imeon) in
Kyrgyzstan and eastern
Uzbekistan -- the
Naryn River and the
Kara Darya River -- and flows for some 2,212 km (1,380 miles) west and north-west Uzbekistan and southern
Kazakhstan to the remains of the
Aral Sea. The Syr Darya drains an area of over 800,000 square kilometres, but no more than 200,000 square kilometres actually contribute water to the river. Its annual flow is a very modest 28 cubic kilometres (23 million
acre feet) per year - half that of its sister river, the Amu Darya.
Along its course, the Syr Darya irrigates the most fertile cotton-growing region in the whole of Central Asia, together with the towns of
Kokand,
Khujand,
Kyzylorda and
Turkestan.
An extensive system of canals, many built in the 18th century by the Uzbek
Khanate of Kokand, spans the regions the river flows through. Massive expansion of irrigation canals during the
Soviet period, to irrigate
cotton fields, wrought ecological carnage to the area, with the river drying up long before reaching the
Aral Sea which, as a result, has shrunk to a small remnant of its former size. With millions of people now settled in these cotton areas (and highly repressive post-Soviet regimes in power in
Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan), it isn't clear how the situation can be rectified.
Further Information
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