Doab

The Doab, United Provinces, 1908 map

The Doab designates the flat alluvial tract between the Ganges and Yamuna rivers extending from the Sivalik Hills to the two rivers' confluence at Allahabad. It is also called as Ganges-Yamuna Doab or Ganga Doab. The region has an area of about 23,360 square miles (60,500 square km); it is approximately 500 miles (805 km) in length and 60 miles (97 km) in width.[5]

The British raj divided the Doab into three administrative districts, viz., Upper Doab (Meerut), Middle Doab (Agra) and Lower Doab (Allahabad).[5]

Currently the following states and districts form part of The Doab:[5]

A map of the Punjab region ca. 1947 showing the different doabs.

Each of the tracts of land lying between the confluent rivers of the Punjab region of Pakistan and India has a distinct name, said to have been coined by Raja Todar Mal, a minister of the Mughal emperor Akbar. The names (except for "Sindh Sagar") are a combination of the first letters, in the Persian alphabet, of the names of the rivers that bound the Doab. For example, "Jech" (جچ) = Jehlam (جهلم, "Jhelum") + Chanāb (چناب, "Chenab"). The names are (from west to east):

In any doab, khadir land (green) lies next to a river, while bangar land (olive) has greater elevation and lies further from the river

Since North India and Pakistan are coursed by a multiplicity of Himalayan rivers that divide the plains into doabs (i.e. regions between two rivers), the Indo-Gangetic plains consist of alternating regions of river, khadir and bangar. The regions of the doabs near the rivers consist of low-lying, floodplains, but usually very fertile khadir and the higher-lying land away from the rivers consist of bangar, less prone to flooding but also less fertile on average.[8][9]

Khadir is also called Nali or Naili, specially in northern Haryana the fertile prairie tract between the Ghaggar river and the southern limits of the Saraswati channel depression in that gets flooded during the rains.[10]

Within bangar area, the Barani is any low rain area where the rain-fed dry farming is practiced, which nowadays are dependent on the tubewells for irrigation.[11] Bagar tract, an example of barani land, is the dry sandy tract of land on the border of Rajasthan state adjoining the states of Haryana and Punjab.[11] Nahri is any canal-irrigated land,[10] for example, the Rangoi tract which is an area irrigated by the Rangoi channel/canal made for the purpose of carrying flood waters of Ghagghar river to dry areas.[12][13]

Historically, villages in the doabs have been officially classified as khadir, khadir-bangar (i.e. mixed) or bangar for many centuries and different agricultural tax rates applied based on a tiered land-productivity scale.[14][15]

• Interamnia, an ancient Latin placename, meaning "between rivers"

• McGregor, Ronald Stuart (1993), The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, p. 513, ISBN 978-0-19-864339-5, retrieved 11 September 2013