The Arabat Spit or Arabat Arrow is a spit which separates a large, shallow and very salty system of lagoons named Syvash from the Sea of Azov. The spit is located between the Henichesk Strait to the north and the north-eastern shores of Crimea to the south.
Name
The spit is commonly called the Arabat Arrow in Russia and Ukraine. The origin of this name is unknown, but dates back to the middle of the 19th century. The Arabat part of the name presumably comes from the Arabat Fortress, a 17th-century Turkish fort at the southern end of the spit. "Arabat" derives from either Arabic "rabat" meaning a "military post" or Arabic "rabad" meaning a "suburb".
Geography and geology
The Arabat Arrow is long, and from wide; its surface area is and thus the average width is. The spit is low and straight on the Azov Sea side, whereas its Sivash side is more convoluted. It contains two areas which are wide and have brown-clay hills; they are located and from the Henichesk Strait. The top layers of other parts of the spit are formed by sand and shells washed by the flows of the Azov Sea. Its vegetation mostly consists of various weed grasses, thorn, festuce grasses, spear grass, crambe, salsola, salicornia, Carex colchica, tamarisk, rose hip, liquorice, etc. Offshore water is shallow with the depth reaching only some from the shore. Its temperature is around in winter, in spring and autumn, and in summer; air temperature is almost the same. The spit is very young and was created by sedimentation processes around 1100–1200 AD.
History
The Arabat Arrow was wild until 1835 when a road and five stations at intervals were built along it for postal delivery. Later in the 19th century, 25 rural and 3 military settlements and one village named Arabat appeared on the spit. The rural population amounted to some 235 people whose occupation was mostly fishing, farming, and salt production. The latter activity is traditional for the region due to the vast areas of shallow and very saline water in the Sivash lagoons. Salt production in the 19th century was about on the Arabat Arrow alone. Nowadays, the spit is a health resort and its Azov Sea side is used as a beach. While the spit is geophysically a part of the Crimean Peninsula, politically its northern half belongs toKherson Oblast, Ukraine, while its southern portion is, de factosince 2014, a part of the RussianRepublic of Crimea. The entirety of the spit was occupied during the annexation, although Russia withdrew its forces from the northern Kherson side in December 2014.
Populated places
The rural communities of Henicheska Hirka, Shchaslyvtseve and Strilkove are located in the northern section of the spit, within the Kherson Oblast. The community of Solyane is located in the southern part of the spit, administered as part of the Republic of Crimea.
