Syr Dar'ya

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At approximately 2,200 kilometers in length, the Syr Dar'ya (Jaxartes and Sayhun) is Central Asia's second-longest river after the Amu Dar'ya. It derives most of its waters from the melting snows and glaciers of the Tian Shan Mountains. On the modern political map, from the system's headwaters in Kyrgyzstan, the river flows through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and into the Aral Sea. Settlements existed near the river's delta during the Bronze Age, and evidence suggests that associated ecologieswere more pastoral than those along the Amu Dar'ya until the Iron Age. By the time of Alexander of Macedon's fourth-century-BCE incursions into the river's territories, settlements and associated irrigation systems were on the rise. The river's upper portions in the Ferghana Valley were especially supportive of irrigated urban centers, and the valley and the river's lower portions thus emerged as key routes of the more northern caravans traveling the Silk Road.

Russian plans to use the Syr Dar'ya as a steamboat route did not endure long in the late nineteenth century, but initial Soviet goals of adding to the river's natural wetlands to support rice cultivation began to materialize rapidly by the 1960s. Prior to this time, most canals were in the Ferghana Valley and Golodnaya Steppe. Under development schemes, however, widespread paddies were created on the lower portions of the river. As with the Amu Dar'ya, ecological ramifications of the river's diversions have been tremendous and continue to contribute to the crisis of the wider Aral region.

Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. (1973) The Ghaznavids. 2d ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Glantz, Michael H., ed. (1999) Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Aral Sea Basin. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Litvinskii, Boris A. (1989) "The Ecology of the Ancient Nomads of Soviet Central Asia and Kazakhstan." In Ecology and Empire: Nomads in the Cultural Evolution of the Old World, edited by Gary Seaman. Los Angeles: Ethnographic Press, 61–72.