ABC 053 — Gap of Kilrekhta

• Owen, Charles (1884-86): Transcript of diary and letters, p. 153: “5 Feb. [1884] […] Two of our officers went out yesterday to the Durband to carry more provisions to the survey party who were snowed up. On their return journey the cold was so intense that they were obliged to walk in places. The road was frightfully slippery. […]”
• [Yate, A.C.] (1884): The Afghan Boundary Commission. (Reprinted from the “Pioneer”), Helmingham Hall Archive in Suffolk (T/Hel/13/8/133), p. 92: “Some fifteen miles from camp [Bala Murghab] is a spot called the ‘Darband-i-kilrikhta’. Here the spurs, on both sides steep and rocky, run down to the edge of the Murghab. The ruins of a solid stone wall carried on either side along these spurs and into the river may be seen. It may have been built as a defence against Turkomans. But legend says that the lovely daughter of the chief of some neighbouring tribe promised her hand in marriage to that one of her wooers who could dam the Murghab. One of them, Mohammad Hanifa, more determined or more madly in love than the rest, essayed and succeeded. The fickle fair one, incited by an aversion for matrimony, not usual with beautiful women, having fulfille3d her promise so far as to go through with the marriage ceremony, straightway sought the shelter, not of her husband’s, but her father’s house. The unfortunate husband in despair drowned his sorrows v- not in drink – but in the waters of the Murghab. […]”
• Adamec, L.W. (1975): Herat and north-western Afghanistan, pp. 87-88: Darband-i-Kilrekhta; p. 272: Kilrekhta; p. 312: Murghab, “[…] it then turns northwest, and breaks through the Band-i-Turkestan by the Darband-i-Kilrekhta and Darband-i-Jaokar. […]”

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