The next step in mapping Turan is to define the course of the two major Turanian rivers; the Ilbars River from Iron Shadows in the Moon and the Zaporoska River from The Devil in Iron. From the stories it appears that the Zaporoska is the southernmost river and the Ilbars lies to the north of it.

The Zaporoska River does not appear in its proper position on any map of the Hyborian world that I’ve ever seen. It was first depicted on the 1938 LANY map produced by P. Schuyler Miller and John Clark as being a Hyrkanian watercourse that drained into the extreme southern Vilayet Sea. Examining the internal evidence from The Devil in Iron does show the Zaporoska as emptying into the southern Vilayet, but from the Turanian side. This is how I see the case for a Turanian placement laying out.

The Devil in Iron shows that Howard placed the Yuetshi homeland as being "along the southern shore of the Sea of Vilayet since time immemorial". He also describes the area around Xapur; "The adjacent coast of the mainland was uninhabited, a reedy marsh given over to the grim beasts that haunted it. The (Yuetshi) fisher's village lay some distance to the south, on the mainland. A storm had blown his frail fishing craft far from his accustomed haunts, and wrecked it in a night of flaring lightning..." So what this tells me is that the isle of Xapur lies to the north of the southern edge of the Vilayet, adjacent to either the western or eastern coast. While it is described as laying "some distance" and "far" from Yuetshi lands, it can really only be as far away as a small boat can be blown over the course of a single night. So it possibly lies within a hundred miles of the northern end of the Yuetshi homeland, but it is much more realistic to place it within fifty miles. Howard describes the lower reaches of the Zaporoska River as a “wilderness of reeds” and a “swampy jungle”. The "reedy marsh" adjacent to Xapur is the same area as "the lower reaches of the Zaporoska", since Conan was set to flee from the isle "across the blue waters to the distant camp at the mouth of the Zaporoska".

Furthermore, The Devil in Iron relates that the role of the governor of Khawarizm is to "guard the frontier". This implies that the city is near the outer border of Turan, not near the heavily settled center of the nation. When Octavia escapes from Khawarizm, she steals a horse, rides all night to the edge of the sea, and swims out to Xapur. So Khawarizm isn't on the sea coast, and it isn't all that far from Conan's war camp on the Zaporoska River, either.

Howard describes the Kozaki raiders as a force that bedevils the western frontiers of Turan: "On the broad steppes between the Sea of Vilayet and borders of the easternmost Hyborian kingdoms, a new race had sprung up in the past half-century…” It is important to note that Howard describes the location of the Kozaki in two stories: The Devil in Iron and Iron Shadows in the Moon. Both stories place these brigands in the same location; along the western borders of Turan. There is not one mention of the Kozaki either to the south or the east of the Sea of Vilayet. The site of Conan’s war camp seems ideally placed as an interface between the Kozaki to the west and the Hyrkanian pirates he deals with on the sea to the east. Textually, it seems reasonably certain that the Zaporoska River empties into the southern reaches of the Vilayet that lies within the land of Turan. Why the 1938 LANY map doesn't reflect this I can only guess.

Вот, ниже, привёл кусок от Риппке