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Syrdare

about the city

Etymology
At different times, the river was known by various names. The ancient Greek authors Strabo (at the turn of AD) and Ptolemy (II century AD) mention this river as Yaxartes — “pearl river”; this name is quoted in ancient Turkic runic monuments of the VII—IX centuries: Yenchu-oguz — “the same”. Medieval Arab authors call the Seyhan River; the etymology of this name is unclear, but there is a hypothesis that it was transferred by the Arabs from Southern Turkey, where the Seyhan and Ceyhan rivers flow (cf. also Ceyhun — Arabic Amu Darya). In addition, a number of names of this river are found in medieval sources, formed from the names of cities, localities, oases: Obi-Fargona (“Ferghana river”), Obi-Khujand (“Khujand river”), Nahr-ash-Shash (“Shash river”, according to the Tashkent oasis Shash), Banokat-Daresi (“Banokata river”), etc. The modern name Syrdarya (Uzbek Sirdaryo

became widespread only in the XIX century; the dare component (Russian traditional darya) — “river” does not cause controversy, but the explanation of the sire component caused a number of etymologies involving various Iranian and Turkic languages. Sir was explained as “abundant”, “good”, “spacious”, “supreme”, “main”, “clear”, etc. The more realistic opinion of V. V. Bartold, who noted the possibility of forming a component of sir from the ethnonym of the population living along the lower reaches of this river. The modern summary of tribal names contains sir, shir — “Turks”, as well as numerous genonyms formed from this basis. It is formed at the confluence of Naryn and Karadarya in the eastern part of the Fergana Valley. Almost the entire water flow of the Syr Darya is formed in the mountainous part of the basin. Food is mainly snow, to a lesser extent glacial and rain. Naryn (36%), Karadarya (11%), Ferghana Valley rivers (25%) and Chirchik (20%) make the main contribution to the water flow of the Syrdarya. Spring and summer floods. Below Chardara, the river flow is spent on irrigation and lost to evaporation in floodplain floods[6].

At the exit from the Ferghana Valley, the river crosses the Farkhad Mountains and then flows through a vast, sometimes swampy floodplain 14.7 km wide through the Hungry Steppe.

In the middle reaches (from the Farkhad Mountains to the Chardara reservoir), the Angren (Akhangaran), Chirchik and Keles rivers flow into the Syr Darya[6]. The Yuzhno-Golodnostepsky Canal begins from the Farkhad hydroelectric complex. In 1958, the Zhanadariinsky Canal was put into operation[7]. The water runoff of many small tributaries of the Syr Darya is disassembled for irrigation and does not reach it[6].

In the lower reaches, the Syr Darya flows along the eastern and northern outskirts of the Kyzylkum sands; the riverbed here is meandering and unstable, floods are not uncommon in winter and spring. The last tributary is the Arys. In the lower reaches of the river, in the area from the city of Turkestan to the district center of Zhosaly, there is an extensive floodplain (10-50 km wide, about 400 km long), riddled with many channels, in places overgrown with reeds and tugai, widely used for agriculture (rice farming, melon farming, vegetable growing, gardening in places). At the mouth of the Syrdarya River, it forms a delta (near the city of Kazalinsk) with numerous channels, lakes and swamps, used for melon farming.

The Syr Darya used to flow into the Aral Sea, now, due to a catastrophic decrease in its level and the disintegration of the sea into two parts (in 1989), the river flows into the northern part of the sea (the so-called “Small Sea”). The waters of the Syr Darya are largely sorted out for irrigation, in this regard, the current volume of runoff at the mouth has decreased by more than 10 times (from 400 m3/s to 30 m3/s) compared with the conditionally natural period (before 1960).
River basin
The length is 2212 km (according to other sources, 2137)[6], from the sources of Naryn — 3019 km.[8] On the territory of the Syrdarya River basin there are 3 regions of Kyrgyzstan: Naryn, Jalalabad and Osh, Sughd region of Tajikistan, 6 regions of Uzbekistan: Andijan, Namangan, Ferghana, Tashkent, Jizzakh and Syrdarya and two regions of Kazakhstan: Turkestan and Kyzylorda. The area of the Syr Darya basin is 219,000 km2. The total value of natural water resources is 36.6 km3. The volume of annual flow of rivers reaching the trunk of the Syr Darya is 30.8 km3[6].
In 1957, in the riverbed of the Syrdarya River, 12 km from the city of Kyzylorda in Kazakhstan, the Kyzylorda hydroelectric complex was built, consisting of a dam to regulate the water flow along the river, as well as two channels
On the 11th kilometer of the derivation channel departing from the reservoir on the Syr Darya, the Farkhad hydroelectric power station (architect Joseph Karakis) is located[9]. The Kayrakkumskoye (4.2 km3, Tajikistan) and Chardaraskoye (5.7 km3, Kazakhstan) reservoirs have been created on the river. In order to regulate spring floods and water discharges from the Toktogul HPP, Kazakhstan built the Koksarai reservoir, otherwise known as the Koksarai counterregulator, in Turkestan region (the length of the dam is 45 km) with a volume of 3 billion cubic meters, which was first filled in the spring of 2010. The construction was completed in December 2011. But already in the spring of 2011, 2 billion m3 were accumulated in the Koksarai reservoir. In 2012, it was planned to gain full volume[10]. In 2017, the Sardobin reservoir with a volume of 1 cubic km was built, and its breakthrough occurred in May 2020.
The cities of Guliston, Khujand (Tajikistan), Syrdarya, Bekabad (Uzbekistan), Shardara, Kyzylorda, Jalagash, Dzhusaly, Baikonur, Kazalinsk (Kazakhstan) are located on the banks of the Syrdarya River.

History
In the writings of Greek historians, the middle course of the river was called “Tanais”, which they transferred from the famous Don-Tanais River, which flowed through the territory of the Scythians. The presence of two Tanais, Central Asian and European, was noted in the II century AD by the Greek writer Arrian. According to Arrian, the Syr Darya was also called “Yaxart” — an ancient local name that was probably common among the local Saka tribes.
Strabo wrote that “the Iaxartes River separates the Saks from the Sogdians.” Sharafaddin Yazdi called the Syr Darya the Seyhan River and claimed that it delimits Moghulistan and Transoxiana[13]. In ancient Turkic runic monuments, the river is called “Pearl”.

On the left bank of the river, in the Kyzylorda region, there is a medieval settlement Artyk-Ata.