Hindu Kush Mountain
The Hindu Kush is a huge mountain range in Central Asia. It stretches for about 500 miles (800 kilometers) and can be as wide as 150 miles (240 kilometers).
The Hindu Kush is a major watershed in Central Asia, forming part of the enormous Alpine zone that extends east to west across Eurasia. It runs from northeast to southwest, dividing the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus River) valley to the north from the Indus River valley to the south.
The Hindu Kush buttresses the Pamir range to the east around the point where China's, Pakistan's-controlled Kashmir's, and Afghanistan's borders meet, then flows southwest through Pakistan and into Afghanistan, merging into lesser ranges in western Afghanistan. Mount Tirich Mir, at 25,230 feet, is the tallest peak near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border (7,690 meters).
Invaders from Central Asia transported their Indo-European language—a predecessor of the Indo-Iranian languages present throughout the region today—through the high passes of the Hindu Kush around 1500 BCE. The passes have historically been important military routes, allowing invaders such as Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia; the Mongols Genghis Khan and Timur (Tamerlane); and their descendant Babur, the first Mughal emperor, access to India's northern plains. The security of both of these crossings, as well as an adjacent geographical feature to the south, the Khyber Pass, was a major concern for the Indian government under British rule in India. The Hindu Kush range has rarely been a great power's border, instead of serving as a buffer zone in between. The name the Hindu Kush appears on a map published in 1000 CE, which is the earliest recorded use of the name.
The Karambar Pass (14,250 feet [4,343 meters]) between the valleys of the Konar (named the Kunar or Chitral in Pakistan) and Gilgit rivers may be tentatively considered as the eastern edge of the Hindu Kush due to its complex geography. The western border is likewise unknown, as the mountains in Afghanistan lose height and branch off into lesser ranges. Geologists, on the other hand, believe the Hindu Kush range extends far further west, all the way to the Iranian border.
The Hindu Kush shares many characteristics with its eastern neighbor, the Karakoram Range, which runs westward from Tibet into Pakistan. The Hindu Kush and Pamirs are the world's most earthquake-prone intermediate-depth earthquake zone, still deforming. The earthquakes occur in a 25-mile (40-km) wide zone between 100 and 140 miles (160 and 230 km) below the surface. Much of the Hindu Kush is made up of metamorphic rock, such as 115 million-year-old metamorphosed granodiorite and amphibolite and greenschist facies metamorphosed sedimentary rocks. The Hindu Kush also contains Cenozoic granites rich in muscovite mica and tourmaline that were intruded during the India-Eurasia collision. The Hindu Kush is limited to the south by the Heart Fault, a right-lateral strike-slip fault, although the northern edge is less well-known.
The climate of the Hindu Kush varies greatly because it separates one main climate zone of Asia from another. Most of the eastern Hindu Kush, as well as the Hindu Raj, rises up at the extreme western boundary of monsoonal Asia, and the mountains of Swat Kohistan are inside the rain-bearing summer monsoon winds' sphere of influence. Summers (from July to September) is rainy or snowy, and winters are dry. The middle and western Hindu Kush, on the other hand, has a Mediterranean climate with hot, dry summers and cold, wet, or snowy winters (from December to early March). Between these opposites, climatic changes occur, resulting in often stark local disparities.