1.
Kongur Tagh
–
Kongur Tagh or Kongkoerh is at 7,649 m the highest mountain wholly within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Kongur Tagh is within a range called the Kongur Shan Kongur Tagh is located just north of Muztagh Ata, some sources use Kongur Shan mistakenly to refer to the peak itself. Due to its remoteness and being hidden by nearby peaks, Kongur was not discovered by Europeans until 1900, however, the building of the Karakoram Highway from Pakistan to China, which runs past nearby Tashkurgan and Karakul Lake, has now made it more accessible. Administratively, the Kongur Range is within Akto County, the first attempt to climb Kongur Tagh was made in 1956 but the party aborted the attempt when it realized it was beyond their abilities. The first ascent of Kongur Tagh was completed in 1981 by a British expedition consisting of Chris Bonington, Al Rouse, Peter Boardman and this is taken from the Guide to Mountaineering in China. Some Chinese authorities give it 7,719 m, but evidence against this higher elevation is given here. Kongur Tagh has a significant subpeak known as Kongur Tiube, 38°36′57″N 75°11′44″E, elevation =7,530 m. Ranked 47th It is moderately independent and it was first climbed in 1956. The Kongur Massif in Southern Sinkiang, the Geographical Journal, Vol.149, No
Kongur Tagh
–
South face of Kongur Tagh
Kongur Tagh
–
Kongur Tagh (left) and Kongur Tiube (slightly to the right) as seen from the
Karakoram Highway on the way from
Kashgar to lake
Karakul
Kongur Tagh
–
Kongur Tagh (towards the right edge of the photo) and Kongur Tiube (center) as seen from lake Karakul.
2.
Summit
–
A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a maximum in elevation. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak, and zenith are synonymous, the UIAA definition is that a summit is independent if it has a prominence of 30 metres or more, it is a mountain if it has a prominence of at least 300 metres. This can be summarised as follows, A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top, Summit may also refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route. In many parts of the western United States, the term refers to the highest point along a road, highway. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit while the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit, geoid Hill List of highest mountains Maxima and minima Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder
Summit
–
The highest elevation summit, Mount Everest, shown with a climber at the summit wearing an oxygen mask. The summit is 8850 m (29,035 ft) elevation. (While the cruising altitude of jetliners is roughly 10,000 m (32,808 feet), they are pressurized.)
Summit
–
View from the summit of Switzerland's highest,
Monte Rosa
Summit
–
The summit of
Mount Damavand,
Iran, in winter
Summit
–
Jeff Davis Peak, one of the highest peaks entirely within
Nevada
3.
Geographic coordinate system
–
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
Geographic coordinate system
–
Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.
4.
Tajikistan
–
Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a mountainous, landlocked country in Central Asia with an estimated 8 million people in 2013, and an area of 143,100 km2. It is bordered by Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the south, the Republic of Uzbekistan to the west, the Kyrgyz Republic to the north, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan lies to the south, separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor. Traditional homelands of Tajik people included present-day Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, a civil war was fought almost immediately after independence, lasting from 1992 to 1997. Since the end of the war, newly established political stability, Tajikistan is a presidential republic consisting of four provinces. Most of Tajikistans 8 million people belong to the Tajik ethnic group, many Tajiks also speak Russian as their second language. Mountains cover more than 90% of the country and it has a transition economy that is highly dependent on remittances, aluminium and cotton production. Tajikistan means the Land of the Tajiks, the suffix -stan is Persian for place of or country and Tajik is, most likely, the name of a pre-Islamic tribe. Tajikistan appeared as Tadjikistan or Tadzhikistan in English prior to 1991 and this is due to a transliteration from the Russian, Таджикистан. In Russian, there is no single letter j to represent the phoneme /ʤ/ and дж, Tadzhikistan is the most common alternate spelling and is widely used in English literature derived from Russian sources. Tadjikistan is the spelling in French and can occasionally be found in English language texts, the way of writing Tajikistan in the Perso-Arabic script is. The earliest recorded history of the dates back to about 500 BCE when much, if not all. After the regions conquest by Alexander the Great it became part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, northern Tajikistan was part of Sogdia, a collection of city-states which was overrun by Scythians and Yuezhi nomadic tribes around 150 BCE. The Silk Road passed through the region and following the expedition of Chinese explorer Zhang Qian during the reign of Wudi commercial relations between Han China and Sogdiana flourished. Sogdians played a role in facilitating trade and also worked in other capacities, as farmers, carpetweavers, glassmakers. Later the Hephthalite Empire, a collection of tribes, moved into the region. Central Asia continued in its role as a crossroads, linking China, the steppes to the north. It was temporarily under the control of the Tibetan empire and Chinese from 650–680, the Samanid Empire,819 to 999, restored Persian control of the region and enlarged the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara which became the cultural centres of Iran and the region was known as Khorasan. The Kara-Khanid Khanate conquered Transoxania and ruled between 999–1211, during Genghis Khans invasion of Khwarezmia in the early 13th century the Mongol Empire took control over nearly all of Central Asia
Tajikistan
–
The
Samanid ruler
Mansur I (961 – 976).
Tajikistan
Tajikistan
–
Tajik men and boys, 1905-1915
Tajikistan
–
Soviet negotiations with
basmachi, 1921
5.
Kyrgyzstan
–
Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Tajikistan to the southwest and its capital and largest city is Bishkek. Kyrgyzstans recorded history spans over 2,000 years, encompassing a variety of cultures and empires, ethnic Kyrgyz make up the majority of the countrys 5.7 million people, followed by significant minorities of Uzbeks and Russians. Kyrgyz is closely related to other Turkic languages, although Russian remains widely spoken and is the official language, the majority of the population are non-denominational Muslims. In addition to its Turkic origins, Kyrgyz culture bears elements of Persian, Mongolian and Russian influence. Kyrgyz is believed to have derived from the Turkic word for forty, in reference to the forty clans of Manas. Literally, Kyrgyz means We are forty, at the time, in the early 9th century AD, the Uyghurs dominated much of Central Asia, Mongolia, and parts of Russia and China. King, Scythians were early settlers in present-day Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 A. D. From the 10th century the Kyrgyz migrated as far as the Tian Shan range, in the twelfth century the Kyrgyz dominion had shrunk to the Altay Range and Sayan Mountains as a result of the Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century, the Kyrgyz peacefully became a part of the Mongol Empire in 1207. The descent of the Kyrgyz from the autochthonous Siberian population is confirmed on the hand by the recent genetic studies. Issyk Kul Lake was a stopover on the Silk Road, a route for traders, merchants. Kyrgyz tribes were overrun in the 17th century by the Mongols, in the century by the Manchurian Qing Dynasty. In the late century, the majority part of what is today Kyrgyzstan was ceded to Russia through two treaties between China and Russia. The territory, then known in Russian as Kirghizia, was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover was met with numerous revolts against Tsarist authority, in addition, the suppression of the 1916 rebellion against Russian rule in Central Asia caused many Kyrgyz later to migrate to China. Soviet power was established in the region in 1919. On 5 December 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a republic of the Soviet Union
Kyrgyzstan
–
Silk road caravansary utilized during the
Islamic Golden Age
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan
–
Kyrgyz nomads, 1869–1870, by Vasily Vereshchagin
Kyrgyzstan
–
Kyrgyz yurt, 1869–1870, by
Vasily Vereshchagin
6.
Afghanistan
–
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
Afghanistan
–
History of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
–
Flag
Afghanistan
–
Bilingual (
Greek and
Aramaic)
edict by Emperor
Ashoka from the 3rd century BCE discovered in the southern city of
Kandahar
Afghanistan
–
One of the
Buddhas of Bamiyan.
Buddhism was widespread in the region before the
Islamic conquest of Afghanistan.
7.
China
–
China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
China
–
Yinxu, ruins of an ancient
palace dating from the
Shang Dynasty (14th century BCE)
China
–
Flag
China
–
Some of the thousands of life-size
Terracotta Warriors of the
Qin Dynasty, c. 210 BCE
China
–
The
Great Wall of China was built by several dynasties over two thousand years to protect the sedentary agricultural regions of the
Chinese interior from incursions by
nomadic pastoralists of the northern
steppes.
8.
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province
–
The Kūhistoni Badakhshon Autonomous Region is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan. Located in the Pamir Mountains, it makes up 45% of the area of the country. The territory was claimed by the Chinese and Russian empires and the Emirate of Afghanistan, the Qing rulers of China claimed control of the entire Pamir Mountains, but Qing military units only controlled the passes just east of Tashkorgan Town. Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region was created in January 1925 and it was attached to Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic after the republics creation in 1929. During the 1950s, the inhabitants of Gorno-Badakhshan, including many ethnic Pamiris, were forcibly relocated to southwestern Tajikistan. Gorno-Badakhshan absorbed some of the territory of the Gharm Oblast when that territory was dissolved in 1955, when the civil war broke out in Tajikistan in 1992, the local government in Gorno-Badakhshan declared independence from the Republic of Tajikistan. During the civil war many Pamiris were targeted for killing by rival groups, later the Gorno-Badakhshan government backed down from its calls for independence. Gorno-Badakhshan remains a region within Tajikistan. In 2012, the region saw a series of clashes between the Tajik military and militants loyal to former warlord Tolib Ayombekov after the latter was accused of murdering a Tajik general, darvoz District is the western beak of the province. West-central Gorno-Badakhshan is mostly a series of east-west mountain ranges separated by valleys of rivers flow into the Panj River. The districts correspond the river valleys, murghob District occupies the eastern half of the province and is mostly a desolate plateau with high mountains on the west. Within Tajikistan the regions western border is with the Districts of Republican Subordination, the population of GBAO increased from 160,900 to 206,000 between the censuses in 1989 and 2000. The population as of January 2008 is estimated at 218,000, according to the State Statistical Committee of Tajikistan, the main ethnic group in GBAO are Pamiris. The remainder of the population is ethnic Kyrgyz and other nationalities, the largest city in GBAO is Khorugh, population 29,000, the second largest is Murghab, with about 4,000 residents. GBAO is home to a number of languages and dialects of the Pamir languages group. The Pamiri language speakers represented in Gorno-Badakshan are speakers of Shughni, Rushani, Wakhi, Ishkashimi, Sarikoli, Bartangi, Khufi, Yazgulyam, vanji, formerly spoken in the Vanj River valley, became extinct in the 19th century. There is a population of Kyrgyz speakers in the Murghab district. Russian and Tajik are also spoken throughout GBAO
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province
–
Lake Karakul
9.
Osh Region
–
Osh Region is a region of Kyrgyzstan. It is bounded by Jalal-Abad Region, Naryn Region, Xinjiang, China, Tajikistan, Batken Region, most of the population lives in the flat northern part of the Oblast, on the edge of the Ferghana Valley. The land gradually rises southward to the crest of the Alay Mountains, drops into the Alay Valley, in the east, the land rises to the Ferghana Range which is roughly parallel to the Naryn border. This area is drained by the Kara Darya which flows northwest to join the Naryn River to form the Syr Darya in the Ferghana Valley, highway M41 goes south over the mountains from Osh to the Tajik border. At Sary-Tash a branch goes east to the Chinese border crossing at Irkeshtam, the other main road goes west through the flat country to Batken Region. As of 2009, Osh Region comprised 3 towns,2 urban-type settlement and 474 villages and its de facto population, according to the Population and Housing Census of 2009, was 999,576. Of them,82,841 people live in urban areas, more than half of all Kyrgyzstans Uzbeks live in Osh Region. They are 33% of the population as opposed to 14. This is the village of Barak in the Fergana valley. Works cited Laurence Mitchell, Kyrgyzstan, Bradt Travel Guides,2008
Osh Region
–
Map of Kyrgyzstan, location of Osh Region highlighted
10.
Mountain range
–
A mountain range is a geographic area containing numerous geologically related mountains. A mountain system or system of ranges, sometimes is used to combine several geological features that are geographically related. Mountain ranges are usually segmented by highlands or mountain passes and valleys, individual mountains within the same mountain range do not necessarily have the same geologic structure or petrology. They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terranes, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earths land surface are associated with either the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt. The Andes is 7,000 kilometres long and is considered the worlds longest mountain system. The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalaya, the belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges. The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the Urals, the Appalachians, the Scandinavian Mountains, the Altai Mountains and the Hijaz Mountains. If the definition of a range is stretched to include underwater mountains. The mountain systems of the earth are characterized by a tree structure, the sub-range relationship is often expressed as a parent-child relationship. For example, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Blue Ridge Mountains are sub-ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, equivalently, the Appalachians are the parent of the White Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains, and the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains are children of the Appalachians. The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow, when air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing orographic precipitation. As the air descends on the side, it warms again and is drier. Often, a shadow will affect the leeward side of a range. Mountain ranges are constantly subjected to forces which work to tear them down. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills, rivers are traditionally believed to be the principle erosive factor on mountain ranges, with their ability of bedrock incision and sediment transport. The rugged topography of a range is the product of erosion. The basins adjacent to a mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock. The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado provides an example and this mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift
Mountain range
–
The
Himalayas, the highest mountain range on Earth, seen from space
Mountain range
–
Mountain range of
High Tatras in
Slovakia in 1865
Mountain range
–
The
Andes, the world's longest mountain range on the surface of a continent, seen from the air
Mountain range
–
Hillary and Norgay Montes on Pluto (14 July 2015)
11.
Central Asia
–
Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
Central Asia
–
On the southern shore of Issyk Kul lake,
Issyk Kul Region.
Central Asia
–
Central Asia
Central Asia
–
Uzbek men from
Khiva, ca. 1861–1880
Central Asia
–
Kazakh man on a horse with golden eagle
12.
Himalayas
–
The Himalayas, or Himalaya, form a mountain range in Asia separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The Himalayan range has the Earths highest peaks, including the highest, the Himalayas include over a hundred mountains exceeding 7,200 metres in elevation. By contrast, the highest peak outside Asia – Aconcagua, in the Andes – is 6,961 metres tall. The Himalayas are spread across five countries, Bhutan, India, Nepal, China, the Himalayan range is bordered on the northwest by the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, on the north by the Tibetan Plateau, and on the south by the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Some of the major rivers, the Indus, the Ganges, and the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra, rise in the Himalayas. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia, many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism. Lifted by the subduction of the Indian tectonic plate under the Eurasian Plate and its western anchor, Nanga Parbat, lies just south of the northernmost bend of Indus river. Its eastern anchor, Namcha Barwa, is just west of the bend of the Tsangpo river. The range varies in width from 400 kilometres in the west to 150 kilometres in the east, the name of the range derives from the Sanskrit Himā-laya, from himá and ā-laya. They are now known as the Himalaya Mountains, usually shortened to the Himalayas, formerly, they were described in the singular as the Himalaya. This was also previously transcribed Himmaleh, as in Emily Dickinsons poetry and Henry David Thoreaus essays. The mountains are known as the Himālaya in Nepali and Hindi, the Himalaya or The Land of Snow in Tibetan, the Hamaleh Mountain Range in Urdu, the flora and fauna of the Himalayas vary with climate, rainfall, altitude, and soils. The climate ranges from tropical at the base of the mountains to permanent ice, the amount of yearly rainfall increases from west to east along the southern front of the range. This diversity of altitude, rainfall and soil conditions combined with the high snow line supports a variety of distinct plant. The extremes of high altitude combined with extreme cold favor extremophile organisms, the unique floral and faunal wealth of the Himalayas is undergoing structural and compositional changes due to climate change. The increase in temperature is shifting various species to higher elevations, the oak forest is being invaded by pine forests in the Garhwal Himalayan region. There are reports of early flowering and fruiting in some species, especially rhododendron, apple. The highest known tree species in the Himalayas is Juniperus tibetica located at 4,900 metres in Southeastern Tibet, the Himalayan range is one of the youngest mountain ranges on the planet and consists mostly of uplifted sedimentary and metamorphic rock
Himalayas
–
The north face of
Mount Everest seen from the path to the base camp in
Tibet Autonomous Region,
China
Himalayas
Himalayas
–
Panoramic view of Langtang Range in
Nepal
Himalayas
–
Indus River
13.
Tian Shan
–
The Tian Shan, meaning the Mountain of Heaven or the Heavenly Mountain, is a large system of mountain ranges located in Central Asia. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Jengish Chokusu,7,439 metres, the Chinese name for Tian Shan may have been derived from the Xiongnu word Qilian – according to Tang commentator Yan Shigu, Qilian is the Xiongnu word for sky or heaven. The Tannu-Ola mountains in Tuva has the meaning in its name. Tian Shan is sacred in Tengrism, and its second-highest peak is known as Khan Tengri which may be translated as Lord of the Spirits. Tian Shan is north and west of the Taklamakan Desert and directly north of the Tarim Basin in the region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. In the south it links up with the Pamir Mountains and to north, Chinese cartography from the Han Dynasty to the present agrees, with the Tian Shan including the Bogda Shan and Barkol ranges. The Tian Shan are a part of the Himalayan orogenic belt and they are one of the longest mountain ranges in Central Asia and stretch some 2,800 kilometres eastward from Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is the Victory Peak which, the Tian Shans second highest peak, Khan Tengri, straddles the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border and at 7,010 metres is the highest point of Kazakhstan. Mountaineers class these as the two most northerly peaks over 7,000 metres in the world, the Torugart Pass, at 3,752 metres, is located at the border between Kyrgyzstan and Chinas Xinjiang province. The forested Alatau ranges, which are at an altitude in the northern part of the Tian Shan, are inhabited by pastoral tribes that speak Turkic languages. The Tian Shan are separated from the Tibetan Plateau by the Taklimakan Desert, the major rivers rising in the Tian Shan are the Syr Darya, the Ili River and the Tarim River. The Aksu Canyon is a feature in the northwestern Tian Shan. Continuous permafrost is found in the Tian Shan starting at the elevation of about 3. One of the first Europeans to visit and the first to describe the Tian Shan in detail was the Russian explorer Peter Semenov, who did so in the 1850s. Glaciers in the Tian Shan Mountains have been shrinking and have lost 27%, or 5.4 billion tons annually. It is estimated that by 2050 half of the glaciers will have melted. The Tian Shan have a number of named ranges which are mentioned separately. In China the Tian Shan starts north of Kumul City with the U-shaped Barkol Mountains, then the Bogda Shan run from 350 to 40 kilometres east of Ürümqi
Tian Shan
–
The Tian Shan range on the border between China and Kyrgyzstan with
Khan Tengri (7,010 m) visible at center.
Tian Shan
–
Tian Shan Mountains from space, October 1997, with
Issyk-Kul Lake in Kyrgyzstan at the northern end
Tian Shan
–
This article is about the mountain. For district of Ürümqi, see
Tianshan District.
Tian Shan
–
Snow-capped peaks of
Kyungey Ala-Too seen from an
Issyk Kul Lake beach
14.
Karakoram
–
The Karakoram, or Karakorum is a large mountain range spanning the borders of Pakistan, India, and China, with the northwest extremity of the range extending to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It is located in the regions of Gilgit–Baltistan, Ladakh, and southern Xinjiang, a part of the complex of ranges from the Hindu Kush to the Himalayan Range, it is one of the Greater Ranges of Asia. The Karakoram is home to the four most closely located peaks over 8000m in height on earth, K2, the range is about 500 km in length, and is the most heavily glaciated part of the world outside the polar regions. The Siachen Glacier at 76 kilometres and the Biafo Glacier at 63 kilometres rank as the worlds second, the Karakoram is bounded on the northeast by the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and on the north by the Pamir Mountains. Karakoram is a Turkic term meaning black gravel, the name was first applied by local traders to the Karakoram Pass. Due to its altitude and ruggedness, the Karakoram is much less inhabited parts of the Himalayas further east. European explorers first visited early in the 19th century, followed by British surveyors starting in 1856, the Muztagh Pass was crossed in 1887 by the expedition of Colonel Francis Younghusband and the valleys above the Hunza River were explored by General Sir George K. Cockerill in 1892. Explorations in the 1910s and 1920s established most of the geography of the region, the name Karakoram was used in the early 20th century, for example by Kenneth Mason, for the range now known as the Baltoro Muztagh. The term is now used to refer to the range from the Batura Muztagh above Hunza in the west to the Saser Muztagh in the bend of the Shyok River in the east. Floral surveys were carried out in the Shyok River catchment and from Panamik to Turtuk village by Chandra Prakash Kala during 1999 and 2000, the Karakoram is in one of the worlds most geologically active areas, at the plate boundary between the Indo-Australian plate and the Eurasian plate. A significant part, 28-50% of the Karakoram Range is glaciated, compared to the Himalaya, mountain glaciers may serve as an indicator of climate change, advancing and receding with long-term changes in temperature and precipitation. Karakoram glaciers are mostly stagnating or enlarging, because, unlike in the Himalayas, where there is no such insulation, the rate of retreat is high. In the last ice age, a series of glaciers stretched from western Tibet to Nanga Parbat. To the south, the Indus glacier was the valley glacier. In the north, the Karakoram glaciers joined those from the Kunlun Mountains, while the current valley glaciers in the Karakoram reach a maximum length of 76 kilometres, several of the ice-age valley glacier branches and main valley glaciers, had lengths up to 700 kilometres. During the Ice age, the snowline was about 1,300 metres lower than today. Baltistan has more than 100 mountain peaks exceeding 6,100 metres height from sea level. K1, Masherbrum K2 K3, Gasherbrum IV K3a, Gasherbrum III K4, Gasherbrum II K5, Gasherbrum I K6, Baltistan Peak K7,6,934 m peak near Charakusa Valley K9, approx
Karakoram
–
Baltoro glacier in the central Karakoram with
8000ers,
Gasherbrum I &
II.
Karakoram
–
K2
Karakoram
–
View from the top of
K2
Karakoram
–
View of the moon over Karakoram Range in Pakistan
15.
Kunlun Mountains
–
The Kunlun Mountains are one of the longest mountain chains in Asia, extending more than 3,000 kilometres. In the broadest sense, it forms the edge of the Tibetan Plateau south of the Tarim Basin. The exact definition of this range varies, an old source uses Kunlun to mean the mountain belt that runs across the center of China, that is, Kunlun in the narrow sense, Altyn Tagh along with the Qilian and Qin Mountains. A recent source has the Kunlun range forming most of the side of the Tarim Basin. Sima Qian says that Emperor Wu of Han sent men to find the source of the Yellow River, the name seems to have originated as a semi-mythical location in the classical Chinese text Shanhai Jing. From the Pamirs of Tajikistan, it runs east along the border between Xinjiang and Tibet autonomous regions to the Sino-Tibetan ranges in Qinghai province. It stretches along the edge of what is now called the Tarim Basin, the infamous Takla Makan or sand-buried houses desert. A number of important rivers flow from it including the Karakash River and the Yurungkash River, altyn-Tagh or Altun Range is one of the chief northern ranges of the Kunlun. Its eastern extension Qilian Shan is another main northern range of the Kunlun, in the south main extension is the Min Shan. Bayan Har Mountains, a branch of the Kunlun Mountains. The highest mountain of the Kunlun Shan is the Kunlun Goddess in the Keriya area, the Arka Tagh is in the center of the Kunlun Shan, its highest point is Ulugh Muztagh. Some authorities claim that the Kunlun extends northwest-wards as far as Kongur Tagh, but these mountains are physically much more closely linked to the Pamir group. The mountain range formed at the edges of the Cimmerian Plate during its collision, in the Late Triassic, with Siberia. The range has very few roads and in its 3,000 km length is crossed by only two, in the west, Highway 219 traverses the range en route from Yecheng, Xinjiang to Lhatse, Tibet. Further east, Highway 109 crosses between Lhasa and Golmud, over 70 volcanic cones form the Kunlun Volcanic Group. They are not volcanic mountains, but cones, as such, they are not counted among the world volcanic mountain peaks. The group, however, musters the heights of 5,808 metres above sea level, if they were considered volcanic mountains, they would constitute the highest volcano in Asia and China and second highest in the Eastern Hemisphere and one of Volcanic Seven Summits by elevation. The last known eruption in the group was on May 27,1951
Kunlun Mountains
–
View of Western Kunlun Shan from the Tibet-Xinjiang highway
Kunlun Mountains
–
Karakash River in the Western Kunlun Shan, seen from the
Tibet-Xinjiang highway
Kunlun Mountains
–
The Kunlun Pass
16.
Hindu Kush
–
It forms the western section of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region. It divides the valley of the Amu Darya to the north from the Indus River valley to the south, the eastern end of the Hindu Kush in the north merges with the Karakoram Range. Towards its southern end, it connects with the Spin Ghar Range near the Kabul River, the Hindu Kush range were a historically significant center of Buddhism with sites such as the Bamiyan Buddhas. The range and communities settled in it hosted ancient monasteries, important trade networks, Buddhism declined, then vanished, after Islam arrived in the region. The Hindu Kush range has also been the passageway during the invasions of the Indian subcontinent and this collision created the Himalayas, including the Hindu Kush. The Hindu Kush range remains geologically active and are still rising, the origins of the name Hindu Kush are uncertain, with multiple theories being propounded by different scholars and writers. The Persian-English dictionary indicates that the word koš is derived from the verb, the word and suffix -kush means kill, slay, death. In his travel memoirs about India, the 14th century Moroccan traveller Muhammad Ibn Battuta mentioned crossing into India via the passes of the Hindu Kush. In his Rihla, he mentions these mountains and the history of the range in slave trading, to Arab geographers, states Allan, Hindu Kush was the frontier boundary where Hindustan started. According to McColl, yet another possibility is that the name may be from the ancient Avestan language, the mountain range was also called Paropamisadae by Hellenic Greeks in the late first millennium BC. Some scholars remove the space, and refer to Hindu Kush as Hindukush, the mountains have historical significance in the Indian subcontinent and China. The Hindu Kush range was a center of Buddhism with sites such as the Bamiyan Buddhas. It has also been the passageway during the invasions of the Indian subcontinent, a region where the Taliban and Al Qaeda grew, Buddhism was widespread in the ancient Hindu Kush region. Ancient artwork of Buddhism include the giant rock carved statues called the Bamiyan Buddha and these statues were blown up by the Taliban Islamists. One of the early Buddhist schools, the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda, was prominent in the area of Bamiyan, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang visited a Lokottaravāda monastery in the 7th century CE, at Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Some manuscripts are in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script, while others are in Sanskrit, after the Islamic conquest of the region and Islam becoming the state religion, Buddhism vanished and locals became Muslims. The significance of the Hindu Kush mountain range has been recorded since the time of Darius I of Persia, alexander the Great entered the Indian subcontinent through the Hindu Kush as his army moved past Bactria into the Afghan valley in the spring of 329 BCE. He moved towards the Indus valley river region in 327 BCE, the region became a part of the Kushan Empire in centuries around the start of the common era
Hindu Kush
–
Hindu Kush range
Hindu Kush
–
Landscape of Afghanistan with a
T-62 in the foreground.
Hindu Kush
–
The Hindu Kush occupies the lower left centre of this satellite image.
Hindu Kush
17.
Suleman Mountain
–
The Sulayman Mountain is the only World Heritage Site located entirely in the country of Kyrgyzstan. It is located in the city of Osh and was once a place of Muslim and pre-Muslim pilgrimage. The rock rises abruptly from the plains of the Fergana Valley and is a popular place among locals and visitors. This mountain is thought by researchers and historians to be the famous landmark of antiquity known as the “Stone Tower”. It marked the midpoint on the ancient Silk Road, the trade route taken by caravans between Europe and Asia. Sulayman is a prophet in the Quran, and the mountain contains a shrine that supposedly marks his grave, women who ascend to the shrine on top and crawl though an opening across the holy rock will, according to legend, give birth to healthy children. The trees and bushes on the mountain are draped with numerous prayer flags, according to the UNESCO, the mountain is the most complete example of a sacred mountain anywhere in Central Asia, worshipped over several millennia. The site is still a place for local Muslims, with stairs leading up to the highest peak where there stands a small mosque originally built by Babur in 1510. Much of the mosque was reconstructed in the late 20th century, the rock also contains the National Historical and Archaeological Museum Complex Sulayman that was built during the Soviet era, showing archaeological findings from the area and its history. The lower slope of the mountain is surrounded by a cemetery
Suleman Mountain
–
UNESCO World Heritage Site
18.
Mountain
–
A mountain is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area, usually in the form of a peak. A mountain is steeper than a hill. Mountains are formed through tectonic forces or volcanism and these forces can locally raise the surface of the earth. Mountains erode slowly through the action of rivers, weather conditions, a few mountains are isolated summits, but most occur in huge mountain ranges. High elevations on mountains produce colder climates than at sea level and these colder climates strongly affect the ecosystems of mountains, different elevations have different plants and animals. Because of the less hospitable terrain and climate, mountains tend to be used less for agriculture and more for resource extraction and recreation, the highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Asia, whose summit is 8,850 m above mean sea level. The highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars at 21,171 m, there is no universally accepted definition of a mountain. Elevation, volume, relief, steepness, spacing and continuity have been used as criteria for defining a mountain, whether a landform is called a mountain may depend on local usage. The highest point in San Francisco, California, is called Mount Davidson, notwithstanding its height of 300 m, similarly, Mount Scott outside Lawton, Oklahoma is only 251 m from its base to its highest point. Whittows Dictionary of Physical Geography states Some authorities regard eminences above 600 metres as mountains, in addition, some definitions also include a topographical prominence requirement, typically 100 or 500 feet. For a while, the US defined a mountain as being 1,000 feet or taller, any similar landform lower than this height was considered a hill. However, today, the United States Geological Survey concludes that these terms do not have technical definitions in the US, using these definitions, mountains cover 33% of Eurasia, 19% of South America, 24% of North America, and 14% of Africa. As a whole, 24% of the Earths land mass is mountainous, there are three main types of mountains, volcanic, fold, and block. All three types are formed from plate tectonics, when portions of the Earths crust move, crumple, compressional forces, isostatic uplift and intrusion of igneous matter forces surface rock upward, creating a landform higher than the surrounding features. The height of the feature makes it either a hill or, if higher and steeper, major mountains tend to occur in long linear arcs, indicating tectonic plate boundaries and activity. Volcanoes are formed when a plate is pushed below another plate, at a depth of around 100 km, melting occurs in rock above the slab, and forms magma that reaches the surface. When the magma reaches the surface, it builds a volcanic mountain. Examples of volcanoes include Mount Fuji in Japan and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, the magma does not have to reach the surface in order to create a mountain, magma that solidifies below ground can still form dome mountains, such as Navajo Mountain in the US
Mountain
–
Mount Everest, the highest peak on Earth
Mountain
–
Chimborazo,
Ecuador. The point on Earth's surface farthest from its center.
Mountain
–
Aiguille du Dru in the
French Alps
Mountain
–
The
Matterhorn,
Swiss Alps
19.
Alay Valley
–
The Alay Valley is a broad, dry valley running east-west across most of southern Osh Province, Kyrgyzstan. It is about 180 km east-west and about 40 km north-south, the north side is the Alay Mountains which slope down to the Ferghana Valley. The south side is the Trans-Alay Range along the Tajikistan border, the western 40 km or so is more hills than valley. On the east there is the low Tongmurun pass and then more valley leading to the Irkestam border crossing to China, the eastern Kyzyl-Suu flows from the Tongmurun rise past Irkestam toward Kashgar. The western Kyzyl-Suu flows west from the Tongmurun rise and drains most of the valley and it exits through the Karamyk pass and a gorge into Tajikistan, where, under the name of the Vakhsh River it flows southwest into the Amu Darya. Highway A371 runs along the valley, the western pass to Tajikistan is closed to foreigners, but the eastern pass to China is open. A371 intersects the M41 highway north to Osh at Sary-Tash, to the south, M41 becomes very rough and leads to the 4, 280m Kyzyl-Art pass to Murgab in Tajikistan, a route that requires considerable preparation and paperwork. The valley has a population of approximately 17,000 and is almost entirely Kyrgyz with a few pockets of Tajik population. One traveler says with no jobs, a winter climate, and poor conditions for agriculture, life is immensely tough here. Places in or near the valley, Irkestam, Nura, Sary-Tash, Achiktash, Lenin Peak, Sary-Mogol, Kashka-Suu, Bordobo, Karakavak, Kyzyleshme, Daroot-Korgon, Chak, Dzharbashy, Karamyk, the Alai Valley in Pakistan is east of Besham. The population is mostly Pathan and lived under their own nawab until the late 1970s
Alay Valley
–
A view of Alay Valley, Trans-Alay Range, and Kyzyl-Suu (West) River
20.
Wakhan Corridor
–
The Wakhan Corridor is the narrow strip of territory in northeastern Afghanistan that extends to China and separates Tajikistan from Pakistan. The corridor, wedged between the Pamirs to the north and the Karakoram range to the south, is about 350 km long, inside the Wakhan Corridor is a high mountain valley from which the Panj and Pamir Rivers emerge and form the Amu Darya. A trade route through the valley has been used by travelers going to and from East, South, Wakhan Corridor can also refer to the valley and the trade route. The closure of the Afghan-Chinese border crossing at the Wakhjir Pass at the east end of the Wakhan Corridor, the corridor was a political creation of The Great Game. On its south side, the Durand Line agreement of 1893 marked the boundary between British India and Afghanistan and this left a narrow strip of land as a buffer between the two empires, which became known as the Wakhan Corridor in the 20th century. As of 2010, the Wakhan Corridor had 12,000 inhabitants, the northern part of the Wakhan is also referred to as the Pamir. The Wakhan Corridor forms the panhandle of Afghanistans Badakhshan Province, at its western entrance near the Afghan town of Ishkashim, the corridor is 18 km wide. The western third of the corridor varies from 13–30 km in width, at its eastern end, the corridor forks into two prongs that wrap around a salient of Chinese territory, forming the two countries 92 km boundary. The Wakhjir Pass, on the southeastern prong is about 300 km from Ishkashim, the easternmost point of the northeastern prong is about 350 km from Ishkashim. On the Chinese side of the border is Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the northern border is formed by the Pamir River and Lake Zorkul in the west and the high peaks of the Pamir Mountains in the east. To the north is Tajikistans Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous region, in the south, the corridor is bounded by the high mountains of the Hindu Kush and Karakoram. The Broghol and Irshad Passes along the southern flank offer access, respectively, to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the corridor is higher in the east and descends to about 3,037 m at Ishkashim. The Wakhjir River emerges from an ice cave on the Afghan side of the Wakhjir Pass and flows west, joining the Bozai Darya near the village of Bozai Gumbaz and forms the Wakhan River. The Wakhan River then joins the Pamir River near Kala-i-Panj to form the Panj River, Chinese considers the valley east of Wakhjir Pass on the Chinese side connecting Taghdumbash Pamir to be part of Wakhan Corridor. The high mountain valley is about 100 km long and this valley, through which the Tashkurgan River flows, is generally about 3–5 km wide and less than 1 km at its narrowest point. This entire valley on the Chinese side is closed to visitors, however, local residents, although the terrain is extremely rugged, the Corridor was historically used as a trading route between Badakhshan and Yarkand. It appears that Marco Polo came this way, the Portuguese Jesuit priest Bento de Goes crossed from the Wakhan to China between 1602 and 1606. In May 1906, Sir Aurel Stein explored the Wakhan and reported that at time,100 pony loads of goods crossed annually to China
Wakhan Corridor
–
Wakhan Corridor
Wakhan Corridor
–
Wakhan Corridor
21.
Roof of the World
–
For the Doctor Who episode, see Marco Polo. For the Doctor Who audio story, see The Roof of the World, for the ancient geography of this region, see Mount Imeon. Roof of the World is a description of the high region in the world. The term usually refers to the interior of Asia. The term is used for parts of this region, for the Pamirs. Wood, in 1838, was the first European traveller of modern times to visit the Great Pamir, older encyclopedias also used Roof of the World to describe the Pamirs, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. PAMIRS, a mountainous region of central Asia. the Bam-i-dunya. The Columbia Encyclopedia,1942 edition, the Pamirs, hachette,1890, Le Toit du monde, French for Roof of the World. Der Große Brockhaus, Leipzig 1928-1935, Dach der Welt, Bezeichnung für das Hochland von Pamir, with the awakening of public interest in Tibet, the Pamirs, since 1875. Four continents Seven Seas Mount Imeon
Roof of the World
–
Physical map of Central Asia from the Caucasus in the NW, to Mongolia in the NE.
Roof of the World
–
Where the world's tallest mountain ranges meet
Roof of the World
–
Panorama of the Pamirs, the Original Roof of the World
22.
Persian language
–
Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
Persian language
–
Old Persian
Persian language
–
Ferdowsi 's
Shahnameh
Persian language
–
Kalilah va Dimna, an influential work in Persian literature.
23.
Tajik language
–
Tajik or Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is closely related to Dari Persian, since the beginning of the twentieth century, Tajik has been considered by a number of writers and researchers to be a variety of Persian. The issue of whether Tajik and Persian are to be considered two dialects of a language or two discrete languages has political sides to it. Today Tajik is recognized as a West-Iranian language, Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan. In Afghanistan, this language is influenced by Turkic languages, is called Dari. The standard language is based on the dialects of Tajik. The most important cities of Central Asia—Samarkand and Bukhara—are in present-day Uzbekistan, today, virtually all Tajik speakers in Bukhara are bilingual in Tajik and Uzbek. This Tajik–Uzbek bilingualism has had a influence on the phonology, morphology. Tajiks are also found in numbers in the Surxondaryo Region in the south. Tajik is still spoken in Samarqand and Buxoro today, as Tajiks account for perhaps 70% of the total population of Samarqand and have been estimated to make up as much as 90% of Buxoro. Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the total population. However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, the Uzbekization movement ended in 1924. Native Tajiks living in the nation of Uzbekistan have reportedly estimated that Tajiks make up 25–30% of the nations population, Tajiks constitute 80% of Tajikistans population, and Persian dominates in most parts of the country. Some Tajiks in Badakhshan in southeastern Tajikistan, where the Pamir languages are the languages of most residents, are bilingual. Tajiks constitute between 25% and 30% of the population of the country. 50% of Afghan citizens are native speakers of Dari, a large Tajik-speaking diaspora exists due to the instability that has plagued Central Asia in recent years, with significant numbers of Tajiks found in Russia, Kazakhstan, and beyond. This Tajik diaspora is also the result of the state of the economy of Tajikistan. Tajik dialects can be split into the following groups, Northern dialects
Tajik language
–
Toçikī in the
Tajik alphabet
Tajik language
–
Tajik Republic's 1929 coat of arms with Tajik language in Perso-Arabic script جمهوريه اجتماعی شوروى مختار تاجيكستان
24.
Pashto language
–
Pashto, known in Persian literature as Afghānistani and in Urdu and Hindi literature as Paṭhānī, is the South-Central Asian language of the Pashtuns. Its speakers are called Pashtuns or Pukhtuns and sometimes Afghans or Pathans and it is an Eastern Iranian language, belonging to the Indo-European family. Pashto is one of the two languages of Afghanistan, and it is the second-largest regional language of Pakistan, mainly spoken in the west and northwest of the country. Pakistans Federally Administered Tribal Areas are almost 100% Pashto-speaking, while it is the majority language of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pashto is the main language among the Pashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto-speakers is estimated to be 45–60 million people worldwide, Pashto belongs to the Northeastern Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian branch, but Ethnologue lists it as Southeastern Iranian. Pashto has two main groups, “soft” and “hard”, the latter known as Pakhto. As a national language of Afghanistan, Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south, and southwest, the exact numbers of speakers are unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 45–60% of the total population of Afghanistan. In Pakistan Pashto is spoken as a first language by about 15. 42% of Pakistans 170 million people and it is the main language of the Pashtun-majority regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and northern Balochistan. It is also spoken in parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of the Punjab province and in Islamabad, modern Pashto-speaking communities are found in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh. Other communities of Pashto speakers are found in Tajikistan, and further in the Pashtun diaspora, there are also communities of Pashtun descent in the southwestern part of Jammu and Kashmir. Pashto is one of the two languages of Afghanistan, along with Dari. Since the early 18th century, all the kings of Afghanistan were ethnic Pashtuns except for Habibullah Kalakani, Persian as the literary language of the royal court was more widely used in government institutions while Pashto was spoken by the Pashtun tribes as their native tongue. Although officially strengthening the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a “sophisticated language, king Zahir Shah thus followed suit after his father Nadir Khan had decreed in 1933, that both Persian and Pashto were to be studied and utilized by officials. Thus Pashto became a language, a symbol for Afghan nationalism. The status of language was reaffirmed in 1964 by the constitutional assembly when Afghan Persian was officially renamed to Dari. The lyrics of the anthem of Afghanistan are in Pashto. In Pakistan, Urdu and English are the two official languages, Pashto has no official status at the federal level. On a provincial level, Pashto is the language of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas
Pashto language
–
Pashto language on the map of Afghanistan.The brown areas speak Pashto.
Pashto language
–
The word Pax̌tō written in the
Pashto alphabet
25.
Uyghur language
–
Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family, like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with subject–object–verb word order. More distinctly Uyghur processes include, especially in dialects, vowel reduction. In addition to influence of other Turkic languages, Uyghur has historically been influenced strongly by Persian and Arabic, the modified Arabic-derived writing system is the most common and the only standard in China, although other writing systems are used for auxiliary and historical purposes. Unlike most Arabic-derived scripts, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet has mandatory marking of all due to modifications to the original Perso-Arabic script made in the 20th century. Two Latin and one Cyrillic alphabet are used, though to a much lesser extent. The Arabic and Latin alphabets both have 32 characters, the Middle Turkic languages are the direct ancestor of the Karluk languages, including Uyghur and the Uzbek language. Kagan Arik wrote that Modern Uyghur is not descended from Old Uyghur, rather, according to Gerard Clauson, Western Yugur is considered to be the true descendant of Old Uyghur, and is also called Neo-Uyghur. Modern Uyghur is not a descendant of Old Uyghur, but is descended from the Xākānī language described by Mahmud al-Kashgari in Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk, the Western Yugur language, although in geographic proximity, is more closely related to the Siberian Turkic languages in Siberia. Robert Dankoff wrote that the Turkic language spoken in Kashgar and used in Kara Khanid works was Karluk, robert Barkley Shaw wrote, In the Turkish of Káshghar and Yarkand. This would seem in many case to be a misnomer as applied to the language of Kashghar. Other Kara-Khanid writers wrote works in the Turki Karluk Khaqani language, yusuf Khass Hajib wrote the Kutadgu Bilig. Ahmad bin Mahmud Yukenaki wrote the Hibat al-ḥaqāyiq, after Chaghatai fell into extinction, the standard versions of Uyghur and Uzbek were developed from dialects in the Chagatai-speaking region, showing abundant Chaghatai influence. Uyghur language today shows considerable Persian influence as a result from Chagatai, Modern Uyghur religious literature includes the Taẕkirah, biographies of Islamic religious figures and saints. The Taẕkirah is a genre of literature written about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr, the shrines of Sufi Saints are revered in Altishahr as one of Islams essential components and the tazkirah literature reinforced the sacredness of the shrines. Anyone who does not believe in the stories of the saints is guaranteed hellfire by the tazkirahs and it is written, And those who doubt Their Holinesses the Imams will leave this world without faith, and on Judgement Day their faces will be black. In the Tazkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams, Shaw translated extracts from the Tazkiratul-Bughra on the Muslim Turki war against the infidel Khotan. The Turki-language Tadhkirah i Khwajagan was written by M. Sadiq Kashghari, historical works like the Tārīkh-i amniyya and Tārīkh-i ḥamīdi were written by Musa Sayrami
Uyghur language
–
A signboard in front of the Military Museum of Xinjiang written in Uyghur (using Arabic script) and
Standard Chinese
Uyghur language
–
Geographical extent of Uyghur in China
Uyghur language
–
A sign in
Ghulja, Xinjiang, written in Uyghur (using Arabic script) and Chinese (both
Hanzi and
Pinyin)
Uyghur language
–
Internet café in
Khotan oasis city in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Address written in Uyghur Language/
Arabic script
26.
Urdu
–
Urdu is a persianized standard register of the Hindustani language. It is the language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also one of the 22 official languages recognized in the Constitution of India, hyderabad, Rampur, Bhopal and Lucknow are noted Urdu-speaking cities of India. Urdu is historically associated with the Muslims of the northern Indian subcontinent, apart from specialized vocabulary, Urdu is mutually intelligible with Standard Hindi, another recognized register of Hindustani. Urdu, like Hindi, is a form of Hindustani, Urdu developed under the influence of the Persian and Arabic languages, both of which have contributed a significant amount of vocabulary to formal speech. Around 99% of Urdu verbs have their roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit, Urdu words originating from Chagatai and Arabic were borrowed through Persian and hence are Persianized versions of the original words. For instance, the Arabic ta marbuta changes to he or te, nevertheless, contrary to popular belief, Urdu did not borrow from the Turkish language, but from Chagatai. Urdu and Turkish borrowed from Arabic and Persian, hence the similarity in pronunciation of many Urdu, Arabic influence in the region began with the late first-millennium Arab invasion of India in the 7th century. The Persian language was introduced into the subcontinent a few centuries later by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties including that of the Delhi Sultanate. With the advent of the British Raj, Persian was no longer the language of administration but Hindustani, still written in the Persian script, the name Urdu was first used by the poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi around 1780. From the 13th century until the end of the 18th century Urdu was commonly known as Hindi, the language was also known by various other names such as Hindavi and Dehlavi. The communal nature of the language lasted until it replaced Persian as the language in 1837 and was made co-official. Urdu was promoted in British India by British policies to counter the previous emphasis on Persian and this triggered a Brahman backlash in northwestern India, which argued that the language should be written in the native Devanagari script. At independence, Pakistan established a highly Persianized literary form of Urdu as its national language, English has exerted a heavy influence on both as a co-official language. Owing to interaction with other languages, Urdu has become localized wherever it is spoken, similarly, the Urdu spoken in India can also be distinguished into many dialects like Dakhni of South India, and Khariboli of the Punjab region since recent times. Because of Urdus similarity to Hindi, speakers of the two languages can understand one another if both sides refrain from using specialized vocabulary. The syntax, morphology, and the vocabulary are essentially identical. Thus linguists usually count them as one language and contend that they are considered as two different languages for socio-political reasons
Urdu
–
Autograph and a couplet of Last
Mughal Emperor,
Bahadur Shah II, dated 29 April 1844
Urdu
–
Urdu in
Perso-Arabic script (
Nastaliq style)
Urdu
–
A trilingual
signboard in the
UAE
Urdu
–
A multilingual
New Delhi railway station board
27.
Simplified Chinese characters
–
Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
Simplified Chinese characters
–
Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese characters
–
The slogan 战无不胜的毛泽东思想万岁 (Zhàn wúbù shèng de Máo Zédōng sīxiǎng wànsuì; Long live the invincible
Mao Zedong Thought) on
Xinhua Gate in Beijing.
Simplified Chinese characters
–
The first batch of Simplified Characters introduced in 1935 consisted of 324 characters.
28.
Traditional Chinese characters
–
Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
Traditional Chinese characters
–
Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese characters
–
Job announcement in a Filipino Chinese daily newspaper written in Traditional Chinese characters.
Traditional Chinese characters
–
A Series of Reading workbook in Traditional Chinese used in some Elementary schools in the Philippines.
29.
Pinyin
–
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
Pinyin
–
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak
Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.
Pinyin
–
In
Yiling,
Yichang,
Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin
30.
Dungan language
–
The Dungan language /ˈdʊŋɡɑːn/ is a Sinitic language spoken primarily Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan by the Dungan people, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China. Although it is derived from the Central Plains Mandarin of Gansu and Shaanxi, it is written in Cyrillic and contains loanwords. The Hui of Northwestern China would normally speak the same Mandarin dialect as the Han people in the same area, the Hui traders in the bazaars would be able to use Arabic or Persian numbers when talking between themselves, to keep their communications secret from Han bystanders. While not constituting a separate language, these words, phrases and turns of speech, known as Huihui hua, served as markers of group identity. As early 20th century travellers in Northwestern China would note, the Mohammedan Chinese have to some extent a vocabulary, in the Soviet Union, a written standard of the Dungan language was developed, based on a Gansu dialect, rather than the Beijing base of Standard Chinese. The language was used in the schools in Dungan villages, the first Dungan-language newspaper was established in 1932, it continues publication today in weekly form. There is a degree of mutual intelligibility between Dungan and various Mandarin dialects. The Shaanxi and Gansu Mandarin dialects are understood by Dungans, Dungan is spoken primarily in Kyrgyzstan, with speakers in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Russia as well. The Dungan ethnic group are the descendants of refugees from China who migrated west into Central Asia, Chinese varieties usually have different classifiers for different types of nouns, with northern varieties tending to have fewer classifiers than southern ones. 個 is the only found in the Dungan language, though not the only measure word. Like other Chinese varieties, Dungan is tonal, there are two main dialects, one with 4 tones, and the other, considered standard, with 3 tones in the final position in phonetic words and 4 tones in the nonfinal position. The corresponding table compares current Dungan spelling, old Dungan spelling, pinyin, using Standard Chinese vowels as basis, each vowel and its respective current Dungan spelling is presented below, along with the old Dungan spelling, using pinyin, and IPA. Note that the correspondence between Dungan vowels and Standard Chinese vowels is not perfect, vowel constructs that can be used as independent syllable without consonants are shown in parenthesis. There are rhotacised vowels, as well as some syllables only seen in words from Russian, Kyrgyz. Furthermore, the acrolects of Dungan and Gansu/Shaanxi Mandarin have diverged due to time. During the 20th century, translators and intellectuals introduced many neologisms and calques into the Chinese language, as a result of these borrowings, the equivalent standard Chinese terms are not widely known or understood among the Dungan. The modern Dungan language is the only spoken Chinese that is written in the Cyrillic alphabet and it is a Russian-based alphabet plus five special letters, Җ, Ң, Ү, Ә, and Ў. Note The letters Ъ and Ь are only used to write Russian loanwords Dungan is unique in that it is one of the few varieties of Chinese that is not normally written using Chinese characters
Dungan language
–
Books in Dungan, or about Dungan (in Russian or English). Most of them were published in
Frunze,
Kirghiz SSR in the 1970s and 80s.
31.
Geology
–
Geology is an earth science concerned with the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Geology can also refer generally to the study of the features of any terrestrial planet. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life. Geology also plays a role in engineering and is a major academic discipline. The majority of data comes from research on solid Earth materials. These typically fall into one of two categories, rock and unconsolidated material, the majority of research in geology is associated with the study of rock, as rock provides the primary record of the majority of the geologic history of the Earth. There are three types of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The rock cycle is an important concept in geology which illustrates the relationships between three types of rock, and magma. When a rock crystallizes from melt, it is an igneous rock, the sedimentary rock can then be subsequently turned into a metamorphic rock due to heat and pressure and is then weathered, eroded, deposited, and lithified, ultimately becoming a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock may also be re-eroded and redeposited, and metamorphic rock may also undergo additional metamorphism, all three types of rocks may be re-melted, when this happens, a new magma is formed, from which an igneous rock may once again crystallize. Geologists also study unlithified material which typically comes from more recent deposits and these materials are superficial deposits which lie above the bedrock. Because of this, the study of material is often known as Quaternary geology. This includes the study of sediment and soils, including studies in geomorphology, sedimentology and this theory is supported by several types of observations, including seafloor spreading, and the global distribution of mountain terrain and seismicity. This coupling between rigid plates moving on the surface of the Earth and the mantle is called plate tectonics. The development of plate tectonics provided a basis for many observations of the solid Earth. Long linear regions of geologic features could be explained as plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges, high regions on the seafloor where hydrothermal vents and volcanoes exist, were explained as divergent boundaries, where two plates move apart. Arcs of volcanoes and earthquakes were explained as convergent boundaries, where one plate subducts under another, transform boundaries, such as the San Andreas Fault system, resulted in widespread powerful earthquakes. Plate tectonics also provided a mechanism for Alfred Wegeners theory of continental drift and they also provided a driving force for crustal deformation, and a new setting for the observations of structural geology
Geology
–
On this diagram, subducting
slabs are in blue, and continental margins and a few plate boundaries are in red. The blue blob in the cutaway section is the seismically imaged
Farallon Plate, which is subducting beneath North America. The remnants of this plate on the Surface of the Earth are the
Juan de Fuca Plate and Explorer plate in the Northwestern USA / Southwestern Canada, and the
Cocos Plate on the west coast of Mexico.
Geology
–
This schematic diagram of the rock cycle shows the relationship between magma and sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rock
Geology
Geology
–
Geologic cross-section of
Kittatinny Mountain. This cross-section shows metamorphic rocks, overlain by younger sediments deposited after the metamorphic event. These rock units were later folded and faulted during the uplift of the mountain.
32.
Wakhan
–
Wakhan or the Wakhan is a very mountainous and rugged part of the Pamir, Hindu Kush and Karakoram regions of Afghanistan. Wakhan District is a district in Badakshan Province, the Wakhan is located in the extreme north-east of Afghanistan. It contains the headwaters of the Amu Darya River, and was an ancient corridor for travellers from the Tarim Basin to Badakshan. Until 1883 the Wakhan included the valley of the Panj River. Since then, the name Wakhan is now used to refer to the Afghan area south of the two rivers. The northern part of the historic Wakhan is now part of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province in Tajikistan, the only road into the Wakhan is a rough track from Ishkashim past Qila-e Panja to Sarhad-e Broghil. Paths lead from the end of the road to the Wakhjir Pass, the western part of the Wakhan, between Ishkashim and Qila-e Panja, is known as Lower Wakhan, which includes the valley of the Panj River. The valleys of the Wakhan River, the Pamir River and their tributaries, the eastern extremity of Upper Wakhan is known as the Pamir Knot, the area where the Himalayas, Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, and Hindu Kush ranges meet. West of the Pamir Knot is the Little Pamir, a broad U-shaped grassy valley 100 km long and 10 km wide, which contains Chaqmaqtin Lake, at the eastern end of the Little Pamir is the Tegermansu Valley, from where the closed Tegermansu Pass leads to China. The Great Pamir or Big Pamir, a 60 km long valley south of Zorkol lake, drained by the Pamir River, the mountain range that divides the two Pamirs is known as the Nicholas Range. West of the Nicholas Range, between the Great Pamir and the valley of the Wakhan River, is the Wakhan Range. The Wakhan River flows through the corridor from the east to Qila-e Panja where it joins the Pamir River to become the Panj River which then forms the border. In the south the corridor is bordered by the mountains of the Hindu Kush, crossed by the Broghol pass, the Irshad Pass. Historically the Wakhan has been an important region for thousands of years as it is where the Western and Eastern portions of Central Asia meet. Until 1883 Wakhan was a principality on both sides of the Panj and Pamir Rivers, ruled by a ruler with his capital at Qila-e Panja. In the 1880s, under pressure from Britain, Abdur Rahman Khan the Emir of Afghanistan imposed Afghan rule on the Wakhan, on its south side, the Durand Line agreement of 1893 marked the boundary between British India and Afghanistan. This left a narrow strip of land as a buffer between the two empires, in 1949, when Mao Zedong completed the Communist takeover of China, the borders were permanently closed, sealing off the 2, 000-year-old caravan route and turning the corridor into a cul-de-sac. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, they occupied the Wakhan and built strong military posts at Sarhad-e Broghil, to facilitate access they built a bridge across the Pamir River at Prip, near Gaz Khan
Wakhan
–
The
Wakhan Corridor
Wakhan
–
The Wakhan and surrounding areas along the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan
Wakhan
–
Wakhan between Pakistan and Tajikistan
33.
Zorkul
–
Zorkul is a lake in the Pamir Mountains that runs along the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It extends east to west for about 25 km, the Afghan-Tajik border runs along the lake from east to west, turning south towards Concord Peak, about 15 km south of the lake. The lakes northern half lies in Tajikistan where it is protected as part of the Zorkul Nature Reserve, out of the lake, towards the west, flows the Pamir River, tracing the Afghan-Tajik border. It is therefore a source of the Amu Darya or Oxus River, the Great Pamir extends to the south of the lake. The lake is on the path of the Silk Road and it was referred to as Great Dragon Pool in Chinese historical records. Although there is a reference to the lake in Marco Polos account. Sir-i-kol became known to the British as Lake Victoria, after the British queen and it was also known as Lake Victoria in the Pamirs to distinguish it from the much larger Lake Victoria in Africa
Zorkul
–
Zorkul, watercolor by
Thomas Edward Gordon (in May 2nd, 1874)
34.
Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County
–
Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County is a county of Kashgar Prefecture in western Xinjiang, China. The county seat is Taxkorgan Town, the Muztagh Ata, at 7,546 metres, and the Kongur Tagh, at 7,719 metres, are the main peaks in the county, while the two main rivers are the Taxkorgan River and the Tiznap River. By including the Trans-Karakoram Tract, the county also borders several eight-thousanders, including K2, there are several hot springs and resources of gold, iron, and copper. Taxkorgan has a desert climate, influenced by the high elevation, with long, very cold winters. Monthly daily average temperatures range from −11.9 °C in January to 16.4 °C in July, while the annual mean is 3.58 °C. An average of only 68 millimetres of precipitation falls per year The total population of Taxkorgan is 27,800, among them 84% Tajiks, 4% Han and 12% other nationalities. During the Han dynasty, Taxkorgan was known as Puli, during the Tang dynasty, it was a protectorate of the Parthians, Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County was created in 1954 and is part of the district of Kashgar. In August 2013 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences announced that they excavated a cluster of Zoroastrian tombs in Taxkorgan and they are labelled as dating from the Bronze Age to the Warring States period. The mummies were discovered in the nearby Xiabandi Valley on the old route to Yarkand. The valley has now been flooded for a hydro-electric project, the county is served by Karakoram Highway, which runs through Taxkorgan Town. Taxkorgan or Tashkorgan is the last western most town in China and it is also the last/first town for visitors going/coming in/out of China and Pakistan through the Khunjerab Pass. There are public buses plying between Kashgar and Tashkorgan, another option is to hire a pick up for a few hundred RMB for the two way trip. It would be recommended to hire a car as the scenery along the Karakoram is breathtaking as such you might be spending a lot of making numerous stops to take in the views. The initial part of the route is rough and as you travel along it gets better and better in terms of conditions as well as the scenery. However, as of September 2016, China has began building an elevated roads, makan Map Taghdumbash Pamir Tashkurgan Nature Reserve Official website of Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County government
Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County
–
Tashkurgan County
Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County
–
"Welcome to Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County"
Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County
–
Museum of Tajik Autonomous County of Taskorgan, 2011.
35.
Karakoram Highway
–
The highway connects the Pakistani provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan with Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The highway is a popular tourist attraction, and is one of the highest paved roads in the world, passing through the Karakoram mountain range, at 36°51′00″N 75°25′40″E an elevation of 4,693 metres. Due to its elevation and the difficult conditions in which it was constructed. The highway is also a part of the Asian Highway AH4, the Karakoram Highway, also known as the Friendship Highway in China, was built by the governments of Pakistan and China. It was started in 1959 and was completed and opened to the public in 1979, Pakistan initially favored routing through Mintaka Pass. In 1966, China citing the fact that Mintaka would be susceptible to air strikes recommended the steeper Khunjerab Pass instead. About 810 Pakistanis and about 200 Chinese workers lost their lives, mostly in landslides and falls, over 140 Chinese workers who died during the construction are buried in the Chinese cemetery in Gilgit. The route of the KKH traces one of the paths of the ancient Silk Road. On the Pakistani side, the road was constructed by FWO, the Engineer-in-Chiefs Branch of the Pakistani Army completed a project documenting the history of the highway. The book History of Karakoram Highway was written by Brigadier Muhammad Mumtaz Khalid in two volumes. The highway, connecting the Gilgit–Baltistan region to the ancient Silk Road, runs approximately 1,300 km from Kashgar, a city in the Xinjiang region of China, to Abbottabad, of Pakistan. An extension of the highway southwest from Abbottabad, in the form of the N-35 highway, meets the Grand Trunk Road, N-5, at Hasan Abdal, Pakistan. The highway cuts through the zone between the Eurasian and Indian plates, where China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan come within 250 kilometres of each other. According to SASAC, the width will be expanded from 10 to 30 metres, in addition, the upgraded road will be designed to particularly accommodate heavy-laden vehicles and extreme weather conditions. China and Pakistan are planning to link the Karakoram Highway to the port of Gwadar in Balochistan through the Chinese-aided Gwadar-Dalbandin railway. On 4 January 2010, the KKH was closed in the Hunza Valley, the landslide destroyed parts of villages while killing many inhabitants. The subsequent lake displaced thousands and inundated over 20 kilometres of the KKH including the 310 metres long KKH bridge 4 kilometres south of Gulmit and it is highly questionable whether the lake, which reached 27 kilometres in length in 2011, will drain. Goods from and to north are transported over the lake by small vessels
Karakoram Highway
–
A Collage of Panorama at KKH on Pakistani Side.
Karakoram Highway
–
Karakoram Highway route map
Karakoram Highway
–
Summits of Karakoram Mountain Range as seen from the Karakoram Highway near Nagar, Gilgit.
Karakoram Highway
–
Jingle trucks on Karakoram Highway.
36.
Gunt River
–
The Gunt River is a river in the south of Tajikistan. Its source, Lake Yashilkul, is situated at the edge of the Alichur Pamir, the city of Khorog is located at the confluence of the Gunt with the Panj River. The Gunt, and its affluent Shahdara, power the Pamir I power plant, River flow is very seasonal, low in Winter, but high in July and August due to water from melting snow. Its width varies from 10 to 50 meters and it is up to 1.5 meters deep, due to the mountainous terrain, the rivercourse is very fast, over 2 m/s at times. Its bed is rocky, and the banks are steep and precipitous, often the stream occupies the whole river valley, but sometimes it divides into several courses. Tajikistan Development Gateway Debris flows Upper Tokharistan Map of Gunt Kayaking and White Water Rafting
Gunt River
–
Districts
37.
Murghab, Tajikistan
–
Murghab is the capital of Murghob District in the Pamir Mountains of Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, Tajikistan. With a population of 4,000, Murghab is about the significant town the eastern half of Gorno-Badakhshan. It is the highest town in Tajikistan at 3,650 m above sea level and it located at the junction of the Murghab River and the Pamir Highway. The Pamir Highway goes north to Sary-Tash and on to Osh in Kyrgyzstan, a newer road goes east over the Kulma Pass to the Karakoram Highway in China connecting to Tashkurgan to the south and Kashgar in the north. Murghabs location at the hub of roads makes it a regional center for trade. The place was founded by the Russians as Pamirsky Post in 1893, the modern town was constructed during the period of Soviet rule of Tajikistan as a rest stop along the Pamir Highway. The population is about 25% Pamiri and 75% Kyrgyz, Murghab is expected to become a major center for trade between Xinjiang and central Asia. The Köppen Climate Classification sub-type for Murghab is ET or a Tundra Climate, the average annual temperature is −3.9 °C. The warmest month is July with a temperature of 8.7 °C. The average annual precipitation is 347.7 mm and has an average of 87.1 days with precipitation. The wettest month is May with an average of 45.1 mm of precipitation, sixty One Degrees, An Occasional Journal of an Asia-overland adventure
Murghab, Tajikistan
38.
Karakul (Tajikistan)
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Karakul, Qarokul is a 25 km diameter lake within a 52 km impact crater. It is located in the Tajik National Park in the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan, Karakul lies within a circular depression interpreted as an impact crater with a rim diameter of 52 km. The crater is relatively recent, its age is estimated variously as 25 Ma, less than 23 Ma, the Earth Impact Database lists it as less than 5 Ma, or during the Pliocene. It is larger than the Eltanin impact, which has already suggested as a contributor to the cooling. The Karakul impact structure was first identified through studies of imagery taken from space, the lake was formerly known as Lake Victoria, named after Queen Victoria by the British cartographers/military geographers. It was marked as such by most maps of the area until the 1920s when a Kyrgyz name, Karakul, or the Black Lake, the lake/crater lies at an elevation of 3,960 m above mean sea level. It is endorheic and the water is brackish, there is a small village with the same name on the eastern shore of the lake. Although the lake lies within a park, much of the surroundings are used as pasture. The lakes islands are the places where waterbirds rest and nest. The only fish in the lake is a species of stone loach, higher than Lake Titicaca, Karakul hosted the Roof of the World Regatta for the first time in September 2014. This replaced the Alpine Bank Dillon Open, held on the Dillon Reservoir in Summit County, Colorado, as the highest sailing regatta in the world
Karakul (Tajikistan)
–
Karakul
Karakul (Tajikistan)
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Karakul lake Tajikistan
Karakul (Tajikistan)
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Gutman Karakul lake
Karakul (Tajikistan)
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Lists
39.
Pamir River
–
The Pamir is a river in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. It is a tributary of the Panj River, and forms the boundary of Wakhan. The river has its sources in the Pamir Mountains in Gorno-Badakhshan province in the far part of Tajikistan. It flows between the Wakhan Range and the Southern Alichur Range and it starts from the Lake Zorkul, at a height of 4130 meters, and then flows towards the west, and later southwest. Near the town of Langar, at 2799 m, it joins the Wakhan River, the Pamir forms the boundary between Tajikistan and Afghanistan along its entire length. Northwest of Langar is the 6,726 m high Karl Marx Peak, a road runs along the river on the Tajik side to Khargush where it turns north to join the Pamir Highway. A road of lower quality continues east past Zorkul, almost to the Chinese border, john Wood was the first known European to try to find the source of the Oxus, or Pamir River. He made a journey in 1839 and reached Lake Zorkul. Map of the Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajikistan Aga Khan Development Network, Wakhan and the Afghan Pamir Map at p.5
Pamir River
–
Map of Wakhan Corridor, including the Pamir
40.
Sakastan
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Sakastan was a Sasanian province in Late Antiquity, that lay within the kust of Nemroz. The province bordered Kirman in the west, Spahan in the north west, Kushanshahr in the north east, the governor of the province held the title of marzban. The governor also held the title of Sakanshah until the title was abolished in ca, in the Bundahishn, a Zoroastrian scripture written in Pahlavi, the province is written as Seyansih. After the Arab conquest of Iran, the became known as Sijistan and later as Sistan. The province was formed in ca, shapurs son Narseh was the first to appointed as the governor of province, which he would govern until 271, when the Sasanian prince Hormizd was appointed as the new governor. 281, Hormizd revolted against his cousin Bahram II, during the revolt, the people of Sakastan was one of his supporters. Nevertheless, Bahram II managed to suppress the revolt in 283, during the early reign of Shapur II, he appointed his brother Shapur Sakanshah as the governor of Sakastan. Peroz I, during his reign, put an end to dynastic rule in province by appointing a Karenid as its governor. The reason behind the appointment was to further family conflict in the province. During the Muslim conquest of Persia, the last Sasanian king Yazdegerd III fled to Sakastan in the mid-640s, however, Yazdegerd III quickly ended this support when he demanded tax money that he had failed to pay. In 650/1, Abd-Allah ibn Amir, who had recently conquered Kirman, after some time, he reached Zaliq, a border town between Kirman and Sakastan, where he forced the dehqan of the town to acknowledge Rashidun authority. He then did the same at the fortress of Karkuya, which had a fire temple. He then continued to more land in the province. He thereafter besieged Zrang, and after a battle outside the city, Aparviz. When Aparviz went to Rabi to discuss about the conditions of a treaty, Sakastan was thus under the control of the Rashidun Caliphate. During the Achaemenid period, Sakastan, was populated by a Persianized east Iranian group known as the Drangians. From the 2nd century BC to the 1st century, Sakastan saw an influx of Saka tribesmen and also some Parthians. The inhabitants of Sakastan were mainly Zoroastrian, while a minority of them were Nestorian Christians, Narseh Hormizd of Sakastan Bahram III Shapur Sakanshah Hormizd III Unnamed Karen aristrocrat Sukhra Bakhtiyar of Sakastan Rostam of Sakastan Aparviz of Sakastan Greatrex, Geoffrey, Lieu, Samuel N. C
Sakastan
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The gates of Haozdar, in Sistan
Sakastan
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Map of Sakastan, with the capital Sigal.
41.
Muztagh Ata
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Muztagh Ata, or Muztagata, is the second highest of the mountains which form the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. It is sometimes regarded as being part of the Kunlun Shan, not far to the north and east of this group are the lowlands of the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert. The Karakoram Highway passes very close to both peaks as well as Karakul Lake, from which the mountain is conveniently viewed, the closest city is to the mountain is Tashkurgan, the westernmost town in China and very close to the border with Pakistan. According to Michael Witzel, the mentions the mountain Mūjavant. A Muža tribe is found in the Avesta in an eastern area that has vedic-like names. The name seems to survive as the impressive 7, 549-meter-high Muzh Tagh Ata Mountain in the Kirghiz, the Swedish explorer and geographer Sven Hedin made the first recorded attempt to climb Muztagh Ata, in 1894. Additional attempts were made in 1900,1904 and 1947, the last by the team of Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman who came close to the summit but were turned back due to cold. The first ascent of the peak was in 1956 by a party of Chinese. Beletskiy, via the west ridge, which is now the standard route, since the first ascent, many ascents of Muztagh Ata have been made. In 1980, a party led by Ned Gillette made a ski ascent/descent of the standard route, an ascent of the much harder south-east ridge was made in 2000, and a secondary route at the west side of the mountain was first climbed in the summer of 2005. Swedens Anneli Wester camped on the summit in 2011 after climbing the mountain solo, jill Neate, High Asia, An Illustrated History of the 7000 Metre Peaks, ISBN 0-89886-238-8. Himalayan Index Muztagh Ata on summitpost. org Muztagh ata Information muztagh ata informations Muztagh Ata in Kyrgyzstan
Muztagh Ata
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Muztagh Ata, as viewed from the Karakoram Highway
Muztagh Ata
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Mustagh Ata from
Karakoram Highway, 2011
42.
Ismoil Somoni Peak
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Ismoil Somoni Peak is the highest mountain in Tajikistan. It was within the territory of the former Russian Empire and the former Soviet Union before the area became independent as Tajikstan, the mountain is named after Ismail Samani, a ruler of the Samanid dynasty. When the existence of a peak in the Soviet Pamir Mountains higher than Lenin Peak was first established in 1928, in 1962, as part of Krushchevs nationwide de-Stalinization process, the name was changed to Communism Peak, a name by which it is still commonly known. The name Communism Peak was dropped in 1998 in favour of the current name, commemorating the 9th century Samanid emir, the first ascent was made 3 September 1933 by the Soviet mountaineer Yevgeniy Abalakov. Lenin Peak Peak Korzhenevskaya Mount Garmo Patkhor Peak The Free Dictionary, Imeni Ismail Samani Peak Pik Kommunizma
Ismoil Somoni Peak
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Ismoil Somoni Peak (then known as Communism Peak) taken in 1989.
Ismoil Somoni Peak
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Ismoil Somoni Peak (then Communism Peak) from distance in 1982
Ismoil Somoni Peak
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Junko Tabei in peak at 1985
43.
Ibn Sina Peak
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Lenin Peak, or Ibn Sina Peak, rises to 7,134 metres in Gorno-Badakhshan on the border of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and is the second-highest point of both countries. Lenin Peak is the highest mountain in the Trans-Alay Range of Central Asia and it was thought to be the highest point in the Pamirs in Tajikistan until 1933, when Ismoil Somoni Peak was climbed and found to be more than 300 metres higher. Two mountains in the Pamirs in China, Kongur Tagh and Muztagh Ata, are higher than the Tajik summits, the peak was discovered in 1871 and originally named Mount Kaufmann after Konstantin Kaufman, the first Governor-General of Turkestan. In 1928, the mountain was renamed Lenin Peak after the Russian revolutionary and first leader of the Soviet Union, in Tajikistan, the peak was renamed again in July 2006, and today it is officially called in Tajik Qullai Abuali ibni Sino after Abu Ali ibn Sina. In Kyrgyzstan, the peak is still officially called Lenin Chokusu, initial exploration of this part of Central Asia occurred in the period 1774–82. Arguably the first recorded travel through the region is the journey of the slave Filipp Efremov. He crossed the Fergana valley, then via Osh, the Chigirik Pass and Terekdavan Pass he reached the Kashgar and he was the first European who crossed the Alai Mountains. Scientific expeditions to the Alai Mountains began in 1871, when Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko discovered the Trans-Alai Range, the first geographical expedition which came nearest to the base of the future Lenin Peak in the early 20th century was arguably the expedition of Nikolai Leopoldovich Korzhenevskiy. They started climbing upstream of the Saukdara river along the South slope of Trans-Alai Range also Trans-Alay Range, from the river head they continued climbing along the Greater Saukdara Glacier towards a saddle at an elevation of 5820 m. On September 25,1928 they started climbing from the saddle along the NE Ridge, at the time, Kaufman Peak was the highest summit reached by men. The title Lenin Peak was first applied to the highest point of the Trans-Alai Range in the same year, when it was renamed after Lenin it was believed to be the highest point in the USSR. On September 8,1934, at 16,20 Kasian Chernuha, Vitaly Abalakov and Ivan Lukin and their attempt lasted for four days with three camps. The expedition started climbing from the Achik-Tash canyon in the Alai valley, the summit attempt itself was started along the Western ice slope of the Lenin glacier. They continued climbing along the North Face, passing the rocks that were given the name Lipkins Rocks. At the end of the day they reached the crest of the NE ridge at an elevation of about 6500 m. During the following day and a half they climbed along the NE Ridge and, the third ascent was three years later, in 1937, when eight Soviet climbers under the direction of Lev Barkhash reached the summit by the same route. This was at the beginning of political repressions in the Soviet Union and many of the most prominent Soviet climbers. Subsequent attempts to climb Lenin Peak could not begin until 1950, on August 14,1950, twelve climbers under the direction of Vladimir Racek reached the summit for the fourth time
Ibn Sina Peak
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Lenin Peak from Sary Mogol
Ibn Sina Peak
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As it is now, in consideration of an existing infrastructure and BC/ABC location, there are three most attractive routes from the North (as it is approximately indicated on the Scheme): Lipkin's rocks route and NE Ridge; North Face classical route; Razdelnaya route and NW Ridge
Ibn Sina Peak
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Jaan Künnap in the top of Lenin Peak at 1989. This was the first time when
Estonian flag reached over 7000 m
Ibn Sina Peak
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Memorial to the victims of avalanche of 1990
44.
Peak Korzhenevskaya
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Korzhenevskaya Peak is the third highest peak in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan. It is one of the five Snow Leopard Peaks in the territory of the former Soviet Union and it is named after Evgenia Korzhenevskaya, the wife of Russian geographer Nikolai L. Korzhenevskiy, who discovered the peak in August 1910. Due to transliteration and declension issues the name is rendered in many different ways, including Korzhenevski, Korzhenevskoi. Peak Korzhenevskaya lies about 13 km north of Ismoil Somoni Peak and it forms the end of the northwest fork of the Academy of Sciences Range, the north-south trending subrange which forms the core of the Pamirs. It rises on the bank of the Muksu River. While most of the Academy of Sciences Range is in Tajikistans Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province, Korzhenevskaya is located a little to the west of the GBAO line, in Jirgatol district. Korzhenevskaya is one of the five 7,000 m peaks of the former Soviet Union that were required for a climber to be awarded the Snow Leopard award and it is usually said to be the second easiest of these peaks to climb, after Lenin Peak. However it is not a mountain, its rise above local terrain rivals that of Ismoil Somoni Peak. In 1937 D. Gushchin led an attempt on the peak reached the lower summit. Korzhenevskaya was first climbed in 1953 by a party led by A. Ugarov, dimitriev, A. Goziev, A. Kovyrkov, L. Krasavin, E. Ryspajev, R. Sielidzanov, and P. Skorobogatov. They approached via the Fortambek Glacier, to the Korzhenevsky glacier, partly since it is required for the Snow Leopard award, Korzhenevskaya has been climbed many times, it is the second most frequented major peak in the Pamirs, after Lenin Peak. A base camp on the moraine of the Moskvin Glacier, and helicopter access, Korzhenevskaya has been climbed from almost every direction, including a first winter ascent in 1987 by Anatoly Nosov, most of these ascents were by Russians. The most common current route on the mountain ascends from the south, DEM files Vladimir Shataev, Snow Leopards
Peak Korzhenevskaya
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Korzhenevskaya Peak
Peak Korzhenevskaya
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Descent from Korzhenevskaya.
Jaan Künnap.
45.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
Russian language
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Russian language street sign in
Russia.
Russian language
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Russian minimarket in
Limassol, Cyprus; translation: "Teremok market. Russian goods. Phone number: 96 74 19 63"
Russian language
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This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
П.
Russian language
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The
Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest
East Slavic book known, one of many medieval
illuminated manuscripts preserved in the
Russian National Library.
46.
Kongur
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Kongur Tagh or Kongkoerh is at 7,649 m the highest mountain wholly within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Kongur Tagh is within a range called the Kongur Shan Kongur Tagh is located just north of Muztagh Ata, some sources use Kongur Shan mistakenly to refer to the peak itself. Due to its remoteness and being hidden by nearby peaks, Kongur was not discovered by Europeans until 1900, however, the building of the Karakoram Highway from Pakistan to China, which runs past nearby Tashkurgan and Karakul Lake, has now made it more accessible. Administratively, the Kongur Range is within Akto County, the first attempt to climb Kongur Tagh was made in 1956 but the party aborted the attempt when it realized it was beyond their abilities. The first ascent of Kongur Tagh was completed in 1981 by a British expedition consisting of Chris Bonington, Al Rouse, Peter Boardman and this is taken from the Guide to Mountaineering in China. Some Chinese authorities give it 7,719 m, but evidence against this higher elevation is given here. Kongur Tagh has a significant subpeak known as Kongur Tiube, 38°36′57″N 75°11′44″E, elevation =7,530 m. Ranked 47th It is moderately independent and it was first climbed in 1956. The Kongur Massif in Southern Sinkiang, the Geographical Journal, Vol.149, No
Kongur
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South face of Kongur Tagh
Kongur
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Kongur Tagh (left) and Kongur Tiube (slightly to the right) as seen from the
Karakoram Highway on the way from
Kashgar to lake
Karakul
Kongur
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Kongur Tagh (towards the right edge of the photo) and Kongur Tiube (center) as seen from lake Karakul.
47.
Kongur Shan
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Kongur Tagh or Kongkoerh is at 7,649 m the highest mountain wholly within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Kongur Tagh is within a range called the Kongur Shan Kongur Tagh is located just north of Muztagh Ata, some sources use Kongur Shan mistakenly to refer to the peak itself. Due to its remoteness and being hidden by nearby peaks, Kongur was not discovered by Europeans until 1900, however, the building of the Karakoram Highway from Pakistan to China, which runs past nearby Tashkurgan and Karakul Lake, has now made it more accessible. Administratively, the Kongur Range is within Akto County, the first attempt to climb Kongur Tagh was made in 1956 but the party aborted the attempt when it realized it was beyond their abilities. The first ascent of Kongur Tagh was completed in 1981 by a British expedition consisting of Chris Bonington, Al Rouse, Peter Boardman and this is taken from the Guide to Mountaineering in China. Some Chinese authorities give it 7,719 m, but evidence against this higher elevation is given here. Kongur Tagh has a significant subpeak known as Kongur Tiube, 38°36′57″N 75°11′44″E, elevation =7,530 m. Ranked 47th It is moderately independent and it was first climbed in 1956. The Kongur Massif in Southern Sinkiang, the Geographical Journal, Vol.149, No
Kongur Shan
–
South face of Kongur Tagh
Kongur Shan
–
Kongur Tagh (left) and Kongur Tiube (slightly to the right) as seen from the
Karakoram Highway on the way from
Kashgar to lake
Karakul
Kongur Shan
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Kongur Tagh (towards the right edge of the photo) and Kongur Tiube (center) as seen from lake Karakul.
48.
Lenin Peak
–
Lenin Peak, or Ibn Sina Peak, rises to 7,134 metres in Gorno-Badakhshan on the border of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and is the second-highest point of both countries. Lenin Peak is the highest mountain in the Trans-Alay Range of Central Asia and it was thought to be the highest point in the Pamirs in Tajikistan until 1933, when Ismoil Somoni Peak was climbed and found to be more than 300 metres higher. Two mountains in the Pamirs in China, Kongur Tagh and Muztagh Ata, are higher than the Tajik summits, the peak was discovered in 1871 and originally named Mount Kaufmann after Konstantin Kaufman, the first Governor-General of Turkestan. In 1928, the mountain was renamed Lenin Peak after the Russian revolutionary and first leader of the Soviet Union, in Tajikistan, the peak was renamed again in July 2006, and today it is officially called in Tajik Qullai Abuali ibni Sino after Abu Ali ibn Sina. In Kyrgyzstan, the peak is still officially called Lenin Chokusu, initial exploration of this part of Central Asia occurred in the period 1774–82. Arguably the first recorded travel through the region is the journey of the slave Filipp Efremov. He crossed the Fergana valley, then via Osh, the Chigirik Pass and Terekdavan Pass he reached the Kashgar and he was the first European who crossed the Alai Mountains. Scientific expeditions to the Alai Mountains began in 1871, when Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko discovered the Trans-Alai Range, the first geographical expedition which came nearest to the base of the future Lenin Peak in the early 20th century was arguably the expedition of Nikolai Leopoldovich Korzhenevskiy. They started climbing upstream of the Saukdara river along the South slope of Trans-Alai Range also Trans-Alay Range, from the river head they continued climbing along the Greater Saukdara Glacier towards a saddle at an elevation of 5820 m. On September 25,1928 they started climbing from the saddle along the NE Ridge, at the time, Kaufman Peak was the highest summit reached by men. The title Lenin Peak was first applied to the highest point of the Trans-Alai Range in the same year, when it was renamed after Lenin it was believed to be the highest point in the USSR. On September 8,1934, at 16,20 Kasian Chernuha, Vitaly Abalakov and Ivan Lukin and their attempt lasted for four days with three camps. The expedition started climbing from the Achik-Tash canyon in the Alai valley, the summit attempt itself was started along the Western ice slope of the Lenin glacier. They continued climbing along the North Face, passing the rocks that were given the name Lipkins Rocks. At the end of the day they reached the crest of the NE ridge at an elevation of about 6500 m. During the following day and a half they climbed along the NE Ridge and, the third ascent was three years later, in 1937, when eight Soviet climbers under the direction of Lev Barkhash reached the summit by the same route. This was at the beginning of political repressions in the Soviet Union and many of the most prominent Soviet climbers. Subsequent attempts to climb Lenin Peak could not begin until 1950, on August 14,1950, twelve climbers under the direction of Vladimir Racek reached the summit for the fourth time
Lenin Peak
–
Lenin Peak from Sary Mogol
Lenin Peak
–
As it is now, in consideration of an existing infrastructure and BC/ABC location, there are three most attractive routes from the North (as it is approximately indicated on the Scheme): Lipkin's rocks route and NE Ridge; North Face classical route; Razdelnaya route and NW Ridge
Lenin Peak
–
Jaan Künnap in the top of Lenin Peak at 1989. This was the first time when
Estonian flag reached over 7000 m
Lenin Peak
–
Memorial to the victims of avalanche of 1990
49.
Trans-Alay Range
–
The Trans-Alay Range is the northernmost range of the Pamir Mountain System. The Trans-Alay is located in the area where the Pamirs and the Tian Shan come together and this heavily glaciated range forms the border between Gorno-Badakshan province in Tajikistan and Osh Province, Kyrgyzstan, stretching eastwards until the border with China. To the north lies the Alay Valley and to the south, the highest peak in the range is 7,134 m high Lenin Peak
Trans-Alay Range
–
Trans-Alay Range and Alay Valley
.jpg)
水經注 [Commentary on the Water Classic]. 2. Wikisource. "蔥嶺在敦煌西八千里，其山高大，上生蔥，故曰蔥嶺也。(quoting from the 西河舊事) The Onion Range is 8,000 Li west of Dunhuangin Uzbek Language "Pamir Tog'i". Its mountains are high and onions grow on them, therefore it is called Onion Range."
