Helmand takes its name from the river that runs the length of the province. The Helmand flows through a mainly desert country, and wherever its water can be led into canals, wide green fields appear. Along its banks stand remarkable medieval monuments: the great brick arch of Qala-e Bost and the riverside palaces of Lashkari Bazar, once a winter residence of the Ghaznavid sultans. The provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, grew up beside these ruins in the twentieth century.
The river and its canals
Most of the province is desert, and life gathers along the Helmand as it crosses from the hills of the north towards Nimruz and the Sistan basin. Near the capital it is joined by its great tributary, the Arghandab, and the old town of Bost stands where the two rivers meet. Upstream, the Kajaki Dam holds one of Afghanistan’s major reservoirs.
Canals drawn from the river water much of the farmland. The Boghra Canal leaves the Helmand at Gereshk and runs towards Marja, while the Shamalan and Darvishan canals serve Nawa and Garmsir further south. Along the lower river, from Khanishin towards Chahar Burjak in Nimruz, stretches a long riverside woodland of tamarisk, grazed by village flocks and by the herds of Kuchi nomads, who traditionally spent the winter here.
Bost and Lashkari Bazar
People lived at the meeting of the rivers long before Islam. Mounds around Bost have yielded pottery, figurines, seals and coins from roughly 500 BCE to 500 CE, and the town guarded the caravan road between Iran and India. Early Muslim geographers praised its orchards, vineyards and date palms, and a pontoon bridge crossed the river here.
The Ghaznavids made Bost a winter capital, and a military camp about six kilometres upstream grew into a walled royal suburb, Lashkari Bazar. Three fortified palaces stand on a cliff above the river; the largest, the South Palace, was begun by Mahmud of Ghazni and completed by his successor Mas’ud I. French archaeologists of DAFA excavated the site between 1949 and 1951.
Bost’s citadel has a deep central well circled by seven galleries, and its soaring arch, faced with cut-brick lozenges, is the surviving fragment of a large mosque from the Ghurid or Khwarazmshah period. The town faded after the Mongol invasions, and in 1738 Nader Shah pulled down its walls.
Lashkar Gah and its people
Lashkar Gah itself is young. It was laid out in 1946 on a terrace on the left bank of the Helmand as the hub of a large irrigation scheme, to a plan by American architects with spacious streets and a green belt. Its name comes from the nearby village of Lashkargah-e Bazar.
Most people in Helmand are Pashtuns, and Pashto is the main language; Baloch communities live in the southern districts along the river.
Fields, fruit and fish
Farming has always been the heart of Helmand’s economy, and the province was once called a grain store of the region. The irrigated centre grows wheat, maize, mung beans, onions and other vegetables, along with melons and watermelons; cotton was promoted as a cash crop from the late 1960s and cleaned at a state ginnery. Orchards in the north give almonds, apricots, pomegranates and grapes, and along the river around Gereshk fishing supports many families.