ABSTRACT
The geographical importance of the Pamir region varies greatly according to the different perspectives of the various scientific publications. If the enormous highland plateau of China is taken into consideration, together with the Tarim Basin and the Takla Makhân desert, the Pamir quickly shrinks to occupy a rather marginal position on the western rim of the mountainous massif as a whole. However, in relation to actual mountain ranges, the Pamir occupies a central position. A glance at the maps – for example in Capus (1890a: 3) and Reclus (1881: pl. 1) – shows that the most important mountain chains of central Asia begin or at least meet there. To the north over the Alai, the mountains form a continuous chain over thousands of kilometres as the Tien-Shan, the Alai-Taû and finally the Altai. In the south, counting its secondary mountains, the Hindu Kush also extends to the south-west into Pakistan and Afghanistan. To the south-east, the impressive mass of the Himalaya and the Tibetan highlands extends over more than 20 degrees of latitude. Only in the west does the Pamir descend steeply with the streams that drain the Alai into the Tajikistani heartlands.
