BADAJOZ (formerly sometimes written Badajos), a frontier province of western Spain, formed in 1833 of districts taken from the province of Estremadura (q.v.), and bounded on the N. by Cáceres, E. by Cordova and Ciudad Real, S. by Seville and Huelva, and W. by Portugal. Pop. (1900) 520,246; area, 8451 sq. m. Badajoz is thus the largest province of the whole kingdom. Although in many districts there are low ranges of hills, the surface is more often a desolate and monotonous plain, flat or slightly undulating. Its one large river is the Guadiana, which traverses the north of the province from east to west, fed by many tributaries; but it is only at certain seasons that the river-beds fill with any considerable volume of water, and the Guadiana may frequently be forded without difficulty. The climate shows great extremes of heat in summer and of cold in winter, when fierce north and north-west winds blow across the plains. In the hot months intermittent fevers are prevalent in the Guadiana valley. The rainfall is scanty in average years, and only an insignificant proportion of the land is irrigated, while the rest is devoted to pasture, or covered with thin bush and forest. Agriculture, and the cultivation of fruit, including the vine and olive, are thus in a very backward condition; but Badajoz possesses more livestock than any other Spanish province. Its acorn-fed swine are celebrated throughout Spain for their hams and bacon, and large herds of sheep and goats thrive where the pasture is too meagre for cattle. The exploitation of the mineral resources of Badajoz is greatly hindered by lack of water and means of communication; in 1903, out of nearly 600 mines registered only 26 were at work. Their output consisted of lead, with very small quantities of copper. The local industries are not of much importance: they comprise manufactures of woollen and cotton stuffs of a coarse description, soaps, oils, cork and leather. The purely commercial interests are more important than the industrial, because of the transit trade to and from Portugal through no less than seven custom-houses. Many parts of the province are inaccessible except by road, and the roads are ill-made, ill-kept and wholly insufficient. The main line of the Madrid-Lisbon railway passes through Villanueva de la Serena, Mérida and Badajoz; at Mérida it is joined by the railways going north to Cáceres and south to Zafra, where the lines from Huelva and Seville unite. After Badajoz, the capital (pop. (1900) 30,899), the principal towns are Almendralejo (12,587), Azuaga (14,192), Don Benito (16,565), Jerez de los Caballeros (10,271), Mérida (11,168) and Villanueva de la Serena (13,489); these, and also the historically interesting village of Albuera, are described in separate articles. Other small towns, chiefly important as markets for agricultural produce, are Albuquerque (9030), Cabeza del Buey (7566), Campanario (7450), Fregenal de la Sierra (9615), Fuente de Cantos (8483), Fuente del Maestre (6934), Llerena (7049), Montijo (7644), Oliva de Jerez (8348), Olivenza (9066), San Vicente de Alcántara (7722), and Villafranca de los Barros (9954). Very few inhabitants emigrate from this province, where the birth-rate considerably exceeds the death-rate. Education, even primary, is in a very backward condition.
BADAJOZ, the capital of the Spanish province described above; situated close to the Portuguese frontier, on the left
bank of the river Guadiana, and the Madrid-Lisbon railway. Pop. (1900) 30,899. Badajoz is the see of a bishop, and the official residence of the captain-general of Estremadura. It occupies a slight eminence, crowned by the ruins of a Moorish castle, and overlooking the Guadiana. A strong wall and bastions, with a broad moat and outworks, and forts on the surrounding heights, give the city an appearance of great strength. The river, which flows between the castle-hill and the powerfully armed fort of San Cristobál, is crossed by a magnificent granite bridge, originally built in 1460, repaired in 1597 and rebuilt in 1833. The whole aspect of Badajoz recalls its stormy history; even the cathedral, built in 1258, resembles a fortress, with massive embattled walls. Badajoz was the birthplace of the statesman Manuel de Godoy, duke of Alcúdia (1767-1851), and of the painter Luis de Morales (1509-1586). Two pictures by Morales, unfortunately retouched in modern times, are preserved in the cathedral. Owing to its position the city enjoys a considerable transit trade with Portugal; its other industries include the manufacture of linen, woollen and leather goods, and of pottery. It is not mentioned by any Roman historian, and first rose to importance under Moorish rule. In 1031 it became the capital of a small Moorish kingdom, and, though temporarily held by the Portuguese in 1168, it retained its independence until 1229, when it was captured by Alphonso IX. of Leon. As a frontier fortress it underwent many sieges. It was beleaguered by the Portuguese in 1660, and in 1705 by the Allies in the War of the Spanish Succession. During the Peninsular War Badajoz was unsuccessfully attacked by the French in 1808 and 1809; but on the 10th of March 1811, the Spanish commander, José Imaz, was bribed into surrendering to the French force under Marshal Soult. A British army, commanded by Marshal Beresford, endeavoured to retake it, and on the 16th of May defeated a relieving force at Albuera, but the siege was abandoned in June. The fortress was finally stormed on the 6th of April 1812, by the British under Lord Wellington, and carried with terrible loss. It was then delivered up to a two day's pillage. A military and republican rising took place here in August 1883, but completely failed.
BADAKSHAN, including Wakhan, a province on the north-east frontier of Afghanistan, adjoining Russian territory. Its north-eastern boundaries were decided by the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1873, which expressly acknowledged "Badakshan with its dependent district Wakhan" as "fully belonging to the amir of Kabul," and limited it to the left or southern bank of the Oxus. Much of the interior of the province is still unexplored. On the west, Badakshan is bounded by a line which crosses the Turkestan plains southwards from the junction of the Kunduz and Oxus rivers till it touches the eastern water-divide of the Tashkurghan river (here called the Koh-i-Chungar), and then runs south-east, crossing the Sarkhab affluent of the Khanabad (Kunduz), till it strikes the Hindu Kush. The southern boundary is carried along the crest of the Hindu Kush as far as the Khawak pass, leading from Badakshan into the Panjshir valley. Beyond this it is indefinite. It is known that the Kafirs occupy the crest of the Hindu Kush eastwards of the Khawak, but how far they extend north of the main watershed is not ascertainable. The southern limits of Badakshan become definite again at the Dorah pass. The Dorah connects Zebak and Ishkashim at the elbow, or bend, of the Oxus with the Lutku valley leading to Chitral. From the Dorah eastwards the crest of the Hindu Kush again becomes the boundary till it effects a junction with the Muztagh and Sarikol ranges, which shut off China from Russia and India. Skirting round the head of the Tagdumbash Pamir, it finally merges into the Pamir boundary, and turns westwards, following the course of the Oxus, to the junction of that river and the Khanabad (Kunduz). So far as the northern boundary follows the Oxus stream, under the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush, it is only separated by the length of these slopes (some 8 or 10 m.) from the southern boundary along the crest. Thus Badakshan reaches out an arm into the Pamirs eastwards—bottle-shaped—narrow at the neck (represented by the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush), and swelling out eastwards so as to include a part of the great and little Pamirs. Before the boundary settlement of 1873 the small states of Roshan and Shignan extended to the left bank of the Oxus, and the province of Darwaz, on the other hand, extended to the right bank. Now, however, the Darwaz extension northwards is exchanged for the Russian Pamir extension westwards, and the river throughout is the boundary between Russian and Afghan territory; the political boundaries of those provinces and those of Wakhan being no longer coincident with their geographical limits.
The following are the chief provincial subdivisions of Badakshan, omitting Roshan and Shignan:—On the west Rustak, Kataghan, Ghori, Narin and Anderab; on the north Darwaz, Ragh and Shiwa; on the east Charan, Ishkashim, Zebak and Wakhan; and in the centre Faizabad, Farkhar, Minjan and Kishm. There are others, but nothing certain is known about these minor subdivisions.
The conformation of the mountain districts, which comprise all the southern districts of Badakshan and the northern hills and valleys of Kafiristan, is undoubtedly analogous to that of the rest of the Hindu Kush westwards. The water-divide of the Hindu Kush from the Dorah to the Khawak pass, i.e. through the centre of Kafiristan, has never been accurately traced; but its topographical conformation is evidently a continuation of that which has been observed in the districts of Badakshan to the west of the Khawak. The Hindu Kush represents the southern edge of a great central upheaval or plateau. It breaks up into long spurs southwards, deep amongst which are hidden the valleys of Kafiristan, almost isolated from each other by the rugged and snow-capped altitudes which divide them. To the north the plateau gradually slopes away towards the Oxus, falling from an average altitude of 15,000 ft. to 4000 ft. about Faizabad, in the centre of Badakshan, but tailing off to 1100 at Kunduz, in Kataghan, where it merges into the flat plains bordering the Oxus.
The Kokcha river traverses Badakshan from south-east to north-west, and, with the Kunduz, drains all the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush west of the Dorah pass. Some of its sources are near Zebak, close to the great bend of the Oxus northwards, so that it cuts off all the mountainous area included within that bend from the rest of Badakshan. Its chief affluent is the Minjan, which Sir George Robertson found to be a considerable stream where it approaches the Hindu Kush close under the Dorah. Like the Kunduz, it probably drains the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush by deep lateral valleys, more or less parallel to the crest, reaching westwards towards the Khawak pass. From the Oxus (1000 ft.) to Faizabad (4000 ft.) and Zebak (8500 ft.) the course of the Kokcha offers a high road across Badakshan; between Zebak and Ishkashim, at the Oxus bend, there is but an insignificant pass of 9500 ft.; and from Ishkashim by the Panja, through the Pamirs, is the continuation of what must once have been a much-traversed trade route connecting Afghan Turkestan with Kashgar and China. It is undoubtedly one of the great continental high-roads of Asia. North of the Kokcha, within the Oxus bend, is the mountainous district of Darwaz, of which the physiography belongs rather to the Pamir type than to that of the Hindu Kush.
A very remarkable meridional range extends for 100 m. northwards from the Hindu Kush (it is across this range that the route from Zebak to Ishkashim lies), which determines the great bend of the Oxus river northwards from Ishkashim, and narrows the valley of that river into the formation of a trough as far as the next bend westwards at Kala Wamar. The western slopes of this range drain to the Oxus either north-westwards, by the Kokcha and the Ragh, or else they twist their streams into the Shiwa, which runs due north across Darwaz. Here again we find the main routes which traverse the country following the rivers closely. The valleys are narrow, but fertile and populous. The mountains are rugged and difficult; but there is much of the world-famous beauty of scenery, and of the almost phenomenal agricultural wealth of the valleys of Bokhara and Ferghana to be found in the as yet half-explored recesses of Badakshan.
The principal domesticated animal is the yak. There are also large flocks of sheep, cows, goats, ponies, fine dogs and Bactrian camels. The more important wild animals are a large wild sheep (Ovis poli), foxes, wolves, jackals, bears, boars, deer and leopards; amongst birds, there are partridges, pheasants, ravens, jays, sparrows, larks, a famous breed of hawks, &c.