Iron Gate and the Darband Wall

The Iron Gate

The Iron Gate is a narrow defile cutting through the mountains that run south from the Hisor Range towards the Amu Darya. In antiquity and the Middle Ages the main road linking Samarkand, Bukhara and Shash with Bactria–Tokharistan and India passed through it, making it a key strategic point between Sogdiana and Bactria. Today it is called Buzgalakhona, though scholars disagree on its exact location.

The Chinese traveller Xuanzang first mentioned the Iron Gate around 630, and it recurs in Chinese, Arabic, Persian and European sources, as Dar-i Ahanin in Persian and Bab al-Hadid in Arabic. The Old Turkic runic inscriptions of the early 8th century, the monuments to Kul Tigin, Bilge Khagan and Tonyukuk, name Temir Qapig as the western limit of Turkic campaigns. The name reflects the belief that a gate reinforced with iron really stood in the gorge.

Darband and its wall

The nearby village of Darband (Derbent) lies 17 km west of Boysun on the Sherobod river (Machaydaryo). Darband is Persian for “defile, pass, checkpoint”. It was once a small town of the Bukhara Khanate and a key stop on the shortest trade route from G‘uzor to Hisor, and today it has a station on the Tashguzar–Boysun–Qumqo‘rg‘on railway.

Near the village survive the remains of an ancient defensive wall that blocked the passage between the mountains. Archaeologists date it to the 1st–3rd centuries AD, the Kushan period, when it controlled the northern approach to Bactria.