KARAKORUM, the famous capital of the Mongol con federacy whose ruins lie in what is now northern or Outer Mon golia. This forms a belt of open steppe lying between the Gobi desert on the south and the Siberian forest on the north, and has been occupied for ages by pastoral peoples. During the later decades of the 12th century Jenghiz, a Mongol chief, gradually acquired dominion not only over all the Mongols but also over the related peoples of the whole steppe from the Altai to the Khingan. He placed, at some date between 1206 and 1219, the capital of the new confederacy in the central part of the belt of steppe, which is also the more fertile. This was Karakorum. It lay by the Orchon, a river draining north to Lake Baikal, on a tributary of which now stands Urga, the modern capital of Outer Mongolia. Long before, in the 8th century, there had been, only 25 m. away, the capital of the Uighur kingdom, and this also was known as Karakorum. These successive capitals mark out the upper valley of the Orchon as the focus of the Mongolian steppe. It was from this base that the Mongol conquests spread out to embrace the Old World from China to eastern Europe. So long as the expansion of Mongol power was in progress, under the grand khans from Jenghiz to Kublai, his grandson, Karakorum remained the capital. But when the richness of the conquered lands around the periphery, in contrast to the comparative poverty of the steppe homeland in the centre, began to act as a centrifugal force, the far-flung Mongol domain split up into several khanates. Even Kublai, the grand khan, moved his capital in 1267 from Karakorum to Cambaluc (the modern Peking) in the lowlands of China, the richest and most long-lived of all the Mongol conquests. Karakorum then sunk to the level of the capital of a subordinate province, and soon afterwards, on the insurrection of its khan, Was razed to the ground, and has never been restored.
the name of two lakes ("Great" and "Little") of Asiatic Russia, situated on the Pamir plateau, in the Autono mous Mountain Badakshan Area of the Tajik S.S.R. Great Kara-kul, 12 m. long and Io m. wide (formerly much larger), is under 39° N., to the south of the Trans-Alai range, and lies It an altitude of 13,200 ft.; it is surrounded by high mountains, and is reached from the north over the Kyzyl-art pass (14,015 ft.). A peninsula projecting from the south shore and an island off the north shore divide it into two basins, a smaller eastern one which is shallow, 42 to 63 ft., and a larger western one, which has depths of 726 to 756 ft. It has no drainage outlet. Little Kara-kul lies in the north-east Pamir, or Sarikol, north west of the Mustagh-ata peak (25,85o f t.), at an altitude of 12,70o ft. It varies in depth from 79 ft. in the south to 5o to 7o ft. in the middle, and I,000 ft. or more in the north.
("Black Sands"), a flat desert occupying most of the Turkmenistan S.S.R. and extending on the north-west into the Kazakstan A.S.S.R. Its area is nearly Iio,000 sq.m.; it is bounded on the north-west by the Ust-urt plateau, between the Sea of Aral and the Caspian sea, on the north-east by the Amu-darya, on the south by the Turkmen oases, and on the west it nearly reaches the Caspian sea. Only part of this sur face is covered with sand. There are broad expanses (takyrs) of clay soil upon which water accumulates in the spring; in the summer these are muddy, but later quite dry, and merely a few Solanaceae and bushes grow on them. There are also shors, simi lar to the above but encrusted with salt and gypsum, and re lieved only by Solanaceae along their borders. The remainder is occupied with sand, which, according to V. Mainov, assumes five different forms: (I) Barkhans, chiefly in the east, which are mounds of loose sand, 15 to 35 ft. high, hoof-shaped, having their gently sloping convex sides turned towards the prevail ing winds, and a concave side, 3o° to 40° steep, on the opposite slope. They are disposed in groups or chains, and the winds drive them at an average rate of 20 ft. annually towards the south and south-east. Some grass (Stipa pennata) and bushes of saksaul (Haloxylon ammodendron) and other steppe bushes (e.g., Calligonium, Halimodendron and Atraphaxis) grow on them. (2) Mounds of sand, of about the same size, but irregu lar in shape and of a slightly firmer consistency, mostly bearing the same bushes, and also Artemisia and Tamarix; they are chiefly met with in the east and south. (3) A sandy desert, slightly undulating, and covered in spring with grass and flowers (e.g., tulips, Rheum, various Umbelliferae), which are soon burned by the sun ; they cover very large spaces in the south east. (4) Sands disposed in waves from 5o to 7o ft., and oc casionally up to i oo ft. high, at a distance of from 200 to 400 ft. from each other; they cover the central portion, and their vegetation is practically the same as that of the preceding di vision. (5) Dunes on the shores of the Caspian, composed of moving sands, 35 to 8o ft. high and devoid of vegetation.
A typical feature of the Kara-kum is the number of "old river beds," which may have been either channels of tributaries of the Amu and other rivers, or depressions which contained elongated salt lakes. Water is found only in wells, io to 20 m. apart—sometimes as much as 1 oo m.—which are dug in the takyrs and give saline water, occasionally unfit to drink, and in pools of rain-water retained in the lower parts of the takyrs. The population of the Kara-kum, consisting of nomad Kirghiz and Turkmen, is very small. The region in the north of the province of Syr-darya, between Lake Aral and Lake Chalkar teniz, is also called Kara-kum.