Uzboy

The Uzboy (sometimes rendered Uzboj) was a distributary of the Amu Darya which flowed through the northwestern part of the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan until the 17th century, when it abruptly dried up, eliminating the agricultural population that had thrived along its banks. (It was a part of the ancient region of Dahistan).

Now a dry river channel and a center for archaeological excavations, the Uzboy flowed some 750 kilometres (470 mi), from a branch in the Amu Darya River via Sarykamysh Lake to the Caspian Sea.^[1][2] A riverine civilization existed along the banks of the river from at least the 5th century BC until the 17th century AD, when the water which had fed the Uzboy abruptly stopped flowing out of the main course of the Amu Darya. The Uzboy dried up, and the tribes which had inhabited the river's banks were abruptly dispersed, the survivors becoming nomadic desert dwellers.^[3]

In the early 1950s, construction work started to build a

Uzboi Vallis on Mars is named after this river.

Glukhovskoy’s account

This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: based on an 1893 source, likely to be outdated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (July 2021)

Alexandr Ivanovitch Gloukhovsky wrote in 1893 that the Oxus (Amu-Darya) River seemed to flow into the Caspian Sea via the Uzboy River until the 9th century AD and again between 1220 and 1575, approximately.^[4]

At various times in the past one or more branches of the

Peter the Great heard that it would be possible to destroy the dam and send the Oxus into its old channel, thereby making a waterway from Moscow down the Volga and up the Oxus into the heart of Asia. This led to the 1717 invasion, among other things. Around 1879 Russia sent expeditions to accurately survey the old channel. Glukhovskoy thought that a river diversion would be practical. Either the Sarykamysh could be refilled, which would take about 15 years, or an old river bed could be cleaned out making a canal avoiding the Sary-Kamish depression. The Uzboy would need to be cleared of sand in several places and some dams would be needed. The whole project would cost between 15 and 27 million rubles. (An attempt to realize this was made around 1950-1953.)

See also

• Türkmenbaşy Gulf

Literature

• Tsvetsinskaya E.A., Vainberg B.I., V. Glushko E.V. "An integrated assessment of landscape evolution, long-term climate variability, and land use in the Amudarya Prisarykamysh delta", Journal of Arid Environments (2002) 51: 363–381 [1]
• Muradov, Ruslan "Mysteries of Dehistan", Turkmenistan (2009): [2]

References