The Bahmanshir channel ( fa, بهمن‌شیر, ) is a secondary estuary of the

Karun The Karun ( fa, کارون, ) is the Iranian river with the highest water flow, and its only navigable river. It is long. It rises in the Zard Kuh mountains of the Bakhtiari district in the Zagros Range, receiving many tributaries, such as th ...

River that parallels the Shatt al-Arab/Arvand Rud waterway on the far side of the

Abadan Island Abadan Island is an island in Iran. It is the site of the city of Abadan. The island hosted Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's Abadan Refinery, around which Mohammad Mossadegh Mohammad Mosaddegh ( fa, محمد مصدق, ; 16 June 1882 – 5 March 19 ...

, Iran, for 70 miles before emptying into the Persian Gulf. The Bahamanshir served as the main estuary of the

River before the digging of the Haffar canal by the

Daylamite The Daylamites or Dailamites (Middle Persian: ''Daylamīgān''; fa, دیلمیان ''Deylamiyān'') were an Iranian people inhabiting the Daylam—the mountainous regions of northern Iran on the southwest coast of the Caspian Sea, now comprisin ...

Buwayhid king Panah Khusraw Adud ad-Dawlah, that joined the

to the

Arvand Rud The Shatt al-Arab ( ar, شط العرب, lit=River of the Arabs; fa, اروندرود, Arvand Rud, lit=Swift River) is a river of some in length that is formed at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the town of al-Qurnah in ...

Shatt al-Arab The Shatt al-Arab ( ar, شط العرب, lit=River of the Arabs; fa, اروندرود, Arvand Rud, lit=Swift River) is a river of some in length that is formed at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the town of al-Qurnah in ...

waterway at the site of the present-day

Khorramshahr Khorramshahr ( fa, خرمشهر , also romanized as ''Khurramshahr'', ar, المحمرة, romanized as ''Al-Muhammerah'') is a city and capital of Khorramshahr County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. At the 2016 census, its population was 170,976, ...

. The Haffar in time became the main estuary of the

, relegating the Bahmanshir to a secondary estuary status. The rivers was a contraction of Vahman-Ardashir,

Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Per ...

for the "Good thought of Ardashir," named for the

Sasanian The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the History of Iran, last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th cen ...

king,

Ardashir I Ardashir I (Middle Persian: 𐭠𐭥𐭲𐭧𐭱𐭲𐭥, Modern Persian: , '), also known as Ardashir the Unifier (180–242 AD), was the founder of the Sasanian Empire. He was also Ardashir V of the Kings of Persis, until he founded the new ...

. The Bahamanshir may be a man-made canal, "thought up" by king Ardashir, as the Haffar later came to be. If so, then the Bahmanshir was excavated to deliver the waters of the mighty Karun directly to the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The bo ...

, creating a navigable estuary that could bring the seafaring vessels from the Persian Gulf all the way up to city of

Ahwaz Ahvaz ( fa, اهواز, Ahvâz ) is a city in the southwest of Iran and the capital of Khuzestan province. Ahvaz's population is about 1,300,000 and its built-up area with the nearby town of Sheybani is home to 1,136,989 inhabitants. It is home ...

in the heartland of

Khuzistan Khuzestan Province (also spelled Xuzestan; fa, استان خوزستان ''Ostān-e Xūzestān'') is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the southwest of the country, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Its capital is Ahvaz and it covers ...

plain—120 miles away. Without the Bahmanshir, the waters of the

—like those of the

Tigris The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the ...

and the Euphrates largely fed into the vast marshlands of southern

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...

that included the entire southern half of the Khuzistan as well—allowing for no navigable course to exist.

Sources

* * Rivers of Khuzestan Province {{Iran-river-stub