The lower course of the Amu Darya

It is believed that the Amu Darya's lower course across the Kara-Kum Desert has gone through several major shifts in the past few thousand years for much of the time, the most recent period being in the 13th century to the late 16th century, the Amu Darya emptied into both the Aral and the Caspian Seas. Sometimes, the flow through the two branches was more or less equal, but often in this period, most of the Amu Darya's flow split to the west and flowed into the Caspian.

In ancient times the river was dammed by at least two large works: one lies near Amuy, at the beginning of the lower course, today called Carjuy, and the other was at Gurganj where the river bifurcated into two beds. Al-Muqaddasi one of the most notable geographers and scholars of his time,originally from Al-Quds (Jerusalem) around  985 AD describes the Gurganj dam as an amazing work of engineering, built all of wood and resembling sea-works in wood and wickerwork.

Just above this point, the river's course splits: a small branch runs north to the Aral Sea, but another larger branch runs west, past the town of Gurganj, into a deep depression called the Sarykamysh, about 155 miles SW of the Aral Sea. This Sarykamysh depression lies about 100 metres deeper than the river's bed at Gurganj. From the Sarykamysh, a dried-up riverbed called the Uzboi runs through the Balkhan hills all the way to the Caspian Sea.

The Aral Sea's level is itself only about 20 metres deeper than river level at Gurganj. Everything depends on the river's level. In times when the larger branch of the Oxus emptied into the Sarykamysh then in effect it became the true basin of the Amu daya not the Aral Sea.

At the Sarkayamysh the larger part of the river's waters end, like those of other desert lakes: evaporating, without exit. However in times past when little irrigation-water was used upriver, the filled basin of the Sarykamysh overflowed and discharged through the Uzboy into the Caspian.

History of the river's several courses:

Present-day back to about 1575 AD: both Jaxartes and Oxus rivers (the Syr Darya and Amu Darya) run to the Aral Sea, as they do today. Around 1575, the Amu darya's course changed.

Evidence: Abulghazi Khan, born 1603 and ruled 1642-63, wrote that the course of the rivers changed thirty years before his birth. Anthony Jenkinson, British trader and diplomat, the envoy of Queen Elizabeth, and the agent of a company founded in England for trading with Moskovia wrote in 1558-59 describing how the Oxus ran in the Uzboi channel but no longer reached the Caspian Sea, and made the prediction that the demands for irrigation would soon lead to a complete desolation of the region.

From 1575 to 1221 AD (the date of the Mongol invasion) the Amu Darya discharged into both the Caspian and the Aral Seas--usually the main branch ran to the Caspian, but during at least one period, a side branch also ran to the Aral. Thus the seas were linked. There are perhaps four courses which this river seems to have followed at various periods. At this time, the river split just above the town of Gurganj; the main branch ran south of the town (coursing westward) filled the Sarykamysh (about 150 miles SW of the Aral Sea) ran through the Uzboi bed SE to a gap in the Balkhan hills (over 100 miles SE of Krasnowodsk) and discharged into the Caspian Sea opposite the group of islands called Oghurtcha or Aghyrtcha.

Evidence: 1) In 1392, Zahir al-din al-Mar'ashi a native of Mazandaran, describes in detail every waterway from Mazandaran to Khwarizm. 2) Shihab al-din 'Umar al-'Umari (d. about 1348) remarks on the authority of witnesses from Khwarizm "On Khwarizm borders ... a country ... Mangyshlaq, a steppe ... separated from the Djaihun (Oxus) by the Ak-Balkan hills north of Khurasan." 3) In the reign of Oldjaitu (1304-16) Hamdallah al-Mustaufi speaks of the caravan route from Gurgan by way of Dahistan (the modern-day Mashhah i Misriyan) to Gurganj, which had just been surveyed and was 110 fars (380 miles) in length between Dahistan and Gurganj--and says on the Uzboi there was a great waterfall, called in Turkish gurledi, roaring; and a side branch of the Amu Daya fell into the Aral Sea--and tells how the discharge of water of the Amu Daya into the Caspian had raised the sea's level so that the peninsula of Abaskun (Pliny's Socanda) was submerged. 4) The historians Marino Sanudo (1325) and al-Bakuwi (beginning of the fifteenth century) confirm this description.

The river changed its course in 1221 because the armies of Genghis Khan destroyed the great dam at Gurganj : record of ibn al-Athir, xii, 257. From the tenth century to 1221, the Amu Darya seems not to have flowed to the Caspian. However the records are vague and contradictory.

Evidence: the earliest is from ibn Khurdadhbih, but is vague because of variants in texts; Ibn al-Raqih at the beginning of the tenth century, tells a legendary and thus unverified story; ibn Rustah (writing between 903 and 913 AD) carefully describes the mouth of the river's main branch, showing that it discharged into the Sarykamysh. Istakhri (about 960 AD) says the river flows into the Aral Sea. Al-Ya'qubi (about 890) however says it falls into the Caspian.

Muqaddasi--the author of the description of the Gurganj dam--circa 985 AD, relates a legend according to which the Uzboi as the Oxus' main branch had once, long ago, carried water (ergo, it did not do so in Muqaddasi's day) and reached the town of Balkhan in Khurasan; however once the inhabitants of Kath (the pre- and early-Muhammedan capital, 30 miles east of Khiva) had diverted the whole course of the river to their easternmost branch for 24 hours, the river did not turn back to the Uzboi channel and the whole Balkhan region was laid waste by lack of irrigation.

According to Byzantine historians, this region then called Balaam was settled before the Muslim conquest as ot already had irrigation then, and the Amu Darya flowed into the Caspian. (It is not possible to settle an entire region without a major river to provide water.)

In high antiquity, Strabo (C.510) and Polybius (x,48) both mention a waterfall of the Amu Darya; this is probably the waterfall of the Uzboy mentioned by Hamdallah.

Evidence: Seleucus of Persia planned to connect the Caspian by a canal with the Black Sea, if a report of the exploration of the Caspian should be favorable. This took place not later than 282 B.C. Xenocles, the gazophylax of the archives of Babylon, had made accessible for study to Patrocles (the agent sent to study the issue) the original documents with observations by Alexander the Great's general staff concerning the problem. The purpose of the project was to develop trade. Strabo xi (c.509 and 518) quotes Aristobulus speaking of the transport of Indian merchandise on the "well navigable Oxus" (in the present day, the river is not navigable; the water-level fluctuates too much) to the Caspian and across the sea and thence through the Caucasus to the Euxinus or Black Sea . . . This plan of Seleucus' implies that the Oxus was known to discharge into the Caspian, else the whole project would fall to the ground. Hence, in the early third century BC the Amu Daya flowed into the Caspian.

Source: Ernst Herzfeld, Zoroaster and His World, vol II, 1947. Ernst Herzfeld, Professor of Oriental Archaeology at the University of Berlin.

A history of the Amu Darya

The Amu Darya (Amu river) is 2,580 km long and drains some 466,200 sq km of land. It is formed by the junction of the Vakhsh and Pandj rivers, which rise in the Pamir mountains of Central Asia.

It flows generally northwest, marking much of the northern border of Afghanistan with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan before flowing through the Kara Kum desert of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and entering into channels that flow into the Aral Sea basin (not the sea itself) through a large fertile delta.  It flows swiftly until it reaches the Kara Kum where its course braids into several channels. The Amu Darya provides much needed water for irrigation, but this heavy draw on its water particularly in the last 50 years (as irrigated lands have expanded) has prevented the Amu Darya from replenishing the Aral Sea. The Kara Kum Canal c.800 km long carries water from the Amu Darya near Kelif across Southern Turkmenistan to Ashgabat and supplements the flow of the Tejen and Murgab rivers. The Amu Darya is paralleled by the Trans-Caspian Rail Road, which lessened the river's importance as a transport route.

The Amu Darya in ancient times was known in Greek and Latin as the Oxus and in Arabic as the Jayhunand. It figured importantly in the history of Persia, Sogd and Bactria and in the campaigns of Alexander the Great and was long regarded historically as the southern boundary of Transoxiana.

The Amu Darya rises in a number of turbulent headwaters; the Panj whose tributaries include the Vaksab, the Pamir Darya, the upper Morgab, and the Kulab Darya which is the source of the river. In the 9th/15th century the upper course of the river was thought to be the Vaksab, though today it is considered to be the Morgab.

The headwaters have been explored only since the 19th century, and the details provided secondhand by the 4th/10th-century Arab geographers do not accord with what is now known. Estakri named six streams, of which only the Vaksab is readily identifiable; others count the “river of Kundoz” (Dergam, Aq Saray) among the headwaters. The last stream to join the river (on the right), 1,175 km from its mouth, is the Sorkan Darya; several other rivers end in the desert before reaching the Amu Darya.

North of Balk the river enters the desert and flows on without tributaries, losing much water through evaporation. The Qara Qum lies on the left bank, to the southwest; and the Qızıl Qum stretches to the northeast, from the right bank.

The Amu Darya then flows in a northwesterly direction towards the Aral Sea; the river-mouth widenin near modern city of Nukus. The Khanates of Khiva and Bukhara lay along the lower course of the river to the 19th and early 20th centuries; in the south, the Amu Darya marked the Russo-Afghan frontier since the treaties of 1886-93, from Basaga in the west 1,100 km to Qaḷʿa-ye Panj in the east. Parts of the lower course of the river today serve as a boundary between Turkmenistan and Uzbekekistan.

The middle reaches of the Amu Darya are 3,570-5,700 m in width and from 1.5-8 m in depth, and are often in spate from April or May to July. The land along its banks, particularly the left bank has been periodically cultivated since the medieval period.

The mountainous upper reaches sometimes freeze over in winter, as do the delta and the lower course from the end of December to the end of March, to a depth of 30 cm on average.

Beyond the town of Kalef, the Amu Darya has changed its course over the centuries.

According to Ptolemy (in the 2nd century A.D.) and Biruni, the river flowed in a westerly direction from modern Kark/Kerki, not northwesterly as at present, and evaporated in the Qara Qum desert.

An ancient river bed can be detected, and still today the Amu Darya occasionally betrays a tendency to break its banks here and spill out to the left. But geological research has shown that the 350 m narrows near the modern town of Pitnyak are so old that the river cannot possibly have shifted its course there since the beginning of the known historical period.

Medieval irrigation canals, beginning just beyond the narrows, were built in the Khorezm region; canals still branch out in various directions, as far as the Soltan Uiz (Oways) Dag, and the rich agriculture of the region depends upon them.

Here, too, are located Janbas Qala, Toprak Qala, and the other pre-Islamic fortresses that were excavated by S. P. Tolstov starting in 1936.

In the 19th century it was suggested that the Amu Darya had flowed through the Ozboy into the Caspian Sea at the time of the Mongol conquest of Gorganj in 618/1221, and had turned back towards Lake Aral only about 1575.

W. Barthold tried to substantiate this thesis with historical evidence, but was disproved by Soviet geologists, who have shown that the Ozboy could never have been the lower reach of the Amu Darya, if only because of their relative size. Other evidence, including traces of the agricultural exploitation of the Ozboy bed in the medieval period, also contradicts Barthold’s view.

But still today the Amu Darya, particularly when in spate, sometimes extends a lateral channel (daryalıq) into the depression of Sarı Qamıs. The historical proofs adduced, themselves subject to varying interpretation, are not sufficient to outweigh the geological facts, yet certain zoological parallels between the Amu Darya and the Ozboy point to a connection between the two river systems, so the “Ozboy problem” is still being argued out amongst scientists.

Arab geographers refered to changes in the lower courses of the river near the Aral Sea; because of the silting up of river beds, the medieval Khwarazmian capital, Kat, was deserted, and the town of Gorganj was abandoned several times. These changes explain the rise of Khiva as the regional capital and the shifting dimensions of the delta (in Turkish Aral) that gives the sea its name.

In the 19th century the Russians settlers started to enlarge the use of the Amu Darya waters for large scale irrigation (for agricultural use) starting the process that has today resulted in the significant lowering of the level of the Aral.

Bibliography :

General: W. Barthold in EI1 I, pp. 339-42.A. Z. V. Toğan in İA I, pp. 419-26. Le Strange, Lands, pp. 433-45. Barthold, Turkestan3, pp. 64-179. B. Spuler, “Der Āmū Darjā. Eine Fluss-Monographie,” in Jean Deny Armağani, Ankara, 1958, pp. 231-48 (with more detailed bibliography). Idem in EI2 I, pp. 454-57. Bol’shaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya II, 1950, pp. 304-06 (with a map of the river). The upper reach: J. Markwart, Wehrōt und Arang, ed. H. H. Schaeder, Leiden, 1938. J. Wood, A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus, 2nd ed., London, 1872 (with a historical and geographical introduction by H. Yule). I. P. Minaev, Svedeniya o stranakh po verkhov’yam Amu Dar’yi, St. Petersburg, 1879. The Özboy problem: M. J. de Goeje, Das alte Bett des Oxus, Leiden, 1875. W. Barthold, Nachrichten über den Aralsee und den unteren Lauf des Amudarja, Leipzig, 1910. V. Lochtin, Reka Amu-Dar’ya i eyo drevnee soedinenie s Kaspiĭskim Morem, St. Petersburg, 1879. D. D. Bukinich, Starye rusla Oksa i Amu-dar’inskaya problema, Moscow, 1906. S. P. Tolstov, “Arkheologo-etnograficheskaya ekspeditsiya v Khorezm 1955/56 gg.,” Sovetskaya Arkheologiya, 1954-55, pp. 106-33 (also deals with the former course of the Oxus and Jaxartes). Geographical and geological information: Zapiski Imperatorskago Russkago Geograficheskago Obshchestva po obshcheĭ geografii IV, IX and XVII, XIV, XX, XXIII, St. Petersburg, 1877-81. L. A. Molchanov, “Proizkhozhdenie presnovodnykh ozyor Uzboya,” Izvestiya Gosudarstvennogo Gidrologicheskogo Instituta 13, 1929, pp. 43-57. A. S. Kes’, “Ruslo Uzboya i ego genezis,” Trudy Instituta Geografii Akademii Nauk SSSR 30, 1939. S. P. Tolstov, A. S. Kes’ and T. A. Zhdanko, “Istoriya srednevekovogo sarykamyshskogo ozera,” in Voprosy geomorfologii i paleografii Azii, Moscow, 1955, pp. 37-75.