The
Caspian Sea (
Russian ?????????? ????,
Azerbaijani Xezer Denizi) is the largest enclosed body of water on
Earth by area, variously classed as the
world's largest lake or a full-fledged
sea.
[2][3] The sea has a surface area of 371,000 square kilometres (143,244&_160;
sq&_160;mi) and a volume of 78,200 cubic kilometres (18,761&_160;cu&_160;mi).
[4] It is in an
endorheic basin (it has no outflows) and is bounded by northern
Iran, southern
Russia, western
Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan, and eastern
Azerbaijan. It has a maximum depth of about 1,025 metres (3,363&_160;ft).
The ancient inhabitants of its littoral perceived the Caspian as an ocean, probably because of its saltiness and seeming boundlessness. It has a salinity of approximately 1.2%, about a third the salinity of most seawater. According to Strabo, the sea was named after an ancient people called Kashyapas (Sanskrit) [5][6]. Caspian is called Qazvin (????? or ??? ?????) on ancient maps. In Iran, it is sometimes referred to as Daryâ-ye Mâzandarân (????? ????????).
Like the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea is a remnant of the ancient Paratethys Sea. The Caspian Sea became landlocked about 5.5 million years ago due to tectonic uplift and a fall in sea level. During warm and dry climatic periods, the landlocked sea has all but dried up, depositing evaporitic sediments like halite that have become covered by wind-blown deposits and were sealed off as an evaporite sink[7]; when cool, wet climates refilled the basin.[8] Due to the current inflow of fresh water, the Caspian Sea is a fresh-water lake in its northern portions. It is more saline on the Iranian shore, where the catchment basin contributes little flow. Currently, the mean salinity of the Caspian is one third that of the Earth's oceans. The Garabogazköl embayment, which dried up when water flow from the main body of the Caspian was blocked in the 1980s but has since been restored, routinely exceeds oceanic salinity by a factor of 10.[9]
The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world and accounts for 40 to 44 percent of the total lacustrine waters of the world.[citation needed] The coastlines of the Caspian are shared by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. The Caspian is divided into three distinct physical regions the Northern, Middle, and Southern Caspian.[10] The North-Middle boundary is the Mangyshlak threshold, which runs through Chechen Island and Cape Tiub-Karagan. The Middle-South boundary is the Apsheron threshold, a sill of tectonic origin[11] that runs through Zhiloi Island and Cape Kuuli.[12] The Garabogazköl bay is the saline eastern inlet of the Caspian, which is part of Turkmenistan and at times has been a lake in its own right due to the isthmus which cuts it off from the Caspian.
