The Hamun (= marshy lake, in this instance) is dry for most of the year, but fills with fresh water in winter (Harrison, 1941). Its extent is presumably variable, depending on rainfall. It lies at an altitude of about 300 m, with a still-subsiding depression within the Jaz Murian plain, and is ringed by mountains.

The two major rivers flowing into the Hamun are the Halil (or Haliri) River, known as the Kharan or Zar Dasht River in its upper reaches, which flows from the neighbourhood of Kuh-e Laleh Zar at 4374 m lying to the northwest, and the Bampur River which flows towards the Hamun from the east but follows a southerly course in its upper reaches (Tipper, 1921). The source of the Bampur River lies between 1000 and 1500 m. The Halil is a longer river (ca. 390 km) than the Bampur (ca. 315 km) with a stronger and more continuous flow. However, this river was nearly dry downstream of the Jiroft Dam and there was only minimum flow upstream in 2008 during a drought (Atabak Mahjoor Azad, pers. comm., 6 October 2008). There is a 130 m high dam on the Halil, the Jiroft Dam, 40 km upriver of Jiroft. A flood water storage dam at Bazman is 37 m high with a capacity of 3.3 million cu m (www.irna.com, downloaded 26 January 2003). Discharge is only 1-3 m³/second in summer. Floods occur (including an historical one which destroyed Jiroft in 1000 A.D., and one in 1993) and river discharge can reach 800 m³/second in 15 hours with an 18 m rise in reservoir level in 40 hours and massive sediment transport with turbidity reaching 280 gr/liter (sic) (www.stucky.ch/publication/JIRFLOOD.htm downloaded 19 July 1999). The Bampur River in late November and early December was flowing in its upper reaches near Karevandar and around Iranshahr and Bampur but was dry between these two areas. Judging from its width and depth below Bampur it probably did not reach the Hamun by surface flow. Most rain at Iranshahr falls in January and February (15 and 52 mm respectively) with none in the remaining months except for rare summer monsoonal rains (Ganji, 1960). Irrigation and canal schemes in the Bampur basin suffer from erosion and siltation problems as elsewhere in Iran (Borowicka, 1958).

The Jaz Murian basin is ringed by much smaller streams draining the surrounding mountains. These are all very small, e.g. the Ughin River was as narrow as 30 cm and maximum depth in pools was about 50 cm when sampled on 4 December 1977.

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