Sistan
A lowland region lying along the Helmand River, Sistan is made up of the southwestern Afghanistan province of Nimruz (capital, Zaranj) and the Sistan district of the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan (administrative center, Zabol; provincial capital, Zahedan). Spring flooding yields two harvests a year: wheat, barley, millet, and other grains in winter, and cotton and vegetables in summer.
Sistan is the legendary homeland of the hero Rostam from the eleventh-century epic Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. Its name is traced back to Sakastan or "land of the Scythians," the Scythians having dominated the region toward the end of the first millennium BCE.
Sistan's low terrain allows easy access from Central Asia and the Iranian plateau into the heartland of Afghanistan. Since the time of the Achaemenids (559–331 BCE), it has served as a borderland of successive empires bent on eastward expansion. After the Arab conquest in 652 CE, the distant province became a refuge for rebels against later caliphal authority. From the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, the Saffarids and their successors, known as maliks (kings) of Nimruz, ruled the province, acknowledging the suzerainty of Samanids (864–999), Ghaznavids (977–1187), Seljuks (1038–1157), and Ghurids (c. 1000–1215). The region suffered the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century and the devastating punitive expedition of Timur (1370–1405), who destroyed its irrigation system. In Safavid times (1501–1722/1736), the province served as a base for Persian forays against Mughal India. In 1723 a malik of Sistan, Mohammad b. Fath ʿAli Khan, captured Khorasan from the Safavids and claimed royal prerogatives, but his bid for the throne of Persia was foiled by the future Nader Shah Afshar (1736–1747). After Nader Shah's death, the founder of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Durrani, established close relations with the maliks of Sistan, and in the nineteenth century Persia and Afghanistan came to the brink of war over possession of the region. The border between them was established in 1827 by a British commission and finalized in 1905. The present population is mostly Tajik (East Iranian) and Baluch, engaged in agriculture, pasturing, the food and textile industries, and carpet weaving.
Further Reading
Barthold, Wilhelm (Vasilii Vladimirovich, Bartol'd). (1984) "Sistan, the Southern Part of Afghanistan, and Baluchistan." In An Historical Geography of Iran, translated from the Russian by Svat Soucek, edited with an introduction by Clifford E. Bosworth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 64–86.
Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. (1994) The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542–1543). Costa Mesa, CA, and New York: Mazda Publishers.
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