Kores (Tajikistan)
Kores ( Tajik Корез , kɔːˈɾeːz ), English translation Korez , is a village and the capital of the subdistrict of the same name ( dschamoat ) in the district ( nohija ) Danghara in the Tajik province of Khatlon . The place name corresponds to Persian kariz or karez (كاريز, DMG kārīz ) and denotes the irrigation system called qanat in Arabic .
Of the nearby fortified settlement of Soli-Sard from the early Middle Ages , only the former wall can be seen.
Location and townscape
Coordinates: 38 ° 7 ′ 42.9 ″ N , 69 ° 19 ′ 37 ″ E
The village of Kores is located about four kilometers north of the city center of Danghara at an altitude of about 770 meters in an intensely agricultural plain, which is in the west by the over 2000 meter high Sarsarak mountain range, in the north by the equally high Wachsch mountain range and in the east of a hilly area that reaches a height of around 1200 meters. To the west of the Sarsarak mountain range, the Wachsch flows south in a deeply cut valley. The narrow ridge of the Sarasak chain forms a watershed. Some streams, which have their source in the northern mountains, cross the plain and flow parallel to the Wachsch to the south towards the Pandsch river . Most of the fields grown in the surrounding area are cotton , which has to be heavily irrigated. For this purpose, there is a network of larger and smaller irrigation channels ( arik ) in the form of reed-up watercourses or above-ground concrete channels along the roads and paths . In 2008, the yield in the Danghara district was between 1.2 and 3 tons of cotton per hectare. Cattle, goats and sheep are raised on the remaining meadows.
Coming from the north, the A385 highway leads past Nurek via Danghara to the other small towns of Qurghonteppa and Kolchosobod in the south of the province of Chatlon. Four kilometers north of Danghara, a single-lane, unpaved road branches off the A385 to the east and after about three kilometers reaches Kores. Kores can be reached directly from the center of Danghara on two further roads.
According to official information, the Kores sub- district ( jamoat ) had 9,163 inhabitants in 2009 , spread over numerous settlements with only a few dozen houses. The agricultural homesteads mostly consist of a single-storey residential building covered by a hipped roof made of corrugated iron and a few flat-roofed outbuildings. The walls are made of clay bricks over a rubble base or completely made of rubble stones and plastered.
Soli sard
Some mostly isolated finds in the area are dated to the Moustérien . In the Wachsch Valley there was already irrigated agriculture in the Bronze Age . Numerous pot shards and bronze objects date from the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Chr.
Soli-Sard, English translation of Zoli-Zard, is the excavation site of an early medieval fortified settlement, which lies on the road leading east from the A385 between two parts of Kores and is surrounded by cotton fields. The settlement was founded in the 3rd century BC. Founded in BC and represents an example of the importance of the Wachsch Valley in the 10th century. Soli-Sard should not be confused with the settlement of the same name twelve kilometers northwest of Kolchosabod near the village of Uzun, which was called Khelaverd in the Middle Ages and later Lagman.
The excavation site is similar to other fortified settlements in the Wachsch Valley, but smaller than the more important Kafirkala in Kolkhozabod. You can see an approximately rectangular enclosure wall with a length in north-south direction of approximately 350 meters and a width of 150 meters. Directly outside the east wall, a stream flows south along it. The wall is interrupted by incisions at all four corners. Flat elevations show a former settlement in the northern part of the enclosed area.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sayrahmon Nazriyev: Danghara will be the first in Tajikistan to fulfill its cotton target. Asia Plus, October 21, 2008
- ^ Grégoire Frumkin: Archeology in Soviet Central Asia. ( Handbook of Oriental Studies, 7th section: Art and Archeology, Volume 3: Inner Asia, Section 1) EJ Brill, Leiden / Cologne 1970, pp. 58, 62
- ^ Robert Middleton, Huw Thomas: Tajikistan and the High Pamirs . Odyssey Books & Guides, Hong Kong 2012, p. 202
- ↑ Yu. Yakubov: Tajikistan . In: International Institute for Central Asian Studies (Ed.): The Artistic Culture of Central Asia and Azerbaijan in the 9th – 15th Centuries . Volume III: Toreutics . UNESCO / IICAS, Samarqand / Tashkent 2012, p. 148