SISTAN, or SEISTAN (SEJISTAN), the ancient Sacastane (Çahasthâna, "land of the Sacse") and the Nimruz or " meridies " of the Vendidad, is situated generally between 30° 0' and 31° 35' N. lat. and 61° 0' and (including Rudbâr) 62° 40' E. long. Its extreme length is about 100 and its breadth varies from 70 to over 100 miles,—but the exact limits are vague, and the modern signification of the name practically comprehends the peninsula formed by the lower
Helmand and its embouchure on the one side and the " Hamiin " or " lake " on the other. When British arbitra-tion was brought to bear upon the disputed claims of Persia over this country in 1872, it was found necessary to sup-pose two territories—one compact and concentrated, which was called "Sistan Proper," the other detached and irre-gular, called " Outer Sistan." Of each of these a brief description will be given.
1. Sistan Proper is bounded on the north by the "Naizar," or reed-bed which fringes the "Hamiin" or expanse; west by the Hamiin itself, of which the hill called " Kuh-i-Khwajah" marks the central point; south by a line shutting in Sikuha and all villages and lands watered by the main Sistan Canal; and east by the old bed of the Helmand, from a mile above the dam at Kohak to the mouth. Kal ah-i-nau and Rindan are among the more northerly inhabited villages. The Kuh-i-Khwajah is a sufficient indication of the western side. Biirj-i-'Alam Khan should be included within the southern boundary as well as Sikuha. Khwajah Ahmad and Jahanabad, villages on the left bank, or west of the true bed of the Helmand, denote the eastern line. The whole area is estimated at 947 square miles. The fixed population may be roughly stated at 35,000,—some 20,000 Sistanis and 15,000 settlers,—the greater part of whom are Parsiwans, or rather, perhaps, a Persian-speaking people. To the above numbers may be added 10,000 Baluch nomads. Taking the aggregate at 45,000, and look-ing at the extent of country comprehended, we find nearly 48 persons to the square mile. These figures are eight times in excess of the proportional result found for the whole of Persia. It should be explained that the designation Sistan Proper is not arbitrarily given. The territory com-prehended in it is spoken of as Sistan by the dwellers on the right bank of the
Helmand, in contradistinction to their own lands. At the same time it could only be but a fractional part—as indeed the whole country under consideration could only be—of the Sistan of Persian history.
Sistan Proper is an extensive tract of sand and clay alluvium, generally flat, but irregular in detail. It has heaps, but no hills; bushes, but no trees, unless indeed three or four tamarisks of aspiring height deserve the name; many old ruins and vestiges of comparative civi-lization, but few monuments or relics of antiquity. It is well watered by rivers and canals, and its soil is of proved fertility. Wheat or barley is perhaps the staple cultiva-tion ; but pease, beans, oil-seeds, and cotton are also grown. Among fruits, grapes and mulberries are rare, but melons and water-melons, especially the latter, are abundant. Grazing and fodder are not wanting, and besides the reeds peculiar to Sistan there are two grasses which merit notice,—that called bannu, with which the bed of the Hamiin abounds on the south, and the taller and less salt hirta on the higher ground.
2. Outer Sistan, the country on the right bank of the Helmand, and east of its embouchure in the Hamiin, extends more than 100 miles in length, or from a point between the Charboli and Khuspas rivers north to Rud-bar south. In breadth the district of Chakhansiir, measur-ing from the old bed of the Helmand, inclusive of Nad Ali, to Kadah, may be estimated at some 30 miles. It



produces wheat and barley, melons, and perhaps a few vegetables and oil seeds. Beyond the Chakhansiir limits, southward or up to the Helmand, there is probably no cultivation save that obtained on the river bank, and ordinarily illustrated by patches of wheat and barley with melon beds. On the opposite side of the river, in addition to the cultivated portions of the bank, there is a large tract extending from above (i.e., south of) Kohak, or the Sistan dam (band), to the gravelly soil below the mountain ranges which separate Sistan from Baluchistan and Narmashir. The distance from north to south of this plain may be computed at 40 miles, and from east to west at 80 or 90 miles. Lands north of the Naizar not belong-ing to the Afghan district of Lash Juwain may also be included in Outer Sistan; but it is unnecessary to make any distinction of the kind for the tract marked "Hamuli" on the west, where it merges into the Persian frontier. Bellew states there are 1200 houses in Chakhansiir. This can hardly apply to the fort in which the sardar lives, and the comparatively few houses outside, bearing that name, and noticed by Major Lovett on his visit in 1872. Nor did there then appear to be any other centres of population in the district, excepting perhaps Kadah on the eastern limit. The inhabitants are Sistanis or Parsi-wans, Baluch nomads, and Afghans. Between the Kohak band and Rudbar they are mainly Baluch. Most of the less nomad tribesmen are Sanjurani and Toki, the sardars jealously claiming the former appellation.
The most remarkable geographical feature of Sistan generally, in the modern acceptation of the term, is the Hamun, or expanse, which stretches far and wide on the north, west, and south, but is for a great part of the year dry or a mere swamp. In the early spring, at which period the present writer was in the locality, the existence of a lake could only be certified by pools or hollows of water formed at the mouths of the principal feeders, such as the Khash Paid on the north-east, the Farah Rud on the north-west, and the Helmand, where its old bed terminates at no great distance from the Khash Riid. Bellew describes the aspect of that portion of Sistan limited to the actual basin of the Helmand as indicating the former existence of a lake which covered with its waters a considerable area. On the north this tract has been raised to a higher level than the remainder by the deposit at the mouths of rivers of the solid matter brought down. It is still, however, from 200 to 500 feet below the level of the desert cliffs that bound it, and which at some former period formed the shores of the lake ; and it is from 50 or 60 to 200 feet above the level of the beds of the rivers now flowing into the existing Hamun. The tract thus raised by depositions in the bed of the former lake, writes the same authority, is now the inhabited district of Sistan, and contains the Hamun, a great sedge-grown swamp, the last relic of the lake itself. To the south of the Hamlin and inhabited tract of Sistan is the Zarah hollow. It extends for about 100 miles to the Sarhad Mountains. Called by the natives God-i-Zarah, or the hollow of Zarah, it is described as a wide and circular depression sloping gently up to the bounding hills and desert cliffs. It receives the drainage of these in its central and deepest hollow, which, except in seasons of drought, is more or less marshy. It is connected along the western border of the area with the existing Hamiin by the Sar-shila, a great drainage gully through which runs the superfluous flood of the Hamun.
The water-supply of Sistan is about as uncertain as that of Sind, though the general inclination to one bank, the left, is more marked in the Helmand than in the Indus. Therefore the boundary lines given must be received with slight reservation. It is easy to see that a good year of inundation extends the borders of the so-called lake to within the Naizar ; and there are well-defined beds of dry canals intersecting the country, which prove the existence formerly of an extensive water-system no longer prevailing. The main canal of Sistan, confounded by some writers with the parent river, bears the waters of the Helmand westward into the heart of the country. They are diverted by means of a large band or dam, known indifferently as the " Amir's," the " Sistan," or the " Kohak " band. It is constructed of horizon-tally laid tamarisk branches, earth, and perpendicular stakes, and protected from damage by a fort on the left and a tower on the right bank of the river. Although this diversion of the stream may be an artificial development of a natural channel, and undoubtedly dates from a period long prior to recent Persian occupation, it appears that the later arrangements have been more maturely and better organized than those carried on by the


decessors of the amir of Kaian. The towns of Deshtak, Chelling, Burj-i-'Alam Khan, Bahramabad, Kimmak, and others of less note are actually on the banks of this main canal. Moreover, it is the indirect means of supplying water to almost every town and village in Sistan Proper, feeding as it does a network of minor canals, by which a system of profuse irrigation is put in force, which, with an industrious and a contented population, should be productive of most extensive grain cultivation. To consider the main canal as the river itself is a theory which a brief inspec-tion of the locality seems quite to disprove. On the one hand we have a comparatively narrow passage abruptly turning to the westward, on the other a broad and well-defined river-bed pro-longed in the old direction, into which the waters would at all times flow unrestrained but for an artificial embankment. What-ever arguments, however, may be used on this head, the larger bed is assumed to be the original Helmand for purposes of territorial limitation.
Provisions in Sistan are, as a rule, sufficient, though sheep and oxen are somewhat poor. Bread is cheap and good, being pro-curable to natives at less than a halfpenny the pound. Vegetables are scarce, and rice is chiefly obtained from Herat. The inundated lands abound with water-fowl. Partridges and sand-grouse are occasionally seen. River fish are plentiful enough, but confined to one species, the barbel.
The inhabitants of Sistan are mainly composed of Kaiyanis, descendants of the ancient rulers of the land ; Sarbandis and Shahrakis, tribes supposed to have consisted originally of immigrants from western Persia ; and Baluchis of the Nharui and Sanjurani (Toki) clans. Bellew separates the "Sistanis"; but it is a question whether this term is not in a large measure applied to fixed inhabitants of the country, whatever their descent and nationality. For instance, an old Shahraki guide to the Sistan Mission of 1872 persisted in being a " Sistani"; and, if his defini-tion be accepted, the outside element must be confined to Baluchis and modern settlers only.
History.—The ancient Drangiana (Zaraya, Darafika, "lake land ") received the name of "land of the Sacse " after this country was permanently occupied by the " Scythians " or Saca?, who over-ran Iran in 128 B.C. (see PERSIA, vol. xviii. pp. 594 sq.). It was included in the Sasanian empire, and then in the empire of the caliphs. About 860 A.D., when it had undergone many changes of government under lieutenants of the Baghdad caliphs, or bold adventurers acting on their own account, Ya'kiib b. Laith made it the seat of his power. In 901 it fell under the power of the Samanids, and a century later into that of the Ghaznavids. An invasion of Jaghatais and the irruption into its richer lands by Timur are salient points in the history of Sistan prior to the Safawid conquest (1508). Under this dynasty for more than two centuries, or up to 1722, Sistan remained more or less a Persian dependency. At the time of the Afghan invasion of Mir Mahmiid (1722), Malik Muhammad Kaiyani was the resident ruler in Sistan, and by league with the invader or other intrigue he secured for himself that particular principality and a great part of Khurasan also. He was slain by Nadir Kuli Khan, the general of Shah Tahmasp, who afterwards, as Nadir Shah, became possessor of Sistan as part of his Persian dominions. Shortly after the death of Nadir (1751) Sistan passed, together with other provinces, into the hands of Ahmad Shah Abdali, the first sovereign in a united Afghanistan. On the death of Ahmad Shah in 1773 the country became a recognized bone of contention, not so much between Persians and Afghans as between Herat and Kandahar ; but eventually the internal dissensions of Afghanistan gave Persia the desired opportunity ; and by a steady course of intrigue and encroachment she managed to get within her grasp the better lands on the left bank of the lower Helmand and something on the right bank besides. When the British arbitrator appeared on the scene in the beginning of 1872, though compelled to admit the shah's possession of what has been called '' Sistan Proper, "he could in fairness insist on the evacuation of Nad Ali, Kala Fath, and all places occupied on the right bank by Persian troops; and furthermore he left to the Afghans both sides of the river Helmand from the dam of Kohak to its elbow west of Rudbar. For the precise boundary see PERSIA, vol. xviii. p. 619.
See Eastern Persia, vol. i.; Bellew's Record of Sistan Mission; Journal of R.
Geog. Society, vol. xliii. (1873). (F. J. G.)