Nimruz is the Afghan part of Sistan, a low and almost flat basin where the Helmand River and its neighbours end their long journey from the mountains. Its name, meaning ‘midday’ in Persian, revives a medieval title: local rulers of Sistan were known as the Maliks of Nimruz. Desert covers most of the province, but where the rivers reach the basin they spread into deltas, reed beds and the shallow lakes of the Hamun.
Rivers, lakes and the wind
The Sistan basin gathers the Helmand, the Farah Rud, the Khash Rud and the Harut Rud. The Helmand empties mainly into Hamun-e Puzak inside Afghanistan; Hamun-e Saberi lies near Kang, and Gowd-e Zereh, the lowest hollow of the basin, fills only in years of exceptionally high floods. In spring, when snowmelt arrives from the mountains, the wetlands could once spread over 2,000 to 4,000 square kilometres.
The climate is extremely dry, with very hot summers and cold winters. Through the hot season the famous ‘wind of 120 days’ blows from the north and north-west, lifting fine dust and drawing water out of the lakes. In drought years the Hamun shrinks dramatically: in 2001 the Helmand at the border ran almost dry.
Life in the wetlands
In good years the Hamun is an oasis in the desert. Tall stands of reeds and rushes, three to five metres high, ring the open water; local people have used them for fodder, fuel, house-building and woven mats, and the rushes even for boats. Fishermen once moved across the shallows in long boats made of reeds.
The wetlands are also a resting place for migrating birds travelling between Russia and the Indian Ocean. Around 150 bird species have been recorded here, among them flamingos, pelicans and ducks, while foxes and otters lived along the shores.
Zarang and the Saffarids
The field of ruins at Nad-e Ali, near the Iranian border, is identified with ancient Zarang, for centuries a capital of Sistan. Arab armies reached Zarang in 652 and the town surrendered peacefully. Two centuries later Ya’qub ibn Layth, who rose from the town’s bands of local volunteers, took control of the whole province in 861; with his brother ‘Amr he built the Saffarid empire, which stretched from the borders of Iraq towards Kabul.
Medieval geographers praised Sistan’s irrigation channels, watermills and date groves, and described windmills turned by the strong summer wind. Zarang escaped the Mongols in 1221 but was sacked by Timur’s army in 1383. A brick minaret built there in the reign of the Seljuq sultan Sanjar survived as a stump into the twentieth century, before its base too collapsed.
People and livelihoods
Baloch, Pashtuns and Brahui are the main communities, together with Tajiks and Uzbeks. Zaranj, the provincial capital, lies close to the border on the road that crosses into Iranian Sistan. Most families live from trade and labour, farming and herding: wheat, maize and melons are grown on irrigated land, and households keep sheep, goats, cattle and poultry.