KABUL RIVER, a river of Afghanistan, 300 main length.
Russia, Persia, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, India and China have all revised their borders, and with the revision the political relations between these countries have acquired a new and more assured basis.
Above the crossing-point of the Russian Trans-Caspian railway at Charjui, the main channel of the Oxus river becomes the northern boundary of Afghanistan, separating that country from Russia, and so continues to its source in Victoria Lake of the Great Pamir.
Proc. R.G.S., 1879; Dr Bellew, Afghanistan and the Afghans (London, 1879); Nicolas Prjevalski, " Explorations in Asia," see vols.
With the completion of the surveys of Baluchistan and Makran much light has also been thrown on the ancient connexion between east and west; and the final settlement of the southern galuch- boundaries of Afghanistan has led to the reopening of istan and one at least of the old trade routes between Seistan Makran.
They seem almost entirely to have exhausted their northward velocity by the time they have reached the northern extremity of the great Indian plain; they are not felt on the table-lands of Afghanistan, and hardly penetrate into the Indus basin or the ranges of the Himalaya, by which mountains, and those which branch off from them into the Malay peninsula, they are prevented from continuing their progress in the direction originally imparted to them.
In Afghanistan, Persia, Asia Minor and Syria, winter and spring appear to be the chief seasons of condensation.
It includes the peninsula of Arabia, the shores of the Persian Gulf, south Persia, and Afghanistan and Baluchistan.
Among the more mountainous regions of the south-western part of Arabia, known as Arabia Felix, the summits of which rise to 6000 or 7000 ft., the rainfall is sufficient to develop a more luxuriant vegetation, and the valleys have a flora like that of similarly situated parts of southern Persia, and the less elevated parts of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, partaking of the characters of that of the hotter Mediterranean region.
Proc. R.G.S., 1887; Henry Lansdell, Through Central Asia (London, 1887); Archibald Colquhoun, Report on Railway Connexion between Burma and China (London, 1887); Major C. Yate, Northern Afghanistan (Edinburgh, 1888); Captain F.
Seleucus entered the Punjab, but felt himself obliged in 302 to conclude a peace with Chandragupta, by which he ceded large districts of Afghanistan in return for 500 elephants.
Very little is known about the town, which is the trade centre of a considerable district, including Kataghan, where the best horses in Afghanistan are bred.
SABZAWAR, a town of Afghanistan, situated at an elevation of 3550 ft.
Where the Oxus river takes its great bend to the north from Ishkashim, the breadth of the Afghan territory intervening between that river and the main water-divide of the Hindu Kush is not more than 10 or 12 m.; and east of the Pamir extension of Afghanistan, where the Beyik Pass crosses the Sarikol range and drops into the Taghdumbash Pamir, there is but the narrow width of the Karachukar valley between the Sarikol and the Murtagh.
The same principle of maintaining an intervening width of neutral territory between the two countries is definitely established throughout the eastern borders of Afghanistan, along the full length of which a definite boundary has been demarcated to the point where it touches the northern limits of Baluchistan on the Gomal river.
From the Gomal Baluchistan itself becomes an intervening state between British India and Afghanistan, and the dividing line between Baluchistan and Afghanistan is laid down with all the precision employed on the more northerly sections of the demarcation.
This rapid absorption of the khanates brought Russia into close proximity to Afghanistan, and the reception of Kaufmann's emissaries by the Amir was a main cause of the British war with Afghanistan in 1878.
PAGHMAN, a small district of Afghanistan to the west of Kabul, lying under the Paghman branch of the Hindu Kush range.
The Kabul (ancient Kophes), which is the most important (although not the largest) river in Afghanistan, rises at the foot of the Unai pass leading over the Sanglakh range, an offshoot of the Hindu Kush towards Bamian and Afghan Turkestan.
Its basin forms the province of Kabul, which includes all northern Afghanistan between the Hindu Kush and the Safed Koh ranges.
Between Kuhsan and Zulfikar it forms the boundary between Afghanistan and Persia, and from Zulfikar to Sarakhs between Russia and Persia.
Without the pilgrims who come to visit it, Meshed would be a poor place, but lying on the eastern confines of Persia, close to Afghanistan, Russian Central Asia and Transcaspia, at the point where a number of trade routes converge, it is very important politically, and the British and Russian governments have maintained consulates-general there since 1889.
2 9 a of Alexander II.'s reign her domination had been firmly established throughout nearly the whole of the vast expanse of territory lying between Siberia on the north and Persia and Afghanistan on the south, and stretching without interruption from the eastern coast of the Caspian to the Chinese frontier.
These useful labours were interrupted in 1838 by complications in Afghanistan, which excited the fears.
Others of the more important totals are: France 95,000 (besides Algeria 63,000 and Tunis 62,000); Italy 52,000; Persia 49,000; Egypt 39,000; Bulgaria 36,000; Argentine Republic 30,000; Tripoli 19,000; Turkestan and Afghanistan 14,000; Switzerland and Belgium each 12,000; Mexico 90oO; Greece 8000; Servia 6000; Sweden and Cuba each 4000; Denmark 3500; Brazil and Abyssinia (Falashas) each 3000; Spain and Portugal 2500; China and Japan 2000.
Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Iran or Persia, Armenia and the provinces of Asia Minor occupy this high region, with which they are nearly conterminous.
Viewed as a whole, the eastern half of this region, comprising Persia, Afghanistan and Baluchistan, is poor and unproductive.
They reach through Extension Afghanistan and Baluchistan to the eastern districts of o ofge: Persia, and along the coast of Makran to that of Arabia.
The Afghan war of 1878-80; the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission of 1884-1885; the occupation of Gilgit and Chitral; the extension of boundaries east and north of Afghanistan, and again, between Baluchistan and Persia - these, added to the opportunities afforded by the systematic survey of Baluchistan which has been steadily progressing since 1880 - combined to produce a series of geographical maps which extend from the Oxus to the Indus, and from the Indus to the Euphrates.
Every pass of importance is known and recorded; every route of significance has been explored and mapped; Afghanistan has assumed a new political entity by the demarcation of a boundary; the value of Herat and of the Pamirs as bases of aggression has been assessed, and the whole intervening space of mountain and plain thoroughly examined.
It thus places a broad width of independent territory between the boundaries of British India (which have remained practically, though not absolutely, untouched) and Afghanistan; and this independent belt includes Swat, Bajour and a part of the Nlohmand territory north of the Kabul river.
Within this agency there are districts as independent as any in Afghanistan, but the political status of the province as a whole is almost precisely that of the native states of the Indian peninsula.
'This belt includes Asia Minor, Persia, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Himalayas, the Tian-shan, and, although they are very different in direction, the Burmese ranges.
The greater part of western Asia, including the basin of the Obi, the drainage area of the Aral Sea, together with Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Persia and Arabia, was covered by the sea during the later stages of the Cretaceous period; but a considerable part 3f this region was probably dry land in Jurassic times.
Marine Tertiary beds occur in Burma; in the Himalayas and in south Tibet there is a nearly complete series of marine deposits from the Carboniferous to the Eocene; in Afghanistan the Mesozoic beds are in part marine and in part fluviatile.
This belt, which embraces Asia Minor, northern Persia, Afghanistan, and the southern slopes of the Himalaya, from its elevation has a temperate climate, and throughout it the rainfall is sufficient to maintain a vigorous vegetation, while the summers, though hot, and the winters, though severe, are not extreme.
The flora of the northern part of Afghanistan approximates to that of the contiguous western Himalaya.
Quercus Ilex, the evergreen oak of southern Europe, is found in forests as far east as the Sutlej, accompanied with other European forms. In the higher parts of Afghanistan and Persia Boraginaceae and thistles abound; gigantic Umbelliferae, such as Ferula, Galbanum, Dorema, Bubon, Peucedanum, Prangos, and others, also characterize the same districts, and some of them extend into Tibet.
The Turks are Mahommedans; their tribes extend up the Oxus to the borders of Afghanistan and Persia, and to the Caspian, and under the name of Kirghiz into Russia, and their language is spoken over a large part of western Asia.
The name of Aryan has been given to the races speaking languages derived from, or akin to, the ancient form of Sanskrit, who now occupy the temperate zone extending from the Mediterranean, across the highlands of Asia Minor, Persia and Afghanistan, to India.
These Tajiks (as they are usually called) form the underlying population of Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Badakshan, and their language (in the central districts of Asia) is found to contain words of Aryan or Sanskrit derivation which are not known in Persian.
The general results of recent inquiry into the ethnography of Afghanistan is to support the general correctness of Bellew's theories of the origin of the Afghan races.
The first empire, called Maurya,reached its greatest extent in the time of Asoka (264-227 B.C.), who ruled from Afghanistan to Madras.
The map of Afghanistan in this work).
In the case of Persia and Afghanistan we are still dependent upon compilations such as a Russian staff map (1:840,000, published in 1886), Colonel Sir T.
The settlement of boundaries in northern Afghanistan (1883) and in Seistan (1870) has necessitated surveys of some interest.
Aitchison, however, gathered in the Hazardarakht ravine in Afghanistan a form with different-shaped fruit from that of the almond; being larger and flatter.
Aitchison also mentions the almond as wild in some parts of Afghanistan, where it is known to the natives as "beda,m," the same word that they apply to the cultivated almond.
Thus the botanical evidence seems to indicate that the wild almond is the source of cultivated almonds, peaches and nectarines, and consequently that the peach was introduced from Asia Minor or Persia, whence the name Persica given to the peach; and Aitchison's discovery in Afghanistan of a form which reminded him of a wild peach lends additional force to this view.
Though now cultivated in India, and almost wild in some parts of the northwest, and, as we have seen, probably also in Afghanistan, it has no Sanskrit name; it is not mentioned in the Hebrew text of the Scriptures, nor in the earliest Greek times.
In the former sense the native rulers of India in the past, like the amir of Afghanistan to-day, received visitors and conducted business in durbar.
To N.E., has a length of about 290 m., and ends some distance beyond Bujnurd in northern Khorasan, where it joins the Ala Dagh range, which has a direction to the S.E., and, continuing with various appellations to northern Afghanistan, unites with the Paropamisus.
MAZAR -I- Sharif, a town of Afghanistan, the capital of the province of Afghan Turkestan.
Famelicus), whose range extends apparently from Egypt and Somaliland through Palestine and Persia into Afghanistan, seems to form a connecting link between the more typical foxes and the small African species properly known as fennecs.
BADAKSHAN, including Wakhan, a province on the northeast frontier of Afghanistan, adjoining Russian territory.
In 1017 he was taken by Malhmud of Ghazni to Afghanistan, where he remained until his death in 1048.
As the river is here the northern boundary of Afghanistan, and the crest of the Hindu Kush the southern boundary, this distance represents the width of the Afghan kingdom at that point.
This spur carries the boundary of Afghanistan southwards to Arnawai (some 50 m.
Regia, the common walnut, a native of the mountains of Greece, of Armenia, of Afghanistan and the north-west Himalayas.
He then allowed the military authorities to push forward in the direction of Afghanistan, until in March 1885 an engagement took place between Russian and Afghan forces at Panjdeh.
Baluchistan can no longer be regarded as a distinct entity amongst Asiatic nations, such as Afghanistan undoubtedly is.
Thus they make Mer y a sort of watch tower over the entrance into Afghanistan on the north-west and at the same time create a stepping-stone or etape between north-east Persia and the states of Bokhara and Samarkand.
