CASPIAN SEA, a large salt-water inland sea of Central Asia, lying between lat. 36° 55' and 47° 30' N., and long. 46° 48' and 55° 25' E., 730 miles long, 150 to 270 miles broad, with an area of 140,000 square miles. The chief affluents are the Atrak, Gurgan, Kizl-Ozan, Kuma, Kur Terek, Ural, and Volga ; but there are nearly a hundred torrents besides. It has no outlets and no tides. It has valuable fisheries of sturgeon and other large fish ; sterlet, porpoise, perch. It has twice been surveyed, and once declared to be 81.4 feet below the Black Sea, but at another time only 38i feet. It is known to the Mahomedans as the Daria-i-Kulzum, also Daria-i-Hasleta Khan, and Daria Khizr, and by the Armenians as the Srif, by the Georgians Sgwa, and by the Russians Gualenskoi. According to Strabo (lib. xi.), all the tribes east of the Caspian were called Scythic. The Dahm were next the sea ; the Massa-get m and Sacin more eastward ; but every tribe had a par ticular name. All were nomadic ; but of these nomades the best known are the Asi, the Pasiani, Tachari, Saccarandi, who took Bactria from the Greeks. The Sac made irruptions in Asia, similar to those of the Cimmerians, and possessed them selves of Bactria and the best district of Armenia, called after them Sacasenm.
The whole of the N. part of the barren high lands on the E. coast is inhabited by Kirghiz Kazzaks, that to the S. by the Turkoman and Khivali, all of them in tents, carrying on the coasting trade. About 80 ships, called shootes (Razchiva, Aslam), trade from port to port. The waters give employment to about 10,000 fisher men ; yield abundance of fish, classed as red fish, which includes the beluga, sevringa, and sturgeon, yielding isinglass, and made into caviare; whitefish, such as the salmon trout, bastard beluga, sterlet, carp or sazan, soudak, and silure ; the third class have the general names chistia and riba or kooaya. The sturgeon fishery alone yields 2,000,000 roubles annually. The take in 1828 was 43,033 sturgeons, 653,164 sevringa, 23,069 beluga, also 8335 soudak, and 98,584 seals. Canals connect this sea with the Baltic.
The first attempt to open a trade route from the Caspian eastward was made by Antony Jenkin son, Queen Elizabeth's envoy to Shah Tamasp of Persia. In 1557 he travelled through Russia to Bokhara, returning by the Caspian and the Volga in 1560. From the king of Shirvan he obtained leave to establish a factory at that place. In 1579 Christopher Burroughs traded in a ship of his own building across the Caspian to Baku, but the ship got stranded in the ice, and his cargo of raw silk was carried in a boat to Astracan. After 160 years, in 1738, Mr. John Elton, who had been employed by the Russians on the Oren burg frontier, sailed from Astracan with a cargo of goods for the Persian market. He reached Enzeli, the port of Resht, in May 1739, and, pro ceeding to Resht itself, exchanged his .English broadcloth for raw silk. He got leave to•trade in Persia, and to plant a factory at Meshed, with a branch at Resht. Returning to Persia with a large cargo of broadcloth, be entered the service of Nadir Shah, and undertook to build for him a fleet capable of protecting the Persian shores of the Caspian. The Averse, carrying twenty three pounders, was the first-fruits of Elton's energy and resourcefulness. But Russian jealousy brought the new-born English trade in the Caspian to an untimely end in 1746. Two English vessels had to be sold at a great loss to Russian merchants in Astracan, and soon afterwards Elton himself was murdered in Milan during the anarchy which followed on the death of Nadir Shah in 1747. Among those who had embarked in the Caspian trade, was Jonas Ilanway, who fell on ono occasion into the hands of the Kajar chief, Muhammad Husain, ancestor of the present Shah of Persia. He escaped with the loss of his pro perty in Astrabad, and obtained from Nadir Shah an order for the payment of all his losses. But llanway soon went home, to write a charming account of his travels and a life of Nadir Shah. By the treaty of Gulistan between Russia and Persia in 1813, no Persian man-of-war. was thenceforth allowed to navigate the Caspian.