{"book":"adl0957","page":269,"text":"216\n\nof Chakhansoor (or Seistan). It is mostly barren and unpro-\nductive, but in days which cannot be said to be very old, it was\na prosperous country and had a fine system of irrigation. The\nMughal depredations early in the 13th century A.D. wiped out\nthese fine irrigation works, thus turning the smiling face of the\ncountry into a wilderness. The present Afghan Government is\nonce more trying to irrigate these lands. The construction of\nthe Kajaki Dam and the digging of the Boghra Canal are a part\nof this new programme. It is hoped that the Kajaki Dam will\nstore sufficient water to increase the irrigation of Chakhansoor.\n\nFarah to Sabzawar (94 miles): Three rivers—the Farah,\nKhash-Rud and the Harut are crossed en route. The banks of\nthe Farah are covered with a jungle growth of tamarisk and\nmimosa. The country between Farah and Sabzawar is a vast\njumble of ridges and low rolling hills, with small plains\ninhabited mostly by nomadic tribes.\n\nSabzawar (altitude 3,350 feet): This is an important post\non the Herat-Kabul route, situated midway between Farah and\nHerat. It stands on the left bank of the Harut River, at the\nfoot of an outlying spur of the Siah Koh (the Black Mountain).\nBeyond and partly surrounding it is a wide open plain, well-\nirrigated from the waters of the Harut, and it is in consequence\nhighly productive.\n\nSabzawar to Herat (80 miles): Due north, and at a\ndistance of 80 miles lies Herat, one of the most important cities\nof Afghanistan.\n\nHERAT (Height 3,030 ft. above sea-level) ; population:\n100,000, The town of Herat lies on the right bank of the Hari\nRud (Arius of the classical writers). Its strategical and com-\nmercial importance is scarcely to be underrated, for here","chars":1712,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00269.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/269","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/269","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."}}