{"book":"adl0957","page":126,"text":"93\nMission are likely to play an important rôle in the agricultural\ndevelopment of this province. These developments will pro-\ngressively result in an increase in the productive capacity of\nAfghan agriculture of over 700,000 acres of improved and new\nland. At the same time, the project will make a major con-\ntribution to the solution of the problem of the settlement of\nAfghanistan's tribal nomads.\n\nHERAT: The province of Herat occupies the north-\nwestern corner of Afghanistan. A traveller is struck with the\nrichness and fertility of its soil. It is well-watered by innumer-\nable streams, the Hari-Rud being the most important of them.\nWell-fortified and populous villages are scattered throughout\nthis valley. Around these are beautiful gardens, orchards and\nvineyards.\n\nThe north-eastern parts of this province are mostly moun-\ntainous, while the western and southern portions are generally\nsandy and level. The Parapomisus, running roughly parallel to\nthe Hari-Rud, cuts off the valley of the Hari from that of\nBadghisat. The north-western corner of the province is occupied\nby innumerable saline deserts, known by the common name of\nNamaksar (salt-deserts). These deserts are regarded by some as\nthe beds of dried-up seas.\n\nThe main valley of Hert, watered by the Hari-Rud, is\nextremely fertile and well-watered, and is one of the richest\nand best irrigated districts of the country, wherein are situated\nthe important towns of Herat, Obeh, Ghorian (Poshinj of old)\nand Kushan.\n\nThe lovely district of Badghisat, so famous in history, lies\non the northern skirts of the Paropamisus Range. It is said\nthat Nassr bin Ahmad, the Samanid King of Bokhara (913—942","chars":1667,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00126.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/126","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/126","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}