Darial Gorge
The Darialschlucht: View from south to north ( downhill )
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The Darialschlucht or Darielschlucht (Georgian დარიალის ხეობა, Darialis Keoba; Russian Дарьяльское ущелье ) is an eleven- kilometer-long gorge in northern Georgia on the border with Russia. It lies at the eastern foot of Mount Kazbek in Greater Caucasus to 1204 m and is drained by the Terek River. The almost 600 meter high towering steep rock walls on either side of the canyon back there together at a distance of eight meters. The bottleneck on the way to the Caucasus for centuries was of great strategic importance.
Its current name is taken from the New Persian name of the pass -i represents Alan ( dt gate of the Alans ). In the Georgian historiography he is called Ralani, Dargani or Darialani. For the Roman naturalist and geographer Pliny he was the Portae Caucasiae or Portae Hiberiae. In Ptolemy the pass Sarmatikai Pylai called (Greek Σαρματικαι Πυλαι ). The Tartars call him Darioli.
The control of the needle eye on the centuries- long single path through the Caucasus played an important role in the foreign policy of Georgia, of the Roman Empire, Persia, Arab Caliphates, Byzantium and later Russia. By the 13th century it was all about, to prevent armed nomadic tribes from the North Caucasus, including the eponymous Alans from advancing south. They were regularly invaded Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. From the 18th century the pass for the connection between Russia and Georgia was vital. 1799, the Georgian Military Road was dug into the rock above the pass.
After the conquest of Iberia by Pompey 66 BC, the Romans built the fortress in the canyon Kumania and a wall made of tree trunks, which was reinforced with iron. The Iberian kings operated the fort for several centuries under the name Kumli. She has been renovated several times. Its ruins on a hill on the left bank of the Terek can still be seen today. It had watchtowers and a secret passage to the river. Persia, built in the 5th century, the castle Biriparach in which some 1,000 soldiers were stationed. Russia built after 1801 on the northern end of the gorge the fortress Darialskoje (Russian Дарьяльское ) whose sparse remains today lie just behind the Russian- Georgian border on Georgian territory. The Soviet Union also used the natural bottleneck. You controlled to travel through a military post with a barrier. Between 2006 and 2010, the border between Georgia and Russia in the Darielschlucht was closed.