The Buzan (russian: Бузан река) is a river in the

Astrakhan Oblast Astrakhan Oblast (russian: Астраха́нская о́бласть, ''Astrakhanskaya oblast'', , ''Astrakhan oblysy'') is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast) located in southern Russia. Its administrative center ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

. It is a left

distributary A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Distributaries are a common feature of river deltas. The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation. The opposite of a distributar ...

which splits from the

Volga The Volga (; russian: Во́лга, a=Ru-Волга.ogg, p=ˈvoɫɡə) is the List of rivers of Europe#Rivers of Europe by length, longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Cas ...

about upstream from

Astrakhan Astrakhan ( rus, Астрахань, p=ˈastrəxənʲ) is the largest city and administrative centre of Astrakhan Oblast in Southern Russia. The city lies on two banks of the Volga, in the upper part of the Volga Delta, on eleven islands of the ...

. From there it flows generally south-east, splitting into several smaller named distributaries near Lebyazhye. The East Slavic Buzhan tribe inhabited the area of the Buzan river. The Buzhans are one of various Slavic tribes which formed the modern Russian people. The Volga Delta was subject to territorial disputes between the

Nogai Horde The Nogai Horde was a confederation founded by the Nogais that occupied the Pontic–Caspian steppe from about 1500 until they were pushed west by the Kalmyks and south by the Russians in the 17th century. The Mongol tribe called the Manghuds cons ...

and the Russian-annexed

Astrakhan Khanate The Khanate of Astrakhan, also referred to as the Xacitarxan Khanate, was a Tatar state that arose during the break-up of the Golden Horde. The Khanate existed in the 15th and 16th centuries in the area adjacent to the mouth of the Volga river, a ...

in the 1550s. Negotiations between Ismael Beg and

Ivan IV Ivan IV Vasilyevich (russian: Ива́н Васи́льевич; 25 August 1530 – ), commonly known in English as Ivan the Terrible, was the grand prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and the first Tsar of all Russia from 1547 to 1584. Ivan ...

established the Buzan as the boundary between the two realms but proceeded to push the horde back further out of the fertile delta region. The counter-clockwise extremity of the modern

Kazakhstan–Russia border The Kazakhstan–Russia border (russian: Казахстанско-российская граница, kk, Қазақстан-Ресей шекарасы) is the international border between the Kazakhstan, Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russia ...

reflects this history, largely following the leftmost corridors of the delta. A over-deck truss bridge for the

Volga Railway The Privolzhskaya Railway (Приволжская железная дорога; "Volga Railway") is a subsidiary of the Russian Railways headquartered in Saratov. It serves the Saratov, Volgograd, and Astrakhan regions of Russia. Its three branch ...

crosses the Buzan at and was replaced in the mid-2000s to include a vertical lift span and permit river-boats to pass.

References

Rivers of Astrakhan Oblast 0Buzan {{Russia-river-stub