Balochistan
Balochistan ( Persian بلوچستان) is a geographic region in the Iranian highlands that stretches across eastern Iran , southern Afghanistan, and southwest Pakistan . The area is about 690,000 km².
The Pakistani part of the region can be found in the Balochistan Province and the Iranian part in the Sistan and Balochistan Province .
In addition to Baluch , the language of the Baluch , who make up the majority of the population, other Indo-Iranian languages such as Brahui , a Dravidian language , etc. are spoken in the region . a. spoken by the Mengal tribe .
history
The area was first settled in the Paleolithic , at the latest in the 6th century BC it became part of the Achaemenid Empire . Derived from the old Persian mahi khoran , which means "fish eater ", the area was then called macran or in Greek Gedrosia . After belonging to the empire of Alexander the Great for just under thirty years , his successor Seleucus I, Nicator Gedrosien, took over in 303 BC. To the Maurya Empire . Subsequently it was likely to have been part of the Indo-Greek kingdom , but this is not sufficiently proven. According to the numismatist Pankaj Tandon, a kingdom of the Paratarajas existed around the turn of the century, possibly identical to the Indo-Parthian Empire , in Balochistan. A province of the Sassanid Empire in late antiquity , the Islamic conquest of Makran took place in the 7th century. The Baluch immigrated from the 13th century.
The flood disaster in Pakistan in 2010 mainly affected a long, flat area (the Kacchi Desert) north of Jacobabad in the predominantly mountainous region of Balochistan . Houses were washed away, bridges and roads were badly damaged, cattle have partially drowned and crops have been largely destroyed. In addition, many residents of Sindh, which is adjacent to the east and more severely affected by the flood, had to flee to Balochistan.
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Web links
- BALUCHISTAN . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica (English, including references)
- Sebastian Klüsener: Balochistan. Changing nomadism. (PDF; 83 kB). Proseminar, Heidelberg University, summer semester 1997.
- Heinz Rüegger: In the smugglers' train through Balochistan. Travel report. 2006. (almusafir.ch)
Individual evidence
- ^ Strabo : Strabo's Geography. Book XV, Chapter 2. ( Memento from June 18, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
- ^ P. Tandon: New light on the Paratarajas. In: Numismatic Chronicle. 2006.
- ^ Millions of Pakistan children at risk of flood diseases. In: BBC News. August 16, 2010.