Crossword-Solution: ATRAK 5 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

They have long been established in the south-east of the Caspian, a tract watered by the rivers Gargan and Atrak, which is swampy towards the embouchure, but farther inland is broken by valleys as rich and full of charm as any on the flanks of the Pyrenees.[565] The streams descending from the Kopet Dāgh, a mountain range which separates Persia from the Turkoman Desert, has produced a fertile belt of fifteen to twenty-five miles wide, extending from Kizil Arvat to Giaour, a distance of 187 miles.

The Yamuds, about as numerous as the Sāriks, wandered between Khiva and Astrabad in Khorāsān, while the territory watered by the Atrak and Gurgān was inhabited by the Gokhlans, who acknowledged the sway of Persia.

The Gokhlan Turkomans, inhabiting the estuary of the Atrak and the rich valleys behind it, had been brought to heel by an energetic governor of the Persian province of Bajnard in 1869,[611] and their piracies on the Caspian had been put down with a strong hand by the Russian naval authorities.[612] With the pacification of Khiva, too, came the formation, in 1874, of a Transcaspian military district, subordinate to the Caucasus,[613] which was placed under the governorship of Major-General Lomakin.

Zinovieff, that the left bank of the Atrak, which had been virtually annexed, should be ceded to Persia in return for the abandonment of her rather shadowy rights as suzerain over the Merv oasis, and for authority to push the Transcaspian Railway through territory which was still nominally subject to her sway.[631] The absorption by Russia of the whole area inhabited by the conquered race was but a matter of time.

The northern portion, amounting to four-fifths of the whole, is a trackless desert; the remainder is made up of the oases of Akkal and Merv, and the highlands watered by the Atrak and Gurgan.