The Sazliyka is a river in southeastern Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, a left tributary of the Maritsa

Maritsa

The Maritsa or Evros , ) is, with a length of 480 km, the longest river that runs solely in the interior of the Balkans. It has its origin in the Rila Mountains in Western Bulgaria, flowing southeast between the Balkan and Rhodope Mountains, past Plovdiv and Parvomay to Edirne, Turkey...

. It originates in the Sarnena Sredna Gora

Sredna Gora

Sredna Gora is a mountain range in central Bulgaria, situated south of and parallel to Balkan mountain range and extending from the river Iskar to the west and the elbow of Tundzha north of Yambol to the east. Sredna Gora is 285 km long, reaching 50 km at its greatest width...

 mountains. In its upper course until Radnevo

Radnevo

Radnevo is a town in southern Bulgaria, part of Stara Zagora Province, located in the eastern Upper Thracian Lowlands close to the Maritsa Iztok Complex. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Radnevo Municipality...

, it is also known as the Rakitnitsa or Syuyutliyka. The river is 145.4 kilometres in length and has a drainage basin

Drainage basin

A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...

 of 3,293 square kilometres. Its average discharge

Discharge (hydrology)

In hydrology, discharge is the volume rate of water flow, including any suspended solids , dissolved chemical species and/or biologic material , which is transported through a given cross-sectional area...

 at Galabovo

Galabovo

Galabovo is a town in south-central Bulgaria, part of Stara Zagora Province. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Galabovo Municipality...

 is 17 cubic metres per second

Second

The second is a unit of measurement of time, and is the International System of Units base unit of time. It may be measured using a clock....

. The Galabovo Reservoir is located along the river.

The name is thought to be derived from the Ottoman Turkish

Ottoman Turkish language

The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...

 saz, "bulrush

Bulrush

-Wetland plants:* Bolboschoenus, a genus in the sedge family * Cyperus, a genus in the sedge family * Scirpus, a genus in the sedge family * Schoenoplectus, a genus in the sedge family...

", with a Bulgarian feminine suffix. The name of its upper course, Syuyutliyka, is also from a Turkish root, söğüt, "osier", while Rakitnitsa is its Bulgarian translation, the equivalent word for "osier" being rakita.