The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water , variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. It is an endorheic basin a basin without outflows located between Europe and Asia , to the east of the Caucasus Mountains and to the west of the broad steppe of Central Asia.
It has a salinity of approximately 1. It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the west, Iran to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southeast. The Caspian Sea is home to a wide range of species and may be best known for its caviar and oil industries.
Pollution from the oil industry and dams on rivers draining into the Caspian Sea have had negative effects on the organisms living in the sea. The wide and endorheic Caspian Sea has a north—south orientation and its main freshwater inflow , the Volga River , enters at the shallow north end. Two deep basins occupy its central and southern areas. These lead to horizontal differences in temperature, salinity, and ecology.
The ancient inhabitants of its coast perceived the Caspian Sea as an ocean, probably because of its saltiness and large size.
The word Caspian is derived from the name of the Caspi , an ancient people who lived to the southwest of the sea in Transcaucasia. The Iranian city of Qazvin shares the root of its name with that of the sea. In classical antiquity among Greeks and Persians it was called the Hyrcanian Ocean. Some Turkic peoples refer to the lake as Khazar Sea. In all these cases, the second word simply means "sea", and the first word refers to the historical Khazars who had a large empire based to the north of the Caspian Sea between the 7th and 10th centuries.
