of the Little Pamir. The mountain range that divides the two Pamirs is known as the Nicholas Range. West of the Nicholas Range, between the Great Pamir and the lower valley of the Wakhan River, is the Wakhan Range, which culminates in the Koh-e Pamir (6,320 m). The roads in the region have small shrines to Ismaili Muslim pirs and are adorned with "special stones and curled ibex and sheep horns", which are symbols of purity in the Zoroastrian faiths, once present in the region before the arrival of Islam. Wakhan Corridor The Wakhan is connected to Tashkurgan Tajik County, China, by a long, narrow strip called the Wakhan Corridor, which separates the Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajikistan from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and Gilgit-Baltistan. The Wakhan River flows through the corridor from the east to Qila-e Panja where it joins the Pamir River to become the Panj River which then forms the border. In the south the corridor is bordered by the high mountains of the Hindu Kush, crossed by the Broghol pass, the Irshad Pass and the disused Dilisang Pass to Pakistan. History Historically the Wakhan has been an important region for thousands of years as it is where the western and eastern portions of Central Asia meet. Ancient History Western Wakhan (休密 Xiumi) was conquered in the early part of the 1st century CE by Kujula Kadphises, the first "Great Kushan," and was one of the five xihou or principalities that formed the nucleus of the original Kushan kingdom. Wakhan was administered by the Kushan indirectly through semi-independent rulers who oversaw trade on the Buddhist Route of the Silk Road. Wakhan Mirdom Until 1883 Wakhan was a principality on both sides of the Panj and Pamir Rivers, ruled by a hereditary ruler (mir) with his capital at Qila-e Panja. It was normally a tributary to Badakhshan but in the 1750s when the Qing conquered the Dzungar Khanate they also ended up conquering Wakhan and Shughnan. The Khanate of Kokand eventually took Wakhan and Shughnan from the Qing by the 1830s. Conquest by Afghanistan Agreements between Britain and Russia in 1873 and between Britain and Afghanistan in 1893 effectively split the historic area of Wakhan by making the Panj and Pamir Rivers the border between Afghanistan and the Russian Empire. On its south side, the Durand Line agreement of 1893 marked the boundary between British India and Afghanistan. This