Innermost Asia : vol.2 / 473 ページ（カラー画像）

0473	Innermost Asia : vol.2
極奥アジア : vol.2

CHAPTER XXX

IN THE DESERT DELTA OF SĪSTĀN

Section I.—RUINS ANCIENT AND MODERN

The southern delta of the Helmand, to the remains of which, so far as they lie within Persian Dasht
territory, we now turn, is at present wholly desert ground. Ruins and other relics of widely different plateau
periods mark its intermittent occupation since prehistoric times, and the desert conditions that now N. and S.
prevail make it possible to trace these periods with comparative clearness by archaeological evidence. deltas.
On the topographical side, inquiry into the past of this area is facilitated by physical features better
defined than those to be reckoned with in respect of the wide expanse of alluvial plain and shifting
Hāmūn marshes that constitute the much greater northern delta. The division between the two
deltas is formed by a well-marked gravel-covered plateau. It is a north-western extension of the
' Dasht ' barrier along the left bank of the present Helmand course, and stretches right up to the
edge of the southern portion of the Hāmūn near the village of Warmāl.

From the southern scarp of this plateau, rising here about 50 feet above the level of the ground Former
liable to inundation from the Hāmūn, an alluvial plain extends to the deep-cut channel of the irrigation of
Shelāgh, a distance of about 30 miles. The latter, in years of exceptionally high floods from the southern
Helmand, such as recur at intervals, carries water from the Hāmūn into the terminal depression delta.
of the Gaud-i-Zirrāh. The above-mentioned plain, all fertile silt, was capable of being irrigated,
over a maximum width of about 15 miles from east to west, by canals which once took off from the
mouth of the old bed of the Helmand known as the river of Trākun or Rūd-i-biyābān and now
quite dry. This is shown by the map as diverging from the present Helmand river-bed about
36 miles due south of the Band-i-Sīstān at a point called Bandar-i-Kamāl Khān (see Sheet No.
30 F.); after passing westwards in a winding course through the barrier of the Dasht it debouches
in several outlets north and south of the ruin known as Yak-gumbaz, close to the boundary line
between Persian and Afghān territory.¹

Direct historical evidence that this old Helmand bed carried water to the southern delta can Rūd-i-biyā-
apparently not be traced back farther than the time of Tīmūr, and that, too, only if we may trust bān branch
the traditional location near the Bandar-i-Kamāl Khan of the weir known as Band-i-Rustam which of Helmand.
Tīmūr is said to have destroyed.² But there is, as we shall see, good reason to assume that this
area had been occupied for centuries earlier, and also that this occupation, whatever its extent may
have been, did not imply simultaneous abandonment of the northern delta. Information, recorded
without definite indication of its sources but probably correct, points to the continuance, down to
the close of the seventeenth century, of at least partial cultivation of the area commanded by canals
from the Rūd-i-biyābān.³ According to local tradition a change came about during the reign
of Malik Fath 'Alī (A. D. 1692–1721). The Rūd-i-biyābān then ceased to receive an appreciable
volume of water, and cultivation along it became restricted to the wide trough of the old river-bed,
being dependent on canals that took off from what has remained ever since the only active course

国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

引用情報

OCR読み取り結果

国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト 『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

引用情報

OCR読み取り結果

国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ