Hindu Kush

The Hindu Kush, also known in Ancient Greek as the Caucasus Indicus (Ancient Greek: Καύκασος Ινδικός) or Paropamisadae (Ancient Greek: Παροπαμισάδαι), in Pashto and Persian as هندوکش‬, is an 800-kilometre-long (500 mi) mountain range that stretches near the Afghan-Pakistan border, from central Afghanistan to northern Pakistan.

Quotes

• After this I proceeded to the city of Barwan, in the road to which is a high mountain, covered with snow and exceedingly cold; they call it the Hindu Kush, that is Hindu-slayer, because most of the slaves brought thither from India die on account of the intenseness of the cold.
  • Ibn Battuta, Chapter XIII, Rihla – Khorasan: Ibn Battuta; Samuel Lee (Translator) (2010). The Travels of Ibn Battuta: In the Near East, Asia and Africa. Cosimo (Reprint). pp. 97–98. ISBN 978-1-61640-262-4.; Columbia University
  • Different translation: "Another motive for our journey was fear of the snow, for in the middle of this route there is a mountain called Hindû Kûsh, meaning 'Hindu-killer', because many of the male and female slaves transported from India die in these mountains because of the violent cold and the quantity of snow."

• That Muslims enslaved Hindus and drove them to their death in the Hindu Kush is a solidly documented historical fact, never refuted, and only a “highly contested claim” in the Nehruvian-secularist world of fact-free political polemic. ... It is entirely likely that the name Hindu Kush came about as a sarcastic twist on the older name Hindu Koh, viz. on the occasion of an actual mass-killing.
  • Koenraad Elst, The Argumentative Hindu (2012), Chapter 13 and 283-7

• When asserting that “Hindu Kush” means “Hindu slaughter”, I simply repeat what I have learned at the feet of Prof. Pierre Eggermont, a very established Indologist, and what time-witness Ibn Battuta wrote. These sources are not infallible, but are worth quoting... At any rate, there should be nothing controversial about quoting them and approving of what they say. By contrast, the establishment’s insistence on denying this well-known fact ought to be seriously controversial, at least for someone with the scientific temper.
  • Elst, Koenraad. The Wikipedia lemma on "Koenraad Elst": a textbook example of defamation (2013) [1]

• Climate change is expected to exacerbate current stresses on water resources. On a regional scale, mountain snowpack, glaciers, and small ice caps play a crucial role in fresh water availability. Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21^st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and the changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world’s population currently lives. There is also high confidence that many semi-arid areas (e.g. the Mediterranean Basin, western United States, southern Africa, and northeastern Brazil) will suffer a decrease in water resources due to climate change. In Africa by 2020, between 75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change.
  • Rajendra K. Pachauri, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 10 December 2007