From the Indus to the Tigris

by H. W. Bellew

At that period, now eight centuries ago, Sistan comprised all that extensive region drained by the several rivers that converged and emptied their waters into the hámún or “lake basin” of Sistan and its accessory the marsh of Zirrah. According to Ibn Haukal, who wrote in the reign of Mahmúd, this extensive region was known under the names of Zabulistan and Sijistan or Sistan, and comprised the whole of the southern portion of the present kingdom of Afghanistan, or all that portion not included within the limits of Kabulistan. It included the districts of Ghazni, Síbí, Shál, Mastung, and Peshín to the east and south, and those of Zamíndáwar, Ghor, Gháyn, and Nih on the north and west.

The term Sijistan or Sistan applied commonly to the whole of the region thus bounded, and Zabulistan was restricted to its northern parts, whilst the southern were also known by the name of Nímroz, and included the modern Sistan, which represents but a trivial portion of the area included in the Sakistan of the Greeks and the Sagestan or Sijistan of the Arabs. Further, the whole Sijistan country is included in the more extensive region of Khorassan, which comprises all that elevated mountain tract bounded by the valley of the Indus on the east, and that of the Oxus on the north, the salt desert of Kirmán and Yazd on the west, and the sea of Omán on the south.

At the present day it is difficult to define the precise limits of Sistan. The old name of Sagestan or Sijistan it appears applied to the great basin of the hydrographic system that centred in the ancient lakes, and which is represented by the plains of Kandahar and the valleys connected with it through their drainage. It extends eastward to the vicinity of Ghazni, and southward to the plain of Shorawak; whilst to the northward it includes the valleys of the Argandáb and Upper Helmand, called Zamíndáwar, and farther westward those of the Farráh river and the Harút Rúd or Adraskand, which drains the Sabzwár, or, as it is commonly written, Ispzár district.

The modern name of Sistan is applied only to the actual bed of the former lake that at some remote prehistoric period occupied the south-west portion of Afghanistan, and is besides limited par excellence only to a small portion of its area in the immediate vicinity of the present lakes or lagoons formed by the disemboguement of the several rivers converging to this point.

Of this limited area, called hámún, the boundaries have already been described. The more extended area of the great lacustrine basin is clearly marked by a bold coast-line of desert cliffs. Those on the north and east borders are formed by the prolongation westward of the Kandahar steppes, and on the south and south-east by the cliffs and bluffs of the great sandy desert of Balochistan, whilst to the south and west its borders are formed by the hill-skirts of the Sarhadd and Bandán mountains respectively.

The coasts thus indicated present a very irregular outline, ranging from two hundred to four hundred feet above the level of the lacustrine basin, and towards the west and north form long estuaries represented by the valleys of the Helmand, Khásh, Farráh, and Harút rivers. The basin itself extends upwards of two hundred miles from north to south, that is, from the Farráh mountains to those of Sarhadd, and presents a remarkable variation in the level of its surface. Its northern portion, occupied by the two lagoons formed by the convergence in it of the several rivers draining thereto and the intervening and surrounding swamps, is separated from the southern and much lower portion by a tract of elevated waste land, which presents a coast-line similar to that bounding the whole basin, but of much inferior elevation.

Where we saw this coast-line, in the vicinity of Burj Alam, it evidently formed the boundary of a long-deserted delta of the Helmand, the present hámún, and stretched across the plain from east to west, presenting an irregular front of clay banks and bluffs from sixty to eighty feet high. Towards the west the land sinks to a wide channel called Sarshela, or “head ravine.” It runs north and south from the hámún near Koh Khojah to the Godi Zirrah, or “Zirrah hollow,” which occupies the southern portion of the lacustrine district.

In seasons of excessive flood, when the lagoons and surrounding swamps are overfilled, the superfluous waters find a passage through the Sarshela to the Godi Zirrah, the lowest hollow of which is, except in seasons of drought, occupied by a swamp similar to that of the Koh Khojah. We did not visit the Zirrah hollow, and consequently did not see the swamp said to exist there. We were informed, however, that, like the swamps in the northern portion of the basin, it had been dried up owing to the drought of the last four years.

The desiccation of these swamps and the reduced size of the existing lagoons may point to the manner in which the original lake diminished in size and gradually dried up, the main cause in both cases being a diminished volume in the streams terminating at this point. In the general aspect of the country we observed no indications of any cataclysm by which the waters were drained off from this basin. The deposits brought down by the Helmand and other rivers entering at the north of the lake raised its bed in this direction, and displaced the waters farther south; and it is not difficult to understand how they might have been entirely dissipated by the process of evaporation, for they appear to have been spread over the surface in a shallow sea, without the aid of other causes that have obtained during the historic period.

Were the Helmand and other rivers allowed to empty into the hámún the full volume of their floods, they would again cover the whole basin with an uninterrupted sheet of water bordered by swamps, as is now the case in a small portion only of its northern part, but subject to variation in extent and depth by the effects of evaporation and other causes.