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2 - GEOLOGY
from PART 1 - THE LAND
- By J. V. Harrison, University of Oxford
Edited by W. B. Fisher
Book:

The Cambridge History of Iran

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

01 October 1968, pp 111-185
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Summary

This chapter deals with the geology of Iran, the information of which is somewhat uneven. The stratigraphical column in Iran contains samples of all the systems, from Pre-Cambrian to Quaternary; and from the beginning of the Palaeozoic onwards, diagnostic fossils are sometimes abundant. An introduction to the geomorphology of the country can be made by journeying across it from south-west to north-east. Starting then from the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab near Ābādān and crossing an occasionally flooded alluvial plain for seventy miles, never far from the meanders of the Karun river, one comes to a series of low isolated ridges of brown sandstone, the Ahvāz hills. The Zagros range skirts its south-western side for 800 miles and beyond the Zagros are the plains of Iraq or Mesopotamia, the growing delta of the Euphrates and Tigris, and the Persian Gulf. These elements forming the west of the region have features of structural history in common.

4 - THE ORIGIN OF THE ZAGROS DEFILES
from PART 1 - THE LAND
- By T. M. Oberlander, University of California, Berkeley
Edited by W. B. Fisher
Book:

The Cambridge History of Iran

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

01 October 1968, pp 195-211
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Summary

While the westward-flowing streams of the Zagros mountains provide some of the world's most impressive canyon scenery, they also present an extremely perplexing problem of drainage genesis. Seldom are drainage anomalies as pronounced as they are among the great petrified waves of the Zagros. The disharmony between the drainage and the deformational pattern in the Zagros is manifested in the profound gorges, or tangs, which breach range after range in the youngest portion of the mountain system. The vast majority of the drainage anomalies and the most spectacular tangs in the Zagros are found in the zone of powerful but simple folding along the south-western (outer) margin of the highland. The drainage anomaly in the central Zagros may be resolved into two distinct problems: the courses of the trunk streams, and the behaviour of their tributaries, large and small. Each of these appears to be an independent development.

3 - GEOMORPHOLOGY
from PART 1 - THE LAND
- By K. Scharlau, University of Marburg
Edited by W. B. Fisher
Book:

The Cambridge History of Iran

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

01 October 1968, pp 186-194
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Summary

The variety and nature of morphological forms in the upland mass that forms Iran are closely determined by the prevailing climate. The massif of Iran rises generally within the Alpine orogenic zone of Eurasia. As regards geomorphology, the watersheds are significant first because of their course, and also because of the specific effects they produce within the general pattern of relief. The inner plateau of Iran may be regarded as divided hydrographically into two parts, by the southerly prolongation of the Caspian drainage system. Effects produced by shrinkage of the Caspian Sea itself are apparent as geomorphological features in the east, particularly in the Atrak valley. The rivers of the Zagros area that have the greatest elaboration of course and volume of water are located in the rainier north-west and west. The sump or kavīr structures are unique in that they possess no exact counterparts in any other region of the world.