{"book":"adl0957","page":63,"text":"42\n\nhistory, as evidenced by the innumerable cultural ruins of all ages which abound. This region suffers from an adverse climate, however, since the normal rainfall is very low (probably about 5 inches per year), the weather is hot and dry for long periods, and a hot, strong wind blows continuously for four months during the summer causing heavy wind erosion, dust storms and areas of active sand dunes. Furthermore, in some sections the soil is saline, and has an inherent low ferility. In spite of these drawbacks, vast areas have apparently been cultivated in the past and supported large populations, but today the population is sparse and only a comparatively small portion of land is being farmed.\n\nAdditional arable land exists in the flood plains bordering all the river valleys; also some valuable soils occur in the alluvial bottoms of the \"mandas\" and dry washes on the higher desert benches, where silt is dropped during run-off periods. The latter areas are usually of small extent, and offer only limited opportunities for cultivation.\n\nOwing to the arid and dry climate practically all cultivation in southern Afghanistan must be supported by irrigation. Irrigation water has generally been obtained, within the period of recent history at least, on a local community basis, either by direct diversions from the rivers—often augmented during low flow by temporary brush dikes, or from karez. The annual run-off of the rivers is sufficient to irrigate much larger areas than have actually been cultivated, but owing to the fact that about 70% of the flow occurs during three months in the spring, most of the water cannot be utilised and runs to waste, while during the rest of the year the flow is inadequate. This unequal distribution puts definite limitations on the extent of cultivation and types of crops which can be raised. By storing excess of the","chars":1873,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00063.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/63","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/63","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."}}