Persia / [prepared ... under the direction of K. Mason].

  • Great Britain. Naval Intelligence Division
Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Persia / [prepared ... under the direction of K. Mason]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It then takes a somewhat irregular course across the plains of Bakharz and Khaf, dividing a large salt-lake between the two countries and leaving the two posts of Ghurian and Yazdan to Persia. From Yazdan it skirts the eastern flank of Kuh-i-Ahangaran directly south to the neighbourhood of the Siah Kuh peak. From Siah Kuh it turns east along the northern edge of the reed beds of the Seistan Hamun, follows the Helmand river south to the Helmand barrage, _and then cuts directly south-west to the peak of Kuh-i-Malik Siah. This diversion includes in Persia almost all the irrigated area of Seistan (figs. 21, 22). Kuh-i-Malik Siah is the junction of the Persian, Afghan, and British Baluchistan frontiers. Though between Kuh-i-Malik Siah and the Mashkel Hamun the boundary has not been demarcated, its course is defined as skirting the great waste of the Gaud-i-Zirreh (in Afghanistan) first along the crest of low hills which flank it, and then through lowlands at the foot of the Taftan range. From the Mashkel Hamun the boundary traverses lowlands to the northern watershed of the upper Mashkel valley, which is included in Persia, crosses to the southern watershed, and descends to a tributary of the Dasht watercourse of British Baluchistan; for 61 miles this forms the boundary, which then follows the watershed between the Persian Dashtiari and the British Dasht to the coastal marshes east of Gwatar (fig. 20). Physical Features The principal ranges are the Elburz on the north, continued west- ward into the Talish hills and eastward into the ranges of northern Khurasan; the Zagros on the west, alined south-east from the frontier of northern Iraq to the strait of Hormuz; the ranges of Persian Makran in the south; and a series of highlands in the east with no collective name but conveniently called the Qain—Birjand, Nasratabad, and Sarhad highlands. Behind these mountain walls the hinterland is split up in the west into a number of separate basins by secondary mountain systems which generally follow the trend of the Zagros, though some, modified by volcanic action, derange the pattern. Structurally the country has often been compared to a deep saucer, and a large percentage of the land area drains inwards, but unfortunately for man the best part of the water collected by the mountain walls drains rapidly away to the Persian Gulf and the Caspian. Since the prevailing winds are northerly, climate intensifies the effect of drainage. Except for the northern Elburz, the Caspian
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