Zarafshon (river)
The Zarafshon (Uzbek & Tajik: Зарафшон, Romanized: Zarafshon) is a river in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Central Asia. Its name, "spreader of gold" in Persian, refers to the presence of gold-bearing sands in the upper reaches of the river. To the ancient Greeks it was known as the Polytimetus. It was also formerly known as  Sughd River. The river is  long and has a basin area of . Geographic position
It rises at the Zeravshan Glacier, close to where the Turkestan Range and the Zeravshan Range of the Pamir-Alay mountains meet, in Tajikistan. In its upper course, upstream from its confluence with the Fan Darya, it is also called Matcha. It flows due west for some , passing Panjakent before entering Uzbekistan at , where it turns west-to-north-west, flowing past the legendary city of Samarkand, where it feeds the Dargom Canal, which is entirely dependent on the oasis thus created, until it bends left again to the west north of Navoiy and further to the south-west, passing Bukhara before it is lost in the desert beyond the city of Qorakoʻl (Karakul), not quite reaching the Amu Darya, of which it was formerly a tributary. See also
Zarafshon, a city in Uzbekistan's Navoiy Region, called "the gold capital of Uzbekistan". Zarafshan (disambiguation)

Notes

References

Further reading

 В.В. Бартольд "К Истории Орошения в Туркестане" (Collected Works, Vol.3) (Москва) 1965
 V.V. Barthold "Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion" (London) 1968
 Robert Lewis "Early Irrigation in West Turkestan" Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol.56 No..3 (Sept. 1966) pp467–491 
 Edgar Knobloch "Beyond the Oxus" (London) 1972

Rivers of Tajikistan
Rivers of Uzbekistan
International rivers of Asia
Persian words and phrases