Transoxiana

Transoxiana - the " land beyond the Oxus " - is the name of an important historical region in Western Central Asia, which mainly includes the land between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya the two streams with the ancient cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. Today it mostly belongs to Uzbekistan, but also Kazakhstan ( to the north), Tajikistan (in the east ) and Turkmenistan (south) portion of the field.

Name

The term Transoxiana comes from Latin and means " land beyond the Oxus ", where the Oxus, the ancient name of Amudarjas. The Arabs translated this term almost literally with Mawarannahr ( ما وراء النهر, DMG mā ʾ a wara 'n - Nahr, ( that) what lies beyond the river' ), which in turn is calculated by the Uzbek form of the name Movarounnahr. To the ancient Persians Transoxiana belonged to the non-Iranian Turan, which was mainly inhabited later by Turks and thus also known as Turkestan.

Geography

Transoxiana is part of the lowlands of Turan and is dominated by steppes and deserts such as the Kyzyl Kum; The climate is continental and dry. The Ferghana Valley and the valley of the Zeravshan, which also Samarkand and Bukhara are, but have always been fertile irrigation land that is used for agriculture.

Boundaries and structure

Mawarannahr included for Muslim geographers of the Middle Ages virtually all Muslim -dominated areas north of the middle and upper Amudarjas, its northern boundary was not precisely defined. In the west, on the southern shore of the Aral Sea, the Amudarjas was the large oasis of Khorezm, south of the neighboring province of Khorasan ostiranische. Among the regions and provinces, was divided into Transoxiana at the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, included Sughd (around Bukhara and Samarkand on Zeravshan ) Tschaghaniyan, Chuttal and Wakhan on the upper Amu Darya, Syr Darya Uschrusana south of the center, north of the middle Syr Darya Shash and finally Ferghana at the upper Syr Darya.