The Sarikol Range (; zh, s=萨雷阔勒岭, 色勒库尔山脉; ) is a mountain range in the

Pamirs The Pamir Mountains are a range of mountains between Central Asia and South Asia. They are located at a junction with other notable mountains, namely the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and the Himalaya mountain ranges. They are among ...

on the border of

Tajikistan Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital city, capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, south, Uzbekistan to ...

and the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Etymology

The mountain range is named for the Sarikol River at its foot, the name of which comes from the Kyrgyz , which is composed of , and , meaning "yellow river". In this toponym, the word , originates neither from the Kyrgyz , nor from the Kyrgyz , but rather from the Mongolian . The name has also been used to describe the local people who are historically known as Sarikolis; the local

Sarikoli language The Sarikoli language (also Sariqoli, Selekur, Sarikul, Sariqul, Sariköli) is a member of the Pamir subgroup of the Southeastern Iranian languages spoken by the Pamiris in Xinjiang, China and Chitral, Pakistan. It is officially referred to i ...

, and the town of

Tashkurgan Tashkurgan, historically known as Sarikol and Shitoucheng, is a town in the far west of China, close to the country's border with Tajikistan. It is seat of Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County, in the autonomous region of Xinjiang. Tajiksethnic ...

, which was historically known as Sarikol.

Geography

The range divides Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province and China's

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC: previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest of the country at the crossroads ...

and it runs parallel with the Muztagh Range to the east. The range extends from the Markansu River in the north to the Beyik Pass in the south. Its average elevation is roughly and the highest point in the range is Mount Lyavirdyr at . On the Tajik part of the range there are 240 glaciers with a total area of 144 km².''Сарыкольский хребет''
- article from the

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Great Russian Enc ...

The range's

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

feeds both the

Amu Darya The Amu Darya ( ),() also shortened to Amu and historically known as the Oxus ( ), is a major river in Central Asia, which flows through Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. Rising in the Pamir Mountains, north of the Hindu Ku ...

and Tarim River. The range is composed of

schist Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock generally derived from fine-grained sedimentary rock, like shale. It shows pronounced ''schistosity'' (named for the rock). This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a l ...

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

and

gneiss Gneiss (pronounced ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. This rock is formed under p ...

References

{{Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province Mountain ranges of Xinjiang Mountain ranges of Tajikistan China–Tajikistan border Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region Pamir Mountains

Etymology

Geography

See also

References