The first to attempt to decipher the name of the Irtysh was the Turkic philologistMahmud al-Kashgari (1029-1101). According to his interpretation, the river got its name from the word"ertishmak"[a] (quick jump). At the same time, according to the legend cited by his contemporary, the Persian geographeral-Gardizi (d. 1061) in his treatise "Zayn al-akhbar", the author of the name is a slave of the founder of theKimaks, Prince Shad. Seeing the Turks wandering near the river, she said to them«irtysh», which meant "stop".[5]
G. F. Miller gives a version of the formation of the name of the river from the name of the Tatar Khan Irtyshak, the successor of Khan On-Som.[6]
According to one version, the name of the river comes from theTurkic words:ir - "earth",tysh - "dig", that is, it means "digging the earth".[7]
According toA. P. Dulzon and V. N. Popova, in the name Irtysh the segmenttysh goes back to theKetchesh, shesh, sis, ses - "river", and the initialir is associated with the pre-Ket (Iranian) root meaning "stormy", "rapid".[8]
The Hungarian chronicles about the prehistory of Hungary speak of the river Togora, the same river is named in the Vienna illustrated chronicle and in Turoc-Togat. Hunfalvi sees here a Hungarian memory of the Irtysh, which, according toCastren, is called by theOstyaks Tangat or Tlangatl[9](Langal[10]).
Map including the lower reaches of the Irtysh RiverThe Irtysh inOmskThe Irtysh nearPavlodar inKazakhstan
From its origins as theKara-Irtysh (Black Irtysh) in theMongolian Altay mountains inXinjiang, China, the Irtysh flows northwest throughLake Zaysan inKazakhstan, meeting theIshim and Tobol rivers before merging with theOb nearKhanty-Mansiysk in western Siberia,Russia after 4,248 kilometres (2,640 mi).
The nameBlack Irtysh (Kara-Irtysh in Kazakh, orCherny Irtysh in Russian) is applied by some authors, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan, to the upper course of the river, from its source entering Lake Zaysan. The termWhite Irtysh, in contrast to the Black Irtysh, was occasionally used in the past to refer to the Irtysh below Lake Zaysan;[11] now this usage is largely obsolete.
In Kazakhstan and Russia,tankers, passenger ships, andcargo vessels navigate the river during the ice-free season, between April and October.Omsk, home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, functions as the largestriver port in Western Siberia.
On the Kazakhstan section of the river there are presently three majorhydroelectric plants, namely atBukhtarma,Ust-Kamenogorsk andShulbinsk. The world's deepestlock, with a drop of 42 metres (138 ft), allows river traffic to by-pass thedam atUst-Kamenogorsk.[12] Plans exist for the construction of several more dams.
TheNorthern river reversal proposals, widely discussed by the USSR planners and scientists in the 1960s and 1970s, would send some of the Irtysh's (and possibly Ob's) water to the water-deficient regions of central Kazakhstan andUzbekistan. Some versions of this project would have seen the direction of flow of the Irtysh reversed in its section between the mouth of theTobol (atTobolsk) and the confluence of the Irtysh with the Ob at Khanty-Mansiysk, thus creating an "Anti-Irtysh".[15]While these giganticinterbasin transfer schemes were not implemented, a smallerIrtysh–Karaganda Canal was built between 1962 and 1974 to supply water to the dry Kazakhsteppes and to one of the country's main industrial center,Karaganda. In 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to theIshim river and Kazakhstan's capital,Astana.
In China, a short canal was constructed in 1987 (water intake at47°26′31″N87°34′11″E / 47.44194°N 87.56972°E /47.44194; 87.56972) to divert some of the Irtysh water to theendorheicLake Ulungur, whose level had been falling precipitously due to the increasing irrigation use of the lake's main affluent, theUlungur River.[16] In the last years of the 20th century and the early 2000s, a much more major project, theIrtysh–Karamay–Urümqi Canal was completed. Increased water use in China has caused significant concerns among Kazakh and Russian environmentalists.[17][18]According to a report published by Kazakhstan fishery researchers in 2013, the total Irtysh water use in China is about 3 cubic kilometres (0.7 cu mi) per year; as a result, only about 2/3 of what would be the river's "natural" flow (6 km3 out of 9 km3) reaches the Kazakh border.[19]
As theKuytun–Beitun Railway in China's Xinjiang is being extended towardAltay City, a railway bridge over the Irtysh at Beitun will need to be constructed as well.
Numerous highway bridges over the Irtysh exist in China, Kazakhstan, and Russia.
The last bridge downstream on the Irtysh, a highway bridge opened in 2004, is at Khanty-Mansiysk, right before the river's confluence with Ob.
In the 15th and 16th centuries the lower and middle courses of the Irtysh lay within the TatarKhanate of Sibir; its capital,Qashliq (also known asSibir) was located on the Irtysh a few kilometres upstream from the mouth of theTobol (where today'sTobolsk is situated).
The Khanate of Sibir wasconquered by the Russians in the 1580s. The Russians started building fortresses and towns next to the sites of former Tatar towns; one of the first Russian towns in Siberia (afterTyumen) wasTobolsk, founded in 1587 at the fall of the Tobol into the Irtysh, downstream from the former Qashliq.[23]Farther east,Tara was founded in 1594, roughly at the border of thetaiga belt (to the north) and thesteppe to the south.[24]
In the 17th century theDzungar Khanate, formed by the MongolOirat people, became Russia's southern neighbor, and controlled the upper Irtysh.[25] As a result of Russia's confrontation with the Dzungars in thePeter the Great's era,[26] the Russians founded the cities ofOmsk in 1716,Semipalatinsk in 1718,Ust-Kamenogorsk in 1720, andPetropavlovsk in 1752.
The ChineseQing EmpireconqueredDzungaria in the 1750s. This prompted an increase in the Russian authorities' attention to their borderland; in 1756, theOrenburg GovernorIvan Neplyuyev even proposed the annexation of theLake Zaysan region, but this project was forestalled by Chinese successes.[27] Concerns were raised in Russia (1759) about the (theoretical) possibility of a Chinese fleet sailing from Lake Zaysan down the Irtysh and into Western Siberia. A Russian expedition visited Lake Zaysan in 1764, and concluded that such a riverine invasion would not be likely. Nonetheless, a chain of Russian pickets was established on theBukhtarma River, north of Lake Zaysan.[28] Thus the border between the two empires in the Irtysh basin became roughly delineated, with a (sparse) chain of guard posts on both sides. In the summer of 1828, the Prussian explorerAlexander von Humboldt visited the Irtysh region on his journey through Russia and Central Asia; he came face-to-face with Chinese and Mongol border guards.[29]
The situation in the borderlands in the mid-19th century is described in a report by A. Abramof (ru; 1865). Even though the Zaysan region was recognized by both parties as part of theQing empire, it had been annually used, by fishing expeditions sent by theSiberian Cossack Host. The summer expeditions started in 1803, and in 1822–25 their range was expanded through the entire Lake Zaysan and to the mouth of the Black Irtysh. Through the mid-19th century, the Qing presence on the upper Irtysh was mostly limited to the annual visit of the Qingamban fromChuguchak to one of the Cossacks' fishing stations (Batavski Piket).[30]
The border between the Russian and the Qing empires in the Irtysh basin was established along the line fairly similar to China's modern border with Russia and Kazakhstan by theConvention of Peking of 1860.[31] The actual border line pursuant to the convention was drawn by the Protocol of Chuguchak (1864), leaving Lake Zaysan on the Russian side.[32][33] The Qing empire's military presence in the Irtysh basin crumbled during the 1862–77Dungan Revolt. After the fall of the rebellion and the reconquest of Xinjiang byZuo Zongtang, the border between the Russian and the Qing empires in the Irtysh basin was further slightly readjusted, in Russia's favor, by theTreaty of Saint Petersburg (1881).
The Irtysh River serves as a backdrop in the epilogue ofFyodor Dostoyevsky's 1866 novelCrime and Punishment. In Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn'sThe Gulag Archipelago, the chapter "The White Kitten" details Georgi Tenno's escape from a camp along this river.
^Miller G. F. (1750).Description of the Siberian Kingdom and all the affairs that happened in it, from the beginning and especially from its conquest by the Russian State to the present time. Book One (in Russian). St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences. pp. 39, 238.
^Matveyev A.K. Geographical names of the Tyumen North. - P. 48.
^Frolov N. K. (1994). "Irtysh".Russian onomastics and onomastics of Russia. Dictionary (in Russian). M.: Shkola-Press. pp. 97–98, 288.
^Alekseyev M. P. (1941).Siberia in the News of Western European Travelers and Writers (in Russian). Irkutsk. pp. LXI.
^Nikonov V. A. A Brief Toponymic Dictionary. — Moscow: Mysl, 1966. — 514 p.
^Skornyakova, V. A.; Timasheva, I. Ye. (1980), "The possible environmental impact of the anti-Irtysh and problems of rational nature management",Soviet Geography,21 (10):638–644,doi:10.1080/00385417.1980.10640361
^Petr, T., ed. (1999),Fish and Fisheries at Higher Altitudes: Asia, Issue 385 of FAO fisheries technical paper, ISSN 0429-9345, Food & Agriculture Org., p. 257,ISBN978-92-5-104309-7 (An English translation of the original paper published in theVestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta in 1979).
^Jonathan Karem Skaff (2009). Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.).Military Culture in Imperial China. Harvard University Press. pp. 181–185.ISBN978-0-674-03109-8.
^James A. Millward (2007).Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. Columbia University Press. p. 33.ISBN978-0-231-13924-3.
^May, Timothy (May 25, 2022). "Chapter Seven: The Conquest of Qara Khitai and Western Siberia".The Mongol World(PDF) (1st ed.). Routledge. pp. 138–139.ISBN9781315165172.
^Daum, Andreas W. (2024).Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography. Trans. Robert Savage. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. p. 122.ISBN978-0-691-24736-6.
^Abramof 1865, pp. 62–63; see also the border shown on the map before p. 65.
