Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Buddhas of Bamiyan





At a symposium last April on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Kern Institute in Leiden, Dr P. Verhagen emphasized the importance of manuscripts from Afghanistan for the understanding and study of early Buddhism. He told the audience that, during the last decade, many of these kinds of manuscripts had shown up in the Western world. Quite a number are in the hands of the Sch�yen collection in Norway. Perhaps for the audience it was an interesting statement, but for me it was quite a shock.

I lived in Peshawar, half an hour from the Afghan border, during the years 1993 - 1995. This town itself has quite a few monuments in its neighbourhood. Most of the Westerners working in Peshawar were involved with refugees who were fleeing the devastating war in Afghanistan.

Only a handful were concerned about the plight of the cultural heritage of Afghanistan. Monuments were being neglected, if not badly damaged by the war, historic sites had been and were still being illegally excavated and, most importantly, the Kabul Museum, which houses an important collection, was being damaged and plundered.Many artefacts were leaving the country illegally. Nancy Dupree, an expert with many relations with Afghans 'in the field' and who is now working for ACBAR/ARIC in Peshawar, has played a major role in trying to stop the destruction. Together, with some others, we decided to set up the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage (SPACH) in September 1994. One of the aims of SPACH is to raise awareness within the country and abroad about the plight of Afghanistan's cultural heritage and to stop the destruction, plunder, and illegal sales of Afghan artefacts. Hence, the shock I just mentioned that was caused by an 'innocent' remark and, therefore, the relevance of SPACH.

Buddhism in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a country with a very rich, fairly complicated, history. Because of its mountainous terrain, it was often on the borders of different empires and has played a part in a host of different era's. Although ancient texts about the region exist, their interpretations give rise to some heated discussions. As most of the objects known from this area were produced by excavations, archaeological findings are an extremely important source of information. This is why illegal digging, which may cause the destruction of unknown contents of historical significance, is all the more regrettable.

Buddhism was introduced into this area in the third century B.C. by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka. It found fertile soil in the former Gandhara province (nowadays, East Afghanistan and North Pakistan) around the first and second centuries A.D. under the rule of the great Kushan ruler Kanishka. At that time, Afghanistan lay at the heart of the Silk Route, as everybody travelling over land from East to West had no option but to journey through it. Along its roads passed silk from China, delicate glassware from Alexandria, bronze statues from Rome, and beautifully decorated ivories from India. These kinds of objects have been excavated in Afghanistan.

Accompanying the caravans of precious goods, Buddhist monks came and went, teaching their religion along the route. From this very part of the world Buddhism established itself over the centuries in China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia.

In the early centuries of the Christian era, Eastern Afghanistan was full of lively Buddhist monasteries, stupas and monks. In this rich and peaceful climate, a new art form emerged: the art of Gandhara, bearing the same name as the province in which it appeared. The origin of this art is a matter of debate, but Hellenistic influence was strong. During this period, the earliest Buddha images in human form also evolved in this Kushan/Saka area. Some scholars, like A. Foucher, argued that this transformation was engendered by the influence of Greek examples, but this assumption is also constantly being challenged.

Two monumental Buddhas

In this Buddhist richness of inspiration, two masterpieces were produced which stand out head and shoulders above the others, the Buddhas of Bamiyan. These two giant Buddhas (53 m. and 38 m. high, respectively) stand in the beautiful Bamiyan valley, situated 230 km NW of Kabul at an altitude of 2500 metres. The caravans on the Silk Route invariably made a stop in this valley. It was one of the major Buddhist centres from the second century up to the time that Islam entered the valley in the ninth century.
The two statues were hewn out of the rock (estimates of dates vary, but most probably around the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.). They were covered with a mud and straw mixture to model the expression of the face, the hands and the folds of the robes. This was then plastered and, finally, they were painted: the smaller Buddha blue, the larger one red, with their hands and faces gold. They must have been quite impressive for monks travelling through the harsh surrounding landscape, who finally reached the beautiful valley with the peaceful Buddhas making the gesture of reassurance.

The features of the Buddhas have disappeared. During the centuries they have probably been assailed by iconoclasts. The idea behind the destruction was to take away the soul of the hated image by obliterating, or at least deforming, the head and hands. Although there is no firm evidence the Buddhas were subjected to iconoclasm, this fate was certainly meted out to the frescoes surrounding the Buddhas, namely the numerous religious places and monk�s cells also hewn out of the rock and covered with beautiful paintings. The faces in these were destroyed by one of the many groups of invaders who have passed that way.

The Buddhas, at once so impressive and yet so vulnerable, have survived the hostile onslaughts over the centuries. Even so, they are still at risk. In the mid-1990s, the space at the feet of the bigger Buddha was being used as an ammunition dump by one of the warring factions. It was practical: it was an easily defendable, dry position. Who would dare to attack it? One shot might blow this giant up. But on the other hand, who would care? This image could be regarded as an idol, and human and animal depictions are forbidden by Islam. So it was worth taking the risk.

Sent by Mehdizadeh Kabuly


HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF BUDDHISM IN AFGHANISTAN


The Buddhist stupas and monasteries and the massive statues carved out of a sand rock at Bamiyan in the heart of Afghanistan were the wonder of tourists, scholars and connoisseurs of art and culture and scholars are no more, devastated by the Islamic Fundamentalists’ Taliban terrorist regime of Afghanistan, not-withstanding the international plea against this iconoclasm, unleashed on the cultural heritage of the ancestors of the present day people of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, situated in the mid-point of Asia and the cross-roads between the north and south, east and west and in the famous "Chinese Silk Route" due to its geographical position became in bygone times the rendezvous of different peoples and various civilisations, namely Aryan, (Bactrian or Rivedic), Achaemenian, Greek, Kushan and Buddhist. The cumulative effect of this cross-cultural fertilisation found its expression in different schools of art, embodying techniques borrowed from different lands and climes, but modified and remoulded according to the ethos of the Afghan people. The Greek culture found its paths into Bactrian art in the fourth century BC, when the country became a part of the vast Macedonian Empire and came to be totally influenced by the Greek culture and philosophy. In mid-third century BC during the reign of Emperor Asoka of India, Buddhism found its way into Afghanistan. It was in Afghanistan that Greek realism and surrealism intermingled with Indian mysticism, giving birth to a new school of art now accepted by the world as the Gandhara School of art, which had its epicentre at Hadda, six miles south of modern Jalaalabada (Nangahara of Buddhist era) in Afghanistan. In the second century AD with the ascension of Kanishka to the throne, Afghanistan became a great seat of Buddhist learning and the arts. It was from this pivotal centre that Buddhism reached Sinkiang, China and Mongolia. Kanishka, being intellectually convinced of the realism and pragmatism of Buddhism became a Buddhist and later became a very liberal, generous and steadfast promoter of Buddhism and Buddhist art and culture. During his long and epoch-making rulership (120 to 160 AD), Buddhism and Buddhist art and culture became the life-blood of his far-flung empire. Consequently, the famous Gandhara or Graeco- Buddhist school of sculpture progressed by leaps and bounds. This new school on Afghan spill defied the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, and his images became the cynosures of worship and veneration to the exclusion of primitive modes of worship. In Afghanistan, Buddhism compromised with many elements of foreign culture and gave them a Buddhist outlook. The old schools of art never "idolized" Buddha but was represented by an empty seat, a footprint, an umbrella, riderless horse or even a vacant throne. According to the new techniques of art that bred on Afghan soil, Buddha came to be portrayed in human form, with aesthetically rich serenity and compassion on the face and the entire body, inspiring the worshipper to take the path of the Four Sublime States of Buddhism: Loving-kindness (Metta), Compassion (Karuna), Blissful Joy (Mudita) and Equanimity (Upekkha). Kanishka had two capitals: Capsie (modern Bagram, 35 miles north of Kabul), has summer residence, and Purushapura (modern Peshawar), his winter palace. He being the indefatigable promoter of Buddhism built stupas and monasteries very specially in these two locations, and elsewhere in his vast empire. In Peshawar, Kanishka built a beautiful Sangharama (monastery like the Mahavihara of Anuradhapura) with a lofty stupa of about 150 feet in height, a most breath-taking construction of the time. Capisa was dotted with viharas and statues. One of these, Shalokia, was built by his Chinese princess who was taken as a hostage and kept in Kanishka's court. This monastery was in a state of preservation. The famous Chinese pilgrim monk, Xuan Zang, visited Afghanistan in the seventh century AD, as attested by the pilgrim's travel notes. He describes that great many monasteries were ubiquitous in Bamiyan, and the smaller statue at Bamiyan (35 metres in height) and the stupa at its feet (no longer in existence) which were to become the cynosure of the Buddhist past of Afghanistan. Bamiyan valley in those far-off days was a great seat of culture, comparable to Nalanda, Ajantha, Ellora, Odanpura, Wikremashila of India and Mahavihara, Abhayagiri Vihara, Jetawana Vihara of Anruadhapura of Sri Lanka and also to Cittalapabbata of Mahagama of Rohana, in the southern province of Sri Lanka. Bamiyan, lying on the trade route linking India with Balkh, through which trade in spices, pearls, ivory and cotton raw material were traded and it was also on the famous Chinese Silk Route, that linked Mid-west Asia with the Chinese Empire and other East Asian empires. History has it that the pearls, gems, cotton ivory and spices were from Sri Lanka being transited through South Indian ports from the great port of Sri Lanka, Mahatittha (Mannar) on the west coast of Sri Lanka, now a buried port city. This trade rendezvous of Bamiyan continued until the invasion of Genghis Khan in the early part of the thirteenth century and as very correctly said by Jawaharlal Nehru in his book, Discovery of India, "The dagger of Islamic invasion went through the heart of India" and this was fate of Afghanistan too.

Bamiyan is only 145 miles north of Kabul and a motor-road, now occupied by the Taliban demons, leads to it through the picturesque valleys of Kohdanan and Ghoraband. At a distance of about 110 miles from Kabul there is a deep ascent, named Shibar Pass, which is snow-capped in winter. About 19 miles ahead of this Pass, the road branches off; one to the right leads to Mazar-Sharif and Katghan, while the other to the left leads to Bamiyan. The road to Bamiyan runs parallel to the river of Bamiyan and girdles the range of hills. After six miles and old mud fort on a steep rock is called the city of Zahak-I*Msran. From thenceforth, the valley widens and the city of caves, where once reclusive Buddhist monks would have lived in meditation, appears. This is the historic city of Bamiyan, lying at the foot of a reddish hills, some 9,000 ft above mean sea level, which also forms the dividing line between the gigantic mountain ranges - the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba. The valley of Bamiyan, sunk deep in the pleateau, is between 8,000 and 9,000 ft above mean sea level. To the south is the snow-capped range of Kh-i-Baba range running to 16,000 to 17,000 feet. The passes, the hilly ranges, valleys and the girdling river give Bamiyan the ideal backdrop to a Buddhist centre of learning and orectic and it was undoubtedly a glorious centre of Buddhism, that enveloped the entire Afghanistan, until Islamic invasions took over Afghanistan. Little is left of the ancient city, being victimised by barbaric fundamentalists and still the capital exists, known now as Shahr-i-Ghulghols (City of Uproars). Gigantic statues of Buddha (53 and 35 metres in height) with smaller ones in different directions are carved out of the sedimentary rock on the sides of the Bamiyan gorge. These statues once coated with reinforcements to withstands the rigours of climatic changes in this hilly terrain, were a source of inspiration and religious fervour for the sore-footed weary pilgrim who, trotted over the land with just a sack tied to a walking stick and held on the shoulder, for there were no vehicles to travel but just a donkey to be their pack animal and companion through the desolate human unfriendly terrain and weather gods. Xuan Zang, who saw these stupendous monasteries and statues and other Buddhist artifacts in 630 AD said very laconically and implicitly, "The Golden Line Sparks on Every Side". The two masdove statues (175 ft and 125 ft in height) were begun in the second century AD under the patronage of Emperor Kanishka and the several others, probably in the fourth or fifth centuries AD. The niches of the Buddha statues carry, now marred, beautiful frescoes, giving the archaeologist a pointer as to the path arts of India found its way to Afghanistan and percolated it with Greek, Roman and Sassanian elements prior to it being conveyed to China and Japan through Sinkiang. The early Moslem writers (prior to the thirteenth century AD) speak in glorious terms. One writer, Yaquibi, describes it in detail and mention the frescoes that adorned the niches of the caves where statues of the Buddha were depoited. He says, the inhabitants called the big statue the "Red Buddha" and the smaller one the "Grey Buddha". Early in the thirteenth century, the city of Bamiyan and all its inhabitants were swept off the face of the valley by Genghis Khan, the Mongol. The legend has it that his grandson, Mutugen, son of Jaghati, was killed in action during the siege of Bamiyan. When the town surrendered after a long and arduous battle, Genghis, the revengeful fiend of fundamentalism in its early dressing ordered that no living being, man or animal, was to be spared. The ruined town was named Mao - Baligh (The Bad Town). How true are the words of the savant Jawaharlal Nehru, today it is not the dagger but gun powder and mortars that destroy the Buddhist cultural heritage of their own ancestors by the barbaric Taliban. It is time that the all governments of the world take cognisance of this "Cultural Cleansing" and action similar to those in Kosovo - "Serbia Ethnic Cleansing" be taken against the Taliban, as the freedom of religion and cultural heritage of the human race are in jeopardy and other similar organisations would take a leaf off the book of Taliban demons.

Alexander Berzin
November 2001, revised December 2006

Geography

Various schools of Hinayana Buddhism were present in Afghanistan from the earliest times, along the kingdoms that lay on the trade route to Central Asia. The main kingdoms were Gandhara and Bactria. Gandhara included the areas on both the Pakistani Punjab and Afghani sides of the Khyber Pass. Eventually, the Afghani half, from the Khyber Pass to the Kabul Valley, received the name Nagarahara; while the Punjabi side retained the name Gandhara. Bactria extended from the Kabul Valley northwards and included southern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. To its north, in central Uzbekistan and northwestern Tajikistan lay Sogdia. The southern part of Bactria, just north of the Kabul Valley, was Kapisha; while the northern part later received the name Tocharistan.

Early Establishment of Buddhism

According to early Hinayana biographies of the Buddha, such as the Sarvastivada text The Sutra of Extensive Play (Lalitavistara), Tapas­su and Bhallika, two merchant broth­ers from Bac­tria, became the first disciples to receive layman’s vows. This occurred eight weeks after Shakyamuni’s enlightenment, traditionally ascribed to 537 BCE. Bhallika later became a monk and built a monas­tery near his home city, Balkh, near present-day Mazar-i-Sharif. He brought with him eight hairs of the Buddha as relics, for which he built a stupa monument. At about this time, Bactria became part of the Achaemenid Empire of Iran.

In 349 BCE, several years after the Second Buddhist Coun­cil, the Mahasanghika tradition of Hinayana split off from the Theravada. Many Mahasanghikas moved to Gandhara. At Hadda, the main city on the Afghan side, near present-day Jalalabad, they eventually founded Nagara Vihara Monastery, bringing with them a skull relic of the Buddha.

A Theravada elder, Sambhuta Sanavasi, soon followed and tried to establish his trad­ition in Kapisha. He was unsuc­cessful, and Maha­sanghika took root as the main Buddhist tradition of Afghanistan.

Eventually, the Mahasanghikas split into five sub-schools. The main one in Afganistan was Lokottaravada, which later established itself in the Bamiyan Valley in the Hindu Kush Mountains. There, some time between the third and fifth centuries CE, its followers built the world’s largest standing Buddha statue, in keeping with their assertion of Buddha as a transcendent, superhuman figure. The Taliban destroyed the colossus in 2001 CE.

In 330 BCE, Alexander the Great of Macedonia conquered most of the Achaemenid Em­pire, including Bactria and Gandhara. He was tolerant of the religious traditions of these regions and seemed in­terested primarily in military conquest. His successors established the Seleucid Dynasty. In 317 BCE, however, the Indian Mauryan Dynasty took Gandhara from the Seleucids and thus the area was only superficially Hellenized during this short period.

The Mauryan Emperor Ashoka (ruled 268 - 232 BCE) favored Theravada Buddhism. In the later part of his reign, he sent a Theravadan mission to Gandhara, led by Maharakkhita. As far south as Qandahar, the mission erected “Ashoka pillars” with edicts based on Buddhist principles. Through these missions, Theravada established a minor presence in Afghanistan.

The Sarvastivada School and the Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom

Toward the end of Ashoka’s rule, after the Third Buddhist Council, the Sarvastivada School of Hinayana also broke away from the Theravada. After Ashoka’s death, his son Jaloka introduced Sarvastivada to Kashmir.

In 239 BCE, the local Greek nobility of Bactria rebelled against Seleucid rule and gained independence. In the years that followed, they conquered Sogdia and Kashmir, thus establishing the Graeco-Bac­trian king­dom. Kashmiri monks soon spread the Sarvastivada School of Hinayana to Bactria.

In 197 BCE, the Graeco-Bactrians conquered Gandhara from the Mauryans. Subsequently, Sarvastivada came to the southeastern part of Afghanistan as well. From the strong interaction between Greek and Indian cultures that followed, Hellenistic styles strongly influenced Buddhist art, particularly its representation of the human form and the drape of robes.

Although Theravada was never strong in the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom, one of its kings, Menan­dros (Pal­i: Mil­in­da, ruled 155 - 130 BCE), was a follower of Theravada due to the influence of the visiting Indian monk Nagasena. The king put many questions to this Indian master and their dialogue became known as The Questions of Milinda (Pali: Mi­linda­pan­ho). Shor­tly afterwards, the Graeco-Bactrian state established relations with Sri Lanka and sent a delegation of monks to the consecration ceremony of the great stupa built there by King Dutthagamani (ruled 101 – 77 BCE). From the cultu­ral contact that ensued, Graeco-Bactrian monks orally transmitted The Questions of Milinda to Sri Lanka. It later be­came an extra-can­on­ical text in the Thera­vada tra­di­tion.

The Kushan Period

Between 177 and 165 BCE, the westward expansion of the Han Empire of China into Gansu and East Turkistan (Chin.: Xinjiang) drove many of the native Central Asian nomadic tribes further west. One of these tribes, the Xiongnu, attacked another, the Yuezhi (Wades-Giles: Yüeh-chih), and assimilated a large part of them. The Yuezhi were a Caucasian people who spoke an ancient western Indo-European language and represented the easternmost migration of the Caucasian race. According to some sources, one of the five aristocratic tribes of the Yuezhi, known in Greek sources as the Tocharians, migrated to present-day eastern Kazakhstan, driving south the local nomadic Shakas (Ole Iranian: Saka), known to the Greeks as the Scythians. Both the Tocharians and Shakas, however, spoke Iranian languages. Due to this difference in languages, it is disputed whether or not these Tocharians were related to the descendents of the Yuezhi, also kown as "Tocharians", who established thriving civilizations in Kucha and Turfan in East Turkistan in the second century CE. It is clear, however, that the Shakas were unrelated to the Shakya clan of central north India into which Shakyamuni Buddha was born.

The Shakas first conquered Sogdia from the Graeco-Bactrians and then, in 139 BCE, during the reign of King Menandros, took Bactria as well. There, the Shakas turned to Buddhism. By 100 BCE, the Tocharians conquored Sogdia and Bactria from the Shakas. Set­tling in these areas, they also assi­milated Bud­dhism. This was the start of the Kushan Dyna­sty, which eventually extended to Kashmir, northern Pakistan, and northwestern India.

The most famous Kushan king was Kanishka (ruled 78 - 102 CE), whose western capital was at Kapisha. He supported the Sarvas­tivada School of Hinayana. Its Vaibhashaka subdivision was especially pro­minent in Tocharis­tan. The Tocharian monk Ghoshaka was one of the com­pilers of the Vaibha­shaka commentaries on abhidharma (special topics of knowledge) ac­cepted at the Fourth Buddhist Coun­cil held by Kanishka. When Ghoshaka returned to Tocharistan after the council, he founded the Western Vaibhashika (Balhika) School. Nava Vihara, the main monastery at Balkh, soon became the center of higher Buddhist study for all of Central Asia, comparable to Nalanda Monastery in central northern India. It emphasized study primarily of the Vaibhashika abhidharma and admitted only monks who had already composed texts on the topic. Since it housed a tooth relic of the Buddha, it was also one of the main centers of pilgrimage along the Silk Route from China to India.

Balkh had been the birthplace of Zoroaster in about 600 BCE. It was the holy city of Zoroastrianism, the Iranian religion that grew from his teachings and which emphasized the veneration of fire. Kanishka followed the Graeco-Bactrian policy of religious tolerance. Thus, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism peacefully coexisted in Balkh, where they influenced each other’s development. Cave monasteries from this period, for example, had wall paintings of Buddhas with auras of flames and in­scrip­tions calling them “Buddha-Mazda.” This was an amal­gam of Buddha and Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of Zoroastrianism.

In 226 CE, the Persian Sassanid Empire overthrew Kushan rule in Afghanistan. Although strong sup­por­ters of Zoroastrianism, the Sassanids tolerated Buddhism and allowed the construction of more Buddhist monasteries. It was during their rule that the Lokot­taravada followers erected the two colossal Buddha statues at Bamiyan.

The only exception to Sassanid tolerance was during the second half of the third century, when the Zoroastrian high priest Kirder dominated the religious policy of the state. He ordered the destruction of several Buddhist monasteries in Afghanistan, since the amalgam of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism appeared to him as heresy. Buddhism quickly recovered, however, after his death.

The White Huns and Turki Shahis

At the beginning of the fifth century, the White Huns – known to the Greeks as the Heph­thalites and to the In­dians as the Turu­shkas – took most of the former Kushan territories from the Sassanids, including Afghanistan. At first, the White Huns followed their own religi­on, which resembled Zoroastrianism. Soon, however, they became strong sup­por­ters of Bud­dhism. The Han Chinese pilgrim Faxian (Fa-hsien) traveled through their territory between 399 and 414 CE and reported the flourishing of several Hinayana schools.

The Turki Shahis were a Turkic people descended from the Kushans. After the fall of the Kushan Dynasty to the Sassanids, they took over parts of the former empire that lay in northwestern and northern India. They ruled them until the founding of the Indian Gupta Dyna­sty in the early fourth century, and then fled to Nagarahara. They conquered portions of it from the White Huns and, by the mid-fifth century, extended their rule to the Kabul Valley and Kapisha. Like the Kushans and White Huns before them, the Turki Shahis supported Buddhism in Afghanistan.

In 515, the White Hun king Mihirakula, under the influence of jealous non-Buddhist factions in his court, suppressed Bud­dhism. He destroyed monas­teries and killed many monks throughout northwestern In­dia, Gandhara, and espe­cially in Kash­mir. The persecution was less severe in the portions of Nagarahara that he controlled. His son reversed this policy and built new monaster­ies in all these areas.

The Western Turks

Coming from northern West Turkistan, the Western Turks took over the western portion of the Central Asian Silk Route in 560. Slowly, they expanded into Bactria, driving the Turki Shahis further east in Nagarahara. Many Western Turk leaders adopted Buddhism from the local people and, in 590, they built a new Buddhist monastery in Kapisha. In 622, the Western Turk ruler Tongshihu Qaghan formally adopted Buddhism under the guidance of Prabhakaramitra, a visiting northern Indian monk.

The Han Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (Hsüan-tsang) visited the Western Turks in approximately 630 on his way to India. He reported that Buddhism was flourishing in the Bactrian portion of their empire, especially at Nava Vihara Monastery in Balkh. He cited the monastic university not only for its scholarship, but also for its beautiful Buddha statues, draped with silk robes and adorned with jewel ornaments, in accordance with local Zoroastrian custom. The monastery had close links at the time with Khotan, a strongly Buddhist kingdom in East Turkistan, and sent many monks there to teach. Xuanzang also described a monastery near Nava Vihara dedicated to advanced Hinayana meditation practice of vipashyana (Pali: vipassana) – the exceptional perception of impermanence and of a person’s lack of independent identity.

Xuanzang found Buddhism in a much worse condition in Nagarahara, under the Turki Shahis. As in the Punjabi side of Gandhara, the area seemed not to have fully recovered from the persecution by King Mihirakula more than a century earlier. Although Nagara Vihara, with its skull relic of the Buddha, was one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in the Buddhist world, he reported that its monks had become degenerate. They were charging pilgrims a gold coin each to view the relic and there were no centers of study in the entire region.

Moreover, although Mahayana had made advances into Afghanistan from Kashmir and Punjabi Gandhara during the fifth and sixth centuries, Xuanzang noted its presence only in Kapisha and in the Hindu Kush regions west of Nagarahara. Sarvasti­vada remained the predominant Buddhist tradition of Nagara­hara and northern Bactria.

The Umayyad Period and the Introduction of Islam

Thirty years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, the Arabs defeated the Persian Sassanids and founded the Umayyad Caliphate in 661. It ruled over Iran and much of the Middle East. In 663, they attacked Bactria, which the Turki Shahis had taken from the Western Turks by this time. The Umayyad forces captured the area around Balkh, including Nava Vihara Monastery, causing the Turki Shahis to retreat to the Kabul Valley.

The Arabs allowed followers of non-Muslim religions in the lands they conquered to keep their faiths if they submitted peacefully and paid a poll tax (Arabic: jizya). Although some Buddhists in Bactria and even an abbot of Nava Vihara converted to Islam, most Buddhists in the region accepted this dhimmi status as loyal non-Muslim protected subjects within an Islamic state. Nava Vihara remained open and functioning. The Han Chinese pilgrim Yijing (I-tsing) visited Nava Vihara in the 680s and reported it flourishing as a Sarvastivada center of study.

An Umayyad Arab author, al-Kermani, wrote a detailed account of Nava Vihara at the beginning of the eighth century, preserved in the tenth-century work Book of Lands (Arabic: Kitab al-Buldan) by al-Hamadhani. He described it in terms readily understandable to Muslims by drawing the analogy with the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest site of Islam. He explained that the main temple had a stone cube in the center, draped with cloth, and that devotees circumambulated it and made prostration, as is the case with the Kaaba. The stone cube referred to the platform on which a stupa stood, as was the custom in Bactrian temples. The cloth that draped it was in accordance with the Iranian custom for showing veneration, applied equally to Buddha statues as well as to stupas. Al-Kermani’s description indicates an open and respectful attitude by the Umayyad Arabs in trying to understand the non-Muslim religions, such as Buddhism, that they encountered in their newly conquered territories.

The Tibetan Alliance

In 680, Husayn had led an unsuccessful rebellion in Iraq against the Umayyads. This conflict had diverted the focus of the Arab’s attention away from Central Asia and had weakened their control there. Taking advantage of the situation, the Tibetans formed an alliance with the Turki Shahis in 705 and, together, they tried unsuccessfully to drive the Umayyad forces from Bactria. The Tibetans had learned of Buddhism from China and Nepal about sixty years earlier, although at this time they did not yet have any monasteries. In 708, the Turki Shahi prince Nazaktar Khan succeeded in expelling the Umayyads and established a fanatic Buddhist rule in Bactria. He even beheaded the former abbot of Nava Vihara who had converted to Islam.

In 715, the Arab general Qutaiba retook Bactria from the Turki Shahis and their Tibetan allies. He inflicted heavy damage on Nava Vihara as punishment for the previous insurrection. Many monks fled eastward to Khotan and Kashmir, stimulating the growth of Buddhism especially in the latter. Tibet now switched sides and, for political expediency, allied itself with the Umayyad forces they had just been fighting.

Nava Vihara quickly recovered and soon was functioning as before, indicating that the Muslims’ damaging of Buddhist monasteries in Bactria was not a religiously motivated act. Had it been, they would not have allowed their rebuilding. The Umayyads were merely repeating the policy toward Buddhism that they had followed earlier that century when they conquered the Sindh regions of present-day southern Pakistan. They destroyed only select monasteries they suspected of harboring opposition to their takeover, but then allowed them to rebuild and the others to prosper. Their main agenda was economic exploitation and thus they exacted a poll-tax on the Buddhists and a pilgrim tax on visitors to holy shrines.

Despite the general trend of religious tolerance by previous Umayyad caliphs, Umar II (ruled 717 - 724) decreed that all Umayyad allies must adopt Islam. Their acceptance, however, must be voluntary, based on learning its principles. To appease their allies, the Tibetans sent an envoy to the Umayyad court in 717 to invite a Muslim teacher. The Caliph sent al-Hanafi. The fact that this teacher had no recorded success in gaining converts in Tibet demonstrates that the Umayyads were not insistent in their attempt to spread their religion. Furthermore, the cool reception al-Hanafi received was due primarily to the xenophobic atmosphere spread by the opposition faction at the Tibetan court.

During the subsequent decades, political and military alliances changed frequently as the Arabs, Chinese, Tibetans, Turki Shahis, and various other Turkic tribes fought over control of Central Asia. The Turki Shahis retook Kapisha from the Umayyads and, in 739, the Tibetans reestablished their alliance with them by a visit of the Tibetan emperor to Kabul to celebrate a marriage alliance between the Turki Shahis and Khotan. The Umayyads continued to rule northern Bactria.

The Early Abbasid Period

In 750, an Arab faction overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate and founded the Abbasid Dynasty. They maintained control over northern Bactria. Not only did the Abbasids continue the policy of granting dhimmi status to the Buddhists there, they took great interest in foreign culture, particularly that of India. In 762, Caliph al-Mansur (ruled 754 – 775) engaged Indian architects and engineers to design the new Abbasid capital, Baghdad. He took its name from the Sanskrit Bhaga-dada, meaning “Gift of God.” The Caliph also built a House of Knowledge (Arabic: Bayt al-Hikmat), with a translation bureau. He invited scholars from various cultures and religions to translate texts into Arabic, particularly concerning logic and scientific topics. The early Abbasid caliphs were patrons of the Mu’tazila School of Islam that sought to explain the principles of the Quran from the viewpoint of reason. The main focus was on ancient Greek learning, but attention was also paid to Sanskrit traditions. Not only scientific texts were translated, however, at the House of Knowledge. Buddhist scholars translated into Arabic a few Mahayana and Hinayana sutras dealing with devotional and ethical themes.

The next caliph, al-Mahdi (ruled 775 – 785), ordered the Abbasid forces in Sindh to attack Surashtra to the southeast. In face of a rival claimant in Arabia who also had been declared Mahdi, the Islamic messiah, the invasion was part of the Caliph’s campaign to establish his prestige and supremacy as the leader of the Islamic world. The Abbasid army destroyed the Buddhist monasteries and Jain temples at Valabhi. As was the case with the Umayyad conquest of Sindh, however, they seemed to destroy only the centers suspected of harboring opposition to their rule. Even under Caliph al-Mahdi, the Abbasids left the Buddhist monasteries in the rest of their empire alone, preferring to exploit them as sources of revenue. Furthermore, al-Mahdi continued to expand the translation activities of the House of Knowledge in Baghdad. He was not intent on destroying Indian culture, but on learning from it.

Yahya ibn Barmak, the Muslim grandson of one of the Buddhist administrative heads (Skt.: pramukha, Arabic: barmak) of Nava Vihara Monastery, was the minister of the next Abbasid caliph, al-Rashid (ruled 786 - 808). Under his influence, the Caliph invited to Baghdad many more scholars and masters from India, especially Buddhists. A catalogue of both Muslim and non-Muslim texts prepared at this time, Kitab al-Fihrist, included a list of Buddhist works. Among them was an Arabic version of the account of Buddha’s previous lives, Book of Buddha (Arabic: Kitab al-Budd).

Islam was gaining ground in Bactria at this time among the landowners and upper, educated urban classes by the appeal of its high level of culture and learning. To study Buddhism, one needed to enter a monastery. Nava Vihara, though still functioning during this period, was limited in its capacity and required extensive training before one could enter. Islamic high culture and study, on the other hand, was more readily accessible. Buddhism remained strong primarily among the poorer peasant classes in the countryside, mostly in the form of devotional practice at religious shrines.

Hinduism was also present throughout the region. Visiting in 753, the Han Chinese pilgrim Wukung (Wu-k’ung) reported both Hindu and Buddhist temples especially in the Kabul Valley. As Buddhism declined among the merchant classes, Hinduism also grew stronger.

Rebellions against the Abbasids

The early Abbasids were plagued by rebellions. Caliph al-Rashid died in 808 on his way to put down one in Samarkand, the capital of Sogdia. Before his death, he divided his empire between his two sons. Al-Mamun, who had accompanied his father on the campaign in Sogdia, received the eastern half, including Bactria. Al-Amin, the more powerful of the two, received the more prestigious western half, including Baghdad and Mecca.

To gain popular support to take over al-Amin’s half of the Abbasid Empire, al-Mamun distributed land and wealth in Sogdia. He then attacked his brother. During the internecine war that ensued, the Turki Shahis of Kabul, together with their Tibetan allies, joined forces with the anti-Abbasid rebels in Sogdia and Bactria to take advantage of the situation and try to overthrow the Abbasid rule. Al-Mamun’s minister and general, al-Fadl, encouraged his ruler to declare a jihad, a holy war against this alliance in order to enhance even further the Caliph’s prestige. Only rulers that uphold the pure faith may declare a jihad to defend against those who commit aggression against Islam.

After vanquishing his brother, al-Mamun declared this jihad. In 815, he defeated the Turki Shahi ruler, known as the Kabul Shah, and forced him to convert to Islam. What most offended Muslim beliefs was idol-worship. The pagan Arabian cults that preceded Muhammad worshipped idols and kept statues of them in Mecca at the Kaaba shrine. In establishing Islam, the Prophet destroyed them all. Therefore, as a token of submission, al-Mamun made the Shah send a golden Buddha statue to Mecca. Undoubtedly for propaganda purposes to secure his legitimacy, al-Mamun kept the statue on public display at the Kaaba for two years, with the notice that Allah had led the King of Tibet to Islam. The Arabs were confusing the King of Tibet with his vassal, the Turki Shah of Kabul. ­In 817, the Abbasids melted down the Buddha statue to mint gold coins.

After their success against the Turki Shahis, the Abbasids attacked the Tibe­tan-controlled region of Gilgit in present-day northern Pakistan and, within a short time, annexed it as well. They sent a captured Tibetan commander in humiliation back to Baghdad.

The Taharid, Saffarad, and Hindu Shahi Dynasties

At about this time, local military leaders in various parts of the Abbasid Empire began to establish autonomous Islamic states with only nominal allegiance to the caliph in Baghdad. The first region to declare its autonomy was northern Bactria, where General Tahir founded the Tahirid Dynasty in 819.

As the Abbasids withdrew from Kabul and Gilgit, turning their attention to these more pressing matters, the Tibetans and Turki Shahis regained their former holdings. Despite the forced conversions of the leaders of these lands, the Abbasids had not persecuted Buddhism there. In fact, the Arabs maintained trade with the Tibetans throughout this period and even established cultural links. Fazl Ullah, for example, translated into Tibetan, at this time, the Persian classics Gulistan and Bostan.

The next Islamic general to declare autonomy under the Abbasids was al-Saffar. In 861, his successor established the Saffarid Dynasty in southeastern Iran. After gaining control of the rest of Iran, the Saffarids invaded the Kabul Valley in 870. In the face of imminent defeat, the last of the Buddhist Turki Shahi rulers was overthrown by his brahman minister, Kallar. Abandoning Kabul and Nagarahara to the Saffarids, Kallar established the Hindu Shahi Dynasty in Punjabi Gandhara.

The Saffarids were especially vindictive conquerors. They plundered the Buddhist monasteries of the Kabul Valley and Bamiyan, and sent statues of “Buddha-idols” from them as war trophies to the caliph. This harsh military occupation was the first serious blow against Buddhism in the Kabul area. The previous defeat and conversion to Islam of the Kabul Shah in 815 had had only minor repercussions on the general state of Buddhism in the region.

The Saffarids continued their campaign of conquest and destruction northward, capturing Bactria from the Tahirids in 873. In 879, however, the Hindu Shahis retook Kabul and Nagarahara. They continued their policy of patronizing both Hinduism and Buddhism among their people, and the Buddhist monasteries of Kabul soon regained their past richness.

The Samanad, Ghaznavad, and Seljuk Dynasties

Ismail bin Ahmad, the Persian governor of Sogdia, declared autonomy next and founded the Samanid Dynasty in 892. He conquered Bactria from the Saffarids in 903. The Samanids promoted a return to traditional Iranian culture, but remained tolerant of Buddhism. During the reign of Nasr II (ruled 913 - 942), for example, carved Buddha images were still made and sold in the Samanid capital, Bukhara. They were not forbidden as “Buddha-idols.”

The Samanids enslaved the Turkic tribesmen in their realm and conscripted them in their armies. If the soldiers converted to Islam, they gave them nominal freedom. The Samanids, however, had difficulty maintaining control over these men. In 962, Alptigin, one such Turkic military chief who had adopted Islam, seized Ghazna (modern-day Ghazni), south of Kabul. There, in 976, his successor, Sebuktegin (ruled 976 - 997), founded the Ghaznavid Empire as a vassal of the Abbasids. Soon, he conquered the Kabul Valley from the Hindu Shahis, driving them back to Gandhara.

Buddhism had flourished in the Kabul Valley under Hindu Shahi rule. Asadi Tusi, in his Garshasp Name written in 1048, described the opulence of its main monastery, Subahar (Su Vihara), when the Ghaznavids overran Kabul. It does not appear as though the Ghaznavids destroyed it.

In 999, the next Ghaznavid ruler, Mahmud of Ghazni (ruled 998 – 1030) overthrew the Samanids, with the help of Turkic slave soldiers in the Samanid service. The Ghaznavid Empire now included Bactria and southern Sogdia. Mahmud Ghazni also conquered most of Iran. He continued the Samanid policy of promoting Persian culture and tolerating non-Muslim religions. Al-Biruni, a Persian scholar and writer in service to the Ghaznavid court, reported that, at the turn of the millennium, the Buddhist monasteries in Bactria, including Nava Vihara, were still functioning.

Mahmud of Ghazni was intolerant, however, of Islamic sects other than the orthodox Sunni one that he supported. His attacks on Multan in northern Sindh in 1005 and again in 1010 were campaigns against the state-supported Ismaili sect of Shia Islam, which the Samanids had also favored. The Ismaili Fatimid Dynasty (910 – 1171), centered in Egypt from 969, was the principal rival of the Sunni Abbasids for supremacy of the Islamic world. Mahmud was also intent on finishing the overthrow of the Hindu Shahis that his father had begun. Thus, he attacked and drove out the Hindu Shahis from Gandhara, and then proceeded from Gandhara to take Multan.

Over the next years, Mahmud expanded his empire by conquering the regions eastward as far as Agra in northern India. His looting and destruction of wealthy Hindu temples and Buddhist monasteries on the way were part of his invasion tactic. As in most wars, the invading forces often cause as much destruction as possible in order to convince the local population to surrender, especially if they offer resistance. During his campaigns in the Indian subcontinent, Mahmud Ghazni left the Buddhist monasteries under his rule in Kabul and Bactria alone.

In 1040, the Seljuk Turk vassals of the Ghaznavids in Sogdia rebelled and established the Seljuk Dynasty. Soon, they wrested Bactria and most of Iran from the Ghaznavids, who withdrew to the Kabul Valley. Eventually, the Seljuk Empire extended to Baghdad, Turkey, and Palestine. The Seljuks were the infamous “infidels” against whom Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade in 1096.

The Seljuks were pragmatic in their rule. They established Islamic centers of study (madrasah) in Baghdad and Central Asia to educate a civil bureaucracy to administer the various portions of their empire. They tolerated the presence of non-Islamic religions in their realm, such as Buddhism. Thus, al-Shahrastani (1076 - 1153) published in Baghdad his Kitab al-Milal wa Nihal – a text in Arabic on non-Muslim religions and sects. It contained a simple explanation of the Buddhist tenets and repeated al-Biruni’s firsthand account of a century earlier that Indians accepted Buddha as a prophet.

The many Buddhist references in the Persian literature of the period also provide evidence of this Islamic-Buddhist cultural contact. Persian poetry, for example, often used the simile for palaces that they were “as beautiful as a Nowbahar (Nava Vihara).” Further, at Nava Vihara and Bamiyan, Buddha images, particularly of Maitreya, the future Buddha, had moon discs behind their heads. This led to the poetic depiction of pure beauty as someone having “the moon-shaped face of a Buddha.” Thus, eleventh-century Persian poems, such as Varqe and Golshah by Ayyuqi, use the word bot with a positive connotation for “Buddha,” not with its second, derogatory meaning as “ idol.” It implies the ideal of asexual beauty in both men and women. Such references indicate that either Buddhist monasteries and images were present in these Iranian cultural areas at least through the early Mongol period in the thirteenth century or, at minimum, that a strong Buddhist legacy remained for centuries among the Buddhist converts there to Islam.

The Qaraqitan and Ghurad Dynasties

In 1141, the Qaraqitans, a Mongol-speaking people ruling East Turkistan and northern West Turkistan, defeated the Seljuqs at Samarkand. Their ruler, Yelu Dashi, annexed Sogdia and Bactria into his empire. The Ghaznavids still controlled the area from the Kabul Valley eastward. The Qaraqitans followed a blend of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and shamanism. Yelu Dashi, however, was extremely tolerant and protected all religions in his realm, including Islam.

In 1148, Ala-ud-Din of the nomadic Guzz Turks from the mountains of central Afghanistan conquered Bactria from the Qaraqitans and established the Ghurid Dynasty. In 1161, he went on to take Ghazna and Kabul from the Ghaznavids. He appointed his brother, Muhammad Ghuri, governor of Ghazna in 1173 and encouraged him to raid the Indian subcontinent.

Like Mahmud Ghazni before him, Muhammad Ghuri first took, in 1178, the Ismaili Multan kingdom in northern Sindh, which had regained independence from Ghaznavid rule. He then proceeded to conquer the entire Punjab region of Pakistan and north India and, after that, the Gangetic Plain, as far as present-day Bihar and West Bengal. During his campaign, he looted and destroyed many large Buddhist monasteries, including Vikramashila and Odantapuri in 1200. The local Sena king had turned them into military garrisons in an attempt to thwart the invasion.

The Ghurid leaders might have incited their troops to fervor in battle with religious indoctrination, much as any nation does with political or patriotic propaganda. Their main objective, however, as that of most conquerors, was to gain territory, wealth, and power. Thus, the Ghurids destroyed only the monasteries that lay in the direct line of their invasion. Nalanda Monastery and Bodh Gaya, for example, were situated off the main route. Thus, when the Tibetan translator Chag Lotsawa visited them in 1235, he found them damaged and looted, but still functioning with a small number of monks. Jagaddala Monastery in northern Bengal was untouched and flourishing.

Further, the Ghurids did not seek to conquer Kashmir and convert the Buddhists there to Islam. Kashmir was impoverished at the time, and the monasteries had little or no wealth to plunder. Moreover, since the Ghurids did not pay their generals or governors, or provide them supplies, they expected them to support themselves and their troops from local gains. If the governors forcefully converted everyone under their jurisdiction to Islam, they could not exploit large portions of the population for additional taxes. Thus, as in Afghanistan, the Ghurids continued the traditional custom of granting dhimmi status to non-Muslims in India and exacting the jizya poll tax.

The Mongol Period

In 1215, Chinggis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, conquered Afghanistan from the Ghurids. As was his policy elsewhere, Chinggis destroyed those who opposed his takeover and devastated their lands. It is unclear how the vestiges of Buddhism still left in Afghanistan fared at this time. Chinggis was tolerant of all religions, so long as its leaders prayed for his long life and military success. In 1219, for example, he summoned to Afghanistan a renowned Taoist master from China to perform ceremonies for his long life and to prepare for him the elixir of immortality.

After Chinggis’ death in 1227 and the division of his empire among his heirs, his son Chagatai inherited the rule of Sogdia and Afghanistan and established the Chagatai Khaganate. In 1258, Hulegu, a grandson of Chinggis, conquered Iran and overthrew the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. He established the Il Khanate and soon invited to his court in northwestern Iran Buddhist monks from Tibet, Kashmir, and Ladakh. The Il Khanate was more powerful than the Chagatai Khaganate and, at first, it dominated its cousins there. Since the Buddhist monks had to pass through Afghanistan on their way to Iran, they undoubtedly received official support on their way.

According to some scholars, the Tibetan monks who came to Iran were most likely from the Drigung Kagyu School and Hulegu’s reason for inviting them may have been political. In 1260, his cousin Khubilai Khan, the Mongol ruler of northern China, declared himself Grand Khan of all the Mongols. Khubilai supported the Sakya Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and gave its leaders nominal suzerainty over Tibet. Prior to this, the Drigung Kagyu leaders had been in political ascendance in Tibet. Khubilai’s main rival was another cousin, Khaidu, who ruled East Turkistan and supported the Drigung Kagyu line. Hulegu may have been wishing to align himself with Khaidu in this power struggle.

Some speculate that the reason for Khubilai and Khaidu’s turning to Tibetan Buddhism was to gain the supernatural backing of Mahakala, the Buddhist protector practiced by both the Sakya and Kagyu traditions. Mahakala had been the protector of the Tanguts, who had ruled the territory between Tibet and Mongolia. After all, their grandfather, Chinggis Khan, had been killed in battle by the Tanguts, who must have received supernatural help. It is unlikely that the Mongol leaders, including Hulegu, chose Tibetan Buddhism because of its deep philosophical teachings.

After the death of Hulegu in 1266, the Chagatai Khaganate became more indepen­dent of the Il Khans and formed a direct alliance with Khaidu in his struggle against Khubilai Khan. Meanwhile, the line of Hulegu’s successors alternated in their support of Tibetan Buddhism and Islam, apparently also for political expediency. Hulegu’s son Abagha continued his father’s support of Tibetan Buddhism. Abagha’s brother Takudar, however, who succeeded him in 1282, converted to Islam to help gain local support when he invaded and conquered Egypt. Abagha’s son Arghun defeated his uncle and became Il Khan in 1284. He made Buddhism the state religion of Iran and founded several monasteries there. When Arghun died in 1291, his brother Gaihatu became the Il Khan. Tibetan monks had given Gaihatu the Tibetan name Rinchen Dorje, but he was a degenerate drunkard and hardly a credit to the Buddhist faith. He introduced paper money to Iran from China, which caused economic disaster.

Gaihatu died in 1295, one year after the death of Khubilai Khan. Arghun’s son Ghazan succeeded to the throne. He reinstated Islam as the official religion of the Il Khanate and des­troyed the new Buddhist monasteries there. Some scholars assert that Ghazan Khan’s reversal of his father’s religious policy was to distance himself from his uncle’s reforms and beliefs, and to assert his independence from Mongol China.

Despite ordering the destruction of Buddhist monasteries, it seems that the Ghazan Khan did not wish to destroy everything associated with Buddhism. For example, he commissioned Rashid-al-Din to write A History of the World (Arabic: Jami’ al-Tawarikh), with versions both in Persian and Arabic. In its section on the history of the cultures of the people conquered by the Mongols, Rashid-al-Din included The Life and Teachings of Buddha. To assist the historian in his research, Ghazan Khan invited to his court Bakshi Kamalashri, a Buddhist monk from Kashmir. Like the earlier work by al-Kermani, Rashid’s work presented Buddhism in terms that Muslims could easily understand, such as calling Buddha a Prophet, the deva gods as angels, and Mara as the Devil.

Rashid-al-Din reported that in his day, eleven Buddhist texts in Arabic translation were circulating in Iran. These included Mahayana texts such as The Sutra on the Array of the Pure Land of Bliss (Skt. Sukhavativyuha Sutra, concerning Amitabha’s Pure Land), The Sutra on the Array Like a Woven Basket (Skt. Karandavyuha Sutra, concerning Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of compassion) and An Exposition on Maitreya (Skt. Maitreyavyakarana, concerning Maitreya, the future Buddha and embodiment of love). These texts were undoubtedly among those translated under the patronage of the Abbasid caliphs at the House of Knowledge in Baghdad starting in the eighth century.

Rashid-al-Din finished his history in 1305, during the reign of Ghazan’s successor Oljaitu. It seems that Buddhist monks were still present in Iran, however, at least until Oljaitu’s death in 1316, since monks unsuccessfully tried to win the Mongol ruler back to Buddhism. Thus, at least up until then, Buddhist monks still passed back and forth through Afghanistan and thus might still have been welcomed at the Chagatai court.

In 1321, the Chagatai Empire split into two. The Western Chagatai Khaganate included Sogdia and Af­ghanistan. From the start, its khans converted to Islam. The Il Khanate in Iran fragmented and fell apart in 1336. After this, there is no indication of the continuing presence of Buddhism in Afghanistan. It had lasted there nearly nineteen hundred years. Nevertheless, knowledge of Buddhism did not die out. Tughlakh Timur (Tamerlaine) conquered the Western Chagatai Khaganate in 1364 and the small successor states of the Il Khanate in 1385. Tughlakh Timur’s son and successor, Shah Rukh, commissioned the historian, Hafiz-i Abru, to write in Persian A Collection of Histories (Arabic: Majma’ al-Tawarikh). Completed in 1425 in Shah Rukh’s capital, Herat, Afghanistan, the history contained an account of Buddhism modeled after Rashid-al-Din’s work a century earlier.

BUDDHISM IN AFGHANISTAN




Buddhism in Afghanistan


The Buddhist stupas, monasteries and the massive statues carved out of a sand rock at Bamiyan in the heart of Afghanistan were the wonder of tourists, scholars and connoisseurs of art and culture and scholars are no more, devastated by the Islamic Fundamentalists' Taliban terrorist regime of Afghanistan, notwithstanding the international plea against this iconoclasm, unleashed on the cultural heritage of the ancestors of the present day people of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, situated in the midpoint of Asia and the cross-roads between the north and south, cast and west and in the famous "Chinese Silk Route" due to its geographical position became in bygone times the rendezvous of different peoples and various civilisations, namely Aryan, (Bactrian or Rivedic), Achaemenian, Greek, Kushan and Buddhist. The cumulative effect of this cross-cultural fertilisation found its expression in different schools of art, embodying techniques borrowed from different lands and climes, but modified and remoulded according to the ethos of the Afghan people. The Greek culture found its paths into Bactrian art in the fourth century BC, when the country became a part of the vast Macedonian Empire and came to be totally influenced by the Greek culture and philosophy.

In mid-third century BC during the reign of Emperor Asoka of India, Buddhism found its way into Afghanistan. It was in Afghanistan that Greek realism and Surrealism intermingled with Indian mysticism, giving birth to a new school of art now accepted by the world as the Gandhara School of art, which had its epicentre at Hadda, six miles south of modern Jalaalabada (Nangahara of Buddhist era) in Afghanistan. In the second century AD with the ascension of Kanishka to the throne, Afghanistan became a great seat of Buddhist learning and the arts. It was from this pivotal centre that Buddhism reached Sinkiang, China and Mongolia. Kanishka, being intellectually convinced of the realism is and pragmatism of Buddhism became a Buddhist and later became a very liberal, generous and steadfast promoter of Buddhism and Buddhist art and culture.

During his long and epoch-making rulership (120 to 160 AD), Buddhism and Buddhist art and culture became the life-blood of his far-flung empire. Consequently, the famous Gandhara or Graeco- Buddhist school of sculpture progressed by leaps and bounds. This new school on Afghan spill defied the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, and his images became the cynosures of worship and veneration to the exclusion of primitive modes of worship.

In Afghanistan, Buddhism compromised with many elements of foreign culture and gave them a Buddhist outlook. The old schools of art never "idolized" Buddha but was represented by an empty seat, a footprint, an umbrella, riderless horse or even a vacant throne. According to the new techniques of art that bred on Afghan soil, Buddha came to be portrayed in human form, with aesthetically rich serenity and compassion on the face and the entire body, inspiring the worshipper to take the path of the Four Sublime States of Buddhism: Loving-kindness (Metta), Compassion (Karuna), Blissful Joy (Mudita) and Equanimity (Upekkha).

Kanishka had two capitals: Capsie (modern Bagrain, 35 miles north of Kabul), has summer residence, and Purushapura (modern Peshawar), his winter palace. He being the indefatigable promoter of Buddhism built stupas and monasteries very specially in these two locations, and elsewhere in his vast empire. In Peshawar, Kanishka built a beautiful Sanghararna (monastery like the Mahavihara of Anuradhapura) with a lofty stupa of about 150 feet in height, a most breath-taking construction of the time. Capisa was dotted with viharas and statues. One of these, Shalokia, was built by his Chinese princess who was taken as a hostage and kept in Kanishka's court. This monastery was in a state of preservation.

The famous Chinese pilgrim monk, Xuan Zang, visited Afghanistan in the seventh century AD, as attested by the pilgrim's travel notes. He describes that great many monasteries were ubiquitous in Bamiyan, and the smaller statue at Bamiyan (35 metres in height) and the stupa at its feet (no longer in existence) which were to become the cynosure of the Buddhist past of Afghanistan. Bamiyan valley in those far-off days was a great seat of culture, comparable to Nalanda, Ajantha, Ellora, Odanpura, Wikremashila of India and Mahavihara, Abhayagiri Vihara Jetawana Vihara of Anruadhapura of Sri Lanka and also to Cittalapabbata of Mahagarna of Rohana, in the southern province of Sri Lanka.

Bamiyan, lying on the trade route linking India with Balkh, through which trade in spices, pearls, ivory and cotton raw material were traded and it was also on the famous Chinese Silk Route, that linked Mid-west Asia with the Chinese Empire and other East Asian empires. History has it that the pearls, gems, cotton ivory and spices were from Sri Lanka being transited through South Indian ports from the great port of Sri Lanka, Mahatittha (Mannar) on the west coast of Sri Lanka. now a buried port city. This trade rendezvous of Bamiyan continued until the invasion of Genghis Khan in the early part of the thirteenth century and as very correctly said by Jawaharlal Nehru in his book, Discovery of India "The dagger of Islamic invasion went through the heart of India" and this was fate of Afghanistan too.

Bamiyan is only 145 miles north of Kabul and a motor-road, now occupied by the Taliban demons, leads to it through the picturesque valleys of Kohdanan and Ghoraband. At a distance of about 110 miles from Kabul there is a deep ascent, named Shibar Pass, which is snow-capped in winter. About 19 miles ahead of this Pass, the road branches off, one to the right leads to Mazar-Sharif and Katghan, while the other to the left leads to Bamiyan. The road to Bamiyan runs parallel to the river of Barmiyan and girdles the range of hills. After six miles and old mud fort

on a steep rock is called the city of Zahak-I*Msran.

From thenceforth, the valley widens and the city of caves, where once reclusive Buddhist monks would have lived in meditation, appears. This is the historic city of Bamiyan, lying at the foot of a reddish hills, some 9,000 feet above mean sea level, which also forms the dividing line between the gigantic mountain ranges - the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba. The valley of Bamiyan, sunk deep in the pleateau. is between 8,000 and 9,000 ft above sea mean sea level To the south is the snowcapped range of Kh-i-Baba range running to 16,000 to 17,000 feet. The passes the hilly ranges, valleys and the girdling river give Bamiyan the ideal backdrop to a Buddhist centre of learning and orectic and it was undoubtedly a glorious centre of Buddhism, that enveloped the entire Afghanistan, until Islamic invasions took over Afghanistan.

Little is left of the ancient city, being victimised by barbaric fundamentalists and still the capital exists, known now as Shahr-iGhulghols (City of Uproars). Gigantic statues of Buddha (53 and 35 metres in height) with smaller ones in different directions are carved out of the sedimentary rock on the sides of the Bamiyan gorge. These statues once coated with reinforcements to withstands the rigours of climatic changes in this hilly terrain, were a source of inspiration and religious fervour for the sore-footed weary pilgrim who, trotted over the land with just a sack tied to a walking stick and held on the shoulder, for there were no vehicles to travel but just a donkey to be their pack animal and cornpanion through the desolate human unfriendly terrain and weather gods.

Xuan Zang, who saw these stupendous monasteries and statues and other Buddhist artifacts in 630 AD said very laconically and implicitly, "The Golden Line Sparks on Every Side". The two masdove statues (175 ft and 125 ft in height) were begun in the second century AD under the patronage of Emperor Kanishka and the several others. probably in the fourth or fifth centuries AD. The niches of the Buddha statues carry, now marred, beautiful frescoes, giving the archaeologist a pointer as to the path arts of India found its way to Afghanistan and percolated it with Greek, Roman and Sassanian elements prior to it being it conveyed to China and Japan through Sinkiang.

The early Moslem writers (prior to the thirteenth century AD) speak in glorious terms. One writer, Yaquibi, describes it in detail and mention the frescoes that adorned the niches of the caves where statues of the Buddha were depoited. He says, the inhabitants called the big statue the "Red Buddha" and the smaller one the "Grey Buddha".

Early in the thirteenth century, the city of Barmiyan and ill its inhabitants were swept off the face of the valley by Genghis Khan. the Mongol. The legend has it that his grandson, Mutugen, son of Jaghati, was killed in action during the siege of Bamiyan. When the town surrendered after a long and arduous battle. Genghis, the revengeful fiend of fundamentalism in its early dressing ordered that no living being, man or animal, was to be spared. The ruined town was named Mao - Baligh (The Bad Town). How true are the words of the savant Jawaharlal Nehru, today it is not the dagger but gun powder and mortars that destroy the Buddhist cultural heritage of their own ancestors by the barbaric Taliban. It is time that the all governments of the world take cognisance of this "Cultural Cleansing" and action similar to those in Kosovo "Serbia Ethnic Cleansing" be taken against the Taliban, as the freedom of religion and cultural heritage of the human race are in jeopardy and other similar organisations would take a leaf off the book of Taliban demons.

Afghanistan

VII. History

Excavation of prehistoric sites suggests that early humans lived in northern Afghanistan at least 50,000 years ago and that farming communities in Afghanistan were among the earliest in the world. After 2000 bc successive waves of people from Central Asia moved into the area. Since many of these settlers were Aryans (speakers of the parent language of the Indo-European languages), a people who also migrated to Persia (now Iran) and India in prehistoric times, the area was called Aryana, or Land of the Aryans.

By the middle of the 6th century bc the Persian Empire of the Achaemenid dynasty controlled the region of Aryana. About 330 bc, Alexander the Great defeated the last Achaemenid ruler and made his way to the eastern limits of Aryana and beyond. After his death in 323 bc several kingdoms fought for control of his Asian empire. These kingdoms included Seleucids, Bactria, and the Indian Mauryan Empire.

A. Buddhist Period

About the 1st century ad the Kushans, a central Asian people, won control of Aryana. Buddhism was the dominant religion from the 3rd century to the 8th century ad. Ruins of many monasteries and stupas, or reliquary mounds (structures where sacred relics are kept or displayed), from that period still remain. They line what was once a great Buddhist pilgrimage road from India to Balkh, in northern Afghanistan, and on into Central Asia.

Kushan power was destroyed at the end of the 4th century ad by a Turkic people of central Asian origin called the White Huns or Ephthalites. After the Ephthalites, the area was divided among several kingdoms, some Buddhist, some Hindu.

B. Islamic Period

In the 7th century ad Arab armies carried the new religion of Islam to Afghanistan. The western provinces of Herāt and Sistan came under Arab rule, but the people of these provinces revolted and returned to their old beliefs as soon as the Arab armies passed. In the 10th century Muslim rulers called Samanids, from Bukhara in what is now Uzbekistan, extended their influence into the Afghan area. A Samanid established a dynasty in Ghaznī called the Ghaznavids. The greatest Ghaznavid king, Mahmud, who ruled from 998 to 1030, established Islam throughout the area of Afghanistan. He led many military expeditions into India. Ghaznī became a center of literature and the arts.

The Ghaznavid state grew weaker under Mahmud’s descendants and gave way in the middle of the 12th century to the Ghurid kingdom, which arose in Ghur, in the west central region of present-day Afghanistan. The Ghurids in turn were routed early in the 13th century by the Khwarizm Shahs, another central Asian dynasty. They were swept away in about 1220 by the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, who devastated the land.

Near the end of the 14th century the central Asian military leader Tamerlane (Timur Lang) conquered the region of Afghanistan and moved on into India. His sons and grandsons, the Timurids, could not hold Tamerlane’s empire together. However, they ruled most of present-day Afghanistan from Herāt.

The period from the Ghurid through the Timurid dynasty produced fine Islamic architectural monuments. Many of these mosques, shrines, and minarets still stand in Herāt, Qal‘eh-ye Bost, Ghaznī, and Mazār-e Sharīf. An important school of miniature painting flourished at Herāt in the 15th century.

A descendant of Tamerlane on his father’s side and Genghis Khan on his mother’s side, Babur (Zahiruddin Muhammad) took Kābul in October 1504 and then moved on to India, where he established the Mughal Empire.

Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, Afghanistan was fought over by the rulers of the Mughal Empire, centered in India, and those of the Safavid dynasty, in Persia. Usually the Mughals held Kābul and the Persians held Herāt, with Kandahār frequently changing hands. The Pashtun tribes increased their power, but they failed to win independence.

C. An Afghan Empire

In the 18th century, Nadir Shah, the king of Persia, employed the Abdali tribe of Pashtuns in his wars in India. Ahmad Shah, an Abdali chief who had gained a high post in Nadir Shah’s army, established himself in Kandahār after Nadir Shah’s assassination in 1747. An assembly of tribal chiefs proclaimed him shah, and the Afghans extended their rule as far east as Kashmīr and Delhi, north to the Amu Darya, and west into northern Persia.

Ahmad retired from the throne in 1772 and died in Kandahār, whereupon his son Timur Shah assumed control. The Afghan empire survived largely intact through the next 20 years. He established his capital in Kābul to draw power away from his rivals in Kandahār, as well as to be closer to his richest province, the Punjab of India. Following Timur’s death in 1793, palace rivalries and internal conflicts led to the disintegration of the empire. Two sons of Timur, Shah Shuja and Shah Mahmud, fought over the remnants of the Afghan empire, with Shuja finally going into exile in India and Mahmud withdrawing to Herāt, as a number of other small principalities emerged throughout Afghanistan.

Dost Muhammad Khan emerged as the new ruler, or emir, in Kābul by 1826. Among the most pressing problems he faced was repelling the westward encroachment of the Sikhs, who gained control of the Punjab and the region up to the Khyber Pass, including the important trading post of Peshāwar. In 1837 Dost Muhammad’s forces defeated the Sikhs at Jamrūd, but failed to recover Peshāwar. This conflict and the arrival of a new Russian envoy in Kābul made the British, who were allies of the Sikhs, extremely nervous about the security of the western frontier of their growing empire in India. These events played out during the so-called Great Game between the Russian “bear” and the British “lion,” with both empires vying for regional dominance and Afghanistan becoming caught between them. In 1838 Lord Auckland, the British governor-general of India, ordered military intervention in Afghanistan to protect British interests, thereby setting off the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842). With British and Sikh manipulation and support, Shah Shuja returned to Afghanistan to overthrow Dost Muhammad, as a British garrison was established in Kābul and elsewhere south of the Hindu Kush mountains.

A revolt by Dost Muhammad’s son Muhammad Akbar Khan led to the forced withdrawal of the British garrison from Kābul in the winter of 1842. Ambushed during the retreat, nearly all of the some 4,500 British troops and their 12,000 camp followers were killed. Dost Muhammad was able to return to Kābul, from where he spent the next 20 years reunifying parts of Afghanistan until his death in 1863.

Dost Muhammad designated his third son, Sher Ali, as his successor, but civil war erupted as rivals to Sher Ali vied for control. Sher Ali defeated his rivals, notably his brother Afzul Khan, by 1868. At the same time he tried to maintain good relations with the British Raj (British-ruled India). However, the Russian conquests in Central Asia had brought that empire to the Amu Darya river on the northern border of Afghanistan by 1847. The negotiations of a Russian envoy in Kābul renewed the unease of the British, who consequently invaded Afghanistan, instigating the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880). Sher Ali was deposed in 1879, but the British, realizing the difficulties of ruling from within Afghanistan, in 1880 invited a nephew of Sher Ali, Abdur Rahman Khan (Afzul Khan’s son), to rule at their behest. However, the British limited his power beyond the borders of Afghanistan by securing control of Afghan foreign relations.

Known as the Iron Emir, Abdur Rahman recognized the threat from the expansionistic Russians and the defensive British. As a result he allowed the foreign delineation of his borders to encompass a smaller territory than he actually considered to be Afghanistan. The emergence of the present-day configuration of the country, with its narrow panhandle of the Wakhan Corridor projecting to China on the northeast, is an example of the establishment of a classic buffer state, in which, to avoid inadvertent conflict, the borders of the Russian and British empires were to have no contact points in common. Similarly, the establishment of the Durand Line, the southeastern border of Afghanistan, divided the territory of the militant Pashtun tribe into two halves, with one half under the control of the British Raj, and the other inside Afghanistan. This divide-and-rule policy allowed some nominal control of a difficult region, but problems related to the tribally unpopular (and for them, unrecognized) border have continued to the present day.

D. Modern Afghanistan

Abdur Rahman Khan extended his control throughout the territory within the new boundaries of Afghanistan. His son, Habibullah, who reigned from 1901 until 1919, took the first steps toward the introduction of modern education and industry. Habibullah’s son and successor, Amanullah, initiated a brief war, the Third Anglo-Afghan War, in 1919 to end British control over Afghan foreign affairs. The resulting peace treaty recognized the independence of Afghanistan.

Amanullah was determined to modernize his country. In 1926 he took the title of king. His reforms, including efforts to induce women to give up the burka, or full-length veil, and to make men wear Western clothing in certain public areas, offended religious and ethnic group leaders. Revolts broke out, and in 1929 Amanullah fled the country.

Order was restored in 1930 by four brothers who were relatives of Amanullah. One of them, Muhammad Nadir Shah, became king, but he was assassinated in 1933. His son, Muhammad Zahir Shah, succeeded him. Power remained concentrated in the hands of Zahir and the royal family for the next four decades. In 1946 Afghanistan joined the United Nations (UN).

In 1953 Muhammad Daud, a nephew of Nadir Shah, became prime minister. Daud began to modernize Afghanistan rapidly with the help of economic and especially military aid from the USSR; the modern Afghan army was largely created with Soviet equipment and technical training. The United States declined to assist in this process. Social reform proceeded slowly because the government was afraid to antagonize conservative ethnic group leaders and devout Muslims. Relations with Pakistan deteriorated after Daud called for self-determination for the Pashtun tribes of northwestern Pakistan.

In 1963, hoping to halt the growth of Soviet influence and to improve relations with Pakistan, Zahir Shah removed Daud as prime minister. In 1964 Afghanistan adopted a new constitution, changing the country from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. The armed forces still depended on the Soviet Union for equipment and training. A severe drought in the early 1970s caused economic hardship, and the popularity of the regime declined.

E. End of Monarchy

In 1973 Muhammad Daud overthrew the king in a coup. He declared Afghanistan a republic with himself as president. Daud announced ambitious plans for economic development and tried to play the USSR against Western donors, but his dictatorial government was opposed both by radical left-wing intellectuals and soldiers and by traditionalist ethnic leaders. The leading leftist organization was the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which had been founded in 1965 and in 1967 split into a pro-Soviet Parcham faction and a much more radical Khalq faction. The two groups joined forces in 1976 to oppose Daud.

F. Leftist Coup and Soviet Invasion

In April 1978, after Daud launched a crackdown against the PDPA, leftist military officers overthrew him. PDPA leader Noor Muhammad Taraki became prime minister, subsequently assuming the title of president as well. Taraki and his deputy prime minister, Hafizullah Amin, both members of the Khalq faction, purged many Parcham leaders. Taraki announced a sweeping revolutionary program, including land reform, the emancipation of women, and a campaign against illiteracy. In late 1978 Islamic traditionalists and ethnic leaders who objected to rapid social change began an armed revolt against the government. By the summer of 1979 the rebels controlled much of the Afghan countryside. In September Taraki was deposed and later killed.
Amin, his successor, tried vigorously to suppress the rebellion and resisted Soviet efforts to make him moderate his policies. The government’s position deteriorated, however, and on December 25, 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. They quickly won control of Kābul and other important centers. The Soviets executed Amin on December 27 and installed Babrak Karmal, leader of PDPA’s Parcham faction, as president. Karmal, whom the Soviets considered to be more susceptible to their control, denounced Amin’s repressive policies, which reportedly included mass arrests and torture of prisoners, and promised to combine social and economic reform with respect for Islam and for Afghan traditions. But the government, dependent on Soviet military forces to bolster it, was widely unpopular.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan played out in the waning days of the Cold War, as the leaden economy and political repressions of the Soviet Union were just beginning to show signs of strain. Despite the Soviet Union’s own domestic difficulties and high-level internal advice against such a move, the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan’s government and eventual full military invasion was a long-considered and reasonably well-thought-out plan. From its earliest foreign aid in construction of military-quality bridges and highways, to its progressive planting of special agents within the Afghanistan bureaucracy and military, the Soviet Union displayed an unremitting interest in expanding its influence in the country and moving farther south toward the warm-water ports and hydrocarbon riches of the Persian Gulf. Afghanistan’s location along part of the Soviet Union’s southern border made the installation of a Soviet-friendly government there all the more desirable. The leftist coup of 1978 in Kābul seemingly assured that the Soviets would not lose the strategic position that they had patiently established through expensive and pervasive efforts over the prior quarter-century. Elsewhere in the country, however, there was only minimal support for the emerging Communist government in Kābul; opposition to it mounted nationwide, eventually even including significant portions of the Afghan military.
The Soviet Union’s large-scale military intervention aimed to protect its interests in the region by helping the Soviet-installed government to put down this widespread opposition.

Nevertheless, resistance to the Communist government and the Soviet invaders grew spontaneously throughout Afghanistan so that by the mid-1980s there were about 90 areas in the country commanded by guerrilla leaders. The guerrillas called themselves mujahideen (Muslim holy warriors). They had gained prominence by their fighting prowess rather than through the customary routes within traditional social structures. The resistance was roughly organized into seven major mujahideen parties, largely of Sunni background, based in Peshāwar, Pakistan, in the 1980s. Other mujahideen parties were based in Iran. The mujahideen were sustained by weapons and money from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China. By the mid-1980s the United States was spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to aid Afghan rebels based in Pakistan.

During the 1980s Soviet forces increasingly bore the brunt of the fighting. By 1986 about 118,000 Soviet troops and 50,000 Afghan government troops were facing perhaps 130,000 mujahideen guerrillas. Although the Soviet troops used modern equipment, including tanks and bombers, the mujahideen were also well armed, and they had local support and operated more effectively in familiar mountainous terrain. In 1986 the United States began supplying the mujahideen with Stinger missiles able to shoot down Soviet armored helicopters.

The effects of the war on Afghanistan were devastating. Half of the population was displaced inside the country, forced to migrate outside the country, wounded, or killed. About 3 million war refugees fled to Pakistan and about 1.5 million fled to Iran. Estimates of combat fatalities range between 700,000 and 1.3 million people. With the school system largely destroyed, industrialization severely restricted, and large irrigation projects badly damaged, the economy of the country was crippled. Despite some negative reaction, the presence of so many refugees in neighboring Pakistan and Iran actually improved Afghan relations with those countries. In addition, many of the refugees improved their lives considerably by leaving Afghanistan and the dangers of war therein. Because the majority of the refugees were religious, their fellow Muslims in Iran and Pakistan accepted them, even while the Iranian and Pakistani governments were striving to bring about the fall of the Communist regime in Kābul.

In May 1986 Karmal was replaced as PDPA leader by Mohammad Najibullah, a member of the Parcham faction who had headed the Afghan secret police. In November 1987 Najibullah was elected president.

G. Soviet Withdrawal

When Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985, he gave high priority to getting Soviet troops out of the costly, unpopular, and apparently unwinnable war in Afghanistan. In May 1988 Afghanistan, Pakistan, the USSR, and the United States signed agreements providing for an end to foreign intervention in Afghanistan, and the USSR began withdrawing its forces. The Soviet withdrawal was completed in February 1989. See also Soviet-Afghan War.

H. Civil War

The mujahideen, who did not sign the agreement concerning the Soviet withdrawal, maintained their fight against the Afghanistan central government with weapons that they continued to get from the United States via Pakistan. They rejected offers from Najibullah to make peace and share power, and refused to consider participating in any national government that included Communists. Thus the civil war continued. The United States and Pakistani sponsors prompted the Peshāwar-based rebels to besiege Jalālābād, a strong point for Najibullah in southern Afghanistan. After months of fighting, however, the Afghan government scored a clear victory. A March 1990 coup attempt also failed to bring down Najibullah. He continued to receive Soviet food, fuel, and weapons to help maintain his control. However, rebels persisted in terrorizing the civilian population by rocket bombardment of Kābul and other cities. Finally in late 1991 the USSR and the United States signed an agreement to end military aid to the Kābul government and to the mujahideen rebels.

In 1992 as the resistance closed in on Kābul, the Najibullah government fell, in part because of the defection of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek from northern Afghanistan whose militia had served the PDPA government. Two mujahideen parties from Peshāwar, both considered fundamentalist, joined forces with Dostum and Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik military commander, in the north and central mountains of Afghanistan. They won control of Kābul, and Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, became interim president from July through December 1992, taking office as full president in January 1993. A strong attempt was made to keep the Pashtun leaders, who traditionally held the power in Afghanistan, out of the most important government positions. Kābul was besieged beginning in 1992, first by various mujahideen groups and then by the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, which sought to reestablish Pashtun dominance in the capital.

The Taliban emerged in the fall of 1994 as a faction of mujahideen soldiers who identified themselves as religious students. The movement started in the south and worked its way toward Herāt in the northwest and Kābul in the east. It made outstanding military gains using armor, heavy rocket artillery, and helicopters against government forces. The Taliban’s stated mission was to disarm the country’s warring factions and to impose their strictly orthodox version of Islamic law. Some experts suspected the Pakistani government of supporting the Taliban, in order to keep the combat within Afghanistan and out of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, which is a major part of the Pashtun homeland. During the many vagaries of shifting alliances, as Afghans sought a new political equilibrium, one fundamentalist and one moderate party from the Peshāwar-based mujahideen groups contributed considerable personnel to the Taliban.

The term of Rabbani’s government expired in December 1994, but he continued to hold office amid the chaos of the civil war. Factional fighting since the beginning of January 1994 kept government officers from actually occupying ministries and discharging government responsibilities. Most cities outside of Kābul were administered by former resistance commanders and their shuras (councils). In June 1996 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had resigned as prime minister in 1994 to launch a military offensive against forces loyal to Rabbani, again assumed the post, this time to help Rabbani’s government fight the Taliban threat. Despite their efforts, the Taliban took Kābul in September 1996. By that time, the capital had been devastated by the civil war.

Rabbani and Hekmatyar fled north to join the northern-based anti-Taliban alliance led by the military commanders Massoud and Dostum. The alliance was a coalition of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras who were opposed to the Pashtun-dominated Taliban. The alliance took the name United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, commonly known as the United Front or the Northern Alliance. Massoud was the military commander of its chief political wing, Jamiat-i Islami (Islamic Society). The Taliban advanced north toward the mountain strongholds of the Northern Alliance and by the late 1990s had taken control of almost all of Afghanistan. Northern Alliance forces held a small portion of the country’s territory in the north.

I. Taliban Regime

After taking over Kābul, the Taliban created the Ministry for Ordering What Is Right and Forbidding What Is Wrong to impose and enforce its fundamentalist rules of behavior. The Taliban’s laws particularly affected women, who were ordered to cover themselves from head to toe in burkas (long, tentlike veils), forbidden from attending school or working outside their homes, and publicly beaten if they were improperly dressed or escorted by men not related to them. The Taliban also made murder, adultery, and drug dealing punishable by death and made theft punishable by amputation of the hand. Many of the laws alarmed human-rights groups and provoked worldwide condemnation. Most countries did not recognize the Taliban regime as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

In 1998, after terrorist bombings struck U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States launched cruise missiles at alleged terrorist training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The camps were reportedly connected to an international terrorist ring allegedly run by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian expatriate named by U.S. officials as the mastermind behind the embassy bombings. Bin Laden was active in the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation forces during the 1980s, and toward the end of that war he established al-Qaeda (Arabic for “the Base”), an organization based in Afghanistan that, according to U.S. officials, connects and coordinates fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups around the world. Al-Qaeda also supported the Taliban regime, with its special forces, called the Arab Brigade, fighting alongside Taliban troops in the civil war against the Northern Alliance.

On September 9, 2001, pro-Taliban suicide bombers assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance. Two days later in the United States, terrorists hijacked passenger airplanes and deliberately crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, killing thousands of people (see September 11 Attacks). The U.S. government identified bin Laden as the prime suspect behind the attacks. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the supreme leader of the Taliban, refused U.S. demands that the Taliban surrender bin Laden. The U.S. government built an international antiterrorism coalition, securing the approval of many nations for a war on terrorism. American and British forces began aerial bombings of al-Qaeda camps and Taliban military positions on October 7. The Northern Alliance, meanwhile, continued its front-line offensive north of Kābul and other strategic areas. Many Afghans fled to refugee camps in border areas of Pakistan and Iran to escape the bombings, adding to the millions of Afghans already displaced from more than two decades of war.

While the United States and Britain continued the aerial bombardment in November, Northern Alliance forces captured several strategic cities, including Kābul. In late November hundreds of U.S. marines landed near Kandahār in the first major infusion of American ground troops into Afghanistan. The Taliban surrendered Kandahār, their last remaining stronghold, by December 10. The U.S.-led offensive then focused on routing out al-Qaeda forces holed up in the rugged Tora Bora cave region of eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. In March 2002 U.S. troops undertook a mission, known as Operation Anaconda, to clear Taliban and al-Qaeda forces from the Shah-i-Kot Valley, in the vicinity of Gardēz in eastern Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of bin Laden remained unknown.

J. Afghanistan After the Taliban

United Nations-sponsored negotiations in Bonn, Germany, resulted in agreement on December 5, 2001, among four major Afghan factions to create an interim post-Taliban administration in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, a widely respected Pashtun leader, was chosen to head the interim administration, which took power in Kābul on December 22. An international peacekeeping force maintained a measure of law and order in the capital.

J.1. Transitional Government

Karzai’s administration was given up to six months to prepare the country for the introduction of a broad-based, multiethnic transitional government. In January 2002 international donors—including more than 60 countries, major development institutions, and nongovernmental organizations—pledged more than $4.5 billion in aid to Afghanistan over a period of five years. In April deposed Afghan king Zahir Shah returned to Afghanistan, ending nearly three decades of exile, in order to serve a symbolic role in the country. In June he formally convened the loya jirga, or grand council, which was responsible for electing a transitional government to rule the country for 18 months, until general elections scheduled for 2004. The loya jirga elected Karzai interim president of Afghanistan.

J.2. New Constitution

In January 2004 the loya jirga ratified a new constitution and Karzai signed it into law. The new constitution created a strong presidency, a two-chamber legislature, and an independent judiciary. It recognized Islam as the country’s sacred religion but guaranteed protections for other religions. It also recognized equal rights for women and language rights for minorities.

The adoption of the new constitution paved the way for elections, originally scheduled for June 2004 but then postponed due to the continued lack of security in many parts of the country. The Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies, who had regrouped as a military force despite new U.S.-led offensives to combat them, were waging a sporadic guerrilla campaign against the Karzai government and the international forces stationed in the country. In March 2004 Pakistan conducted a military operation along its border with Afghanistan in an attempt to flush out the insurgents.

About 18,000 non-Afghan troops were stationed in Afghanistan in 2004 to fight Taliban forces and offer protection for the Karzai government. Of these, about 8,500 were U.S. troops, and about 3,000 soldiers came from other coalition partners. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) stationed about 6,000 troops in Afghanistan. NATO took charge of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in August 2003 and for the first time played a military role outside of Europe. The ISAF was authorized by the United Nations Security Council to act as peacekeepers in the Afghan capital, Kābul, and surrounding areas. By the end of 2005, about 19,000 U.S. troops and about 9,200 ISAF troops remained in Afghanistan.

In October 2006 about 12,000 of the 20,000 U.S. troops then serving in Afghanistan became part of the ISAF forces as NATO reportedly assumed primary responsibility for international military operations in Afghanistan. The remaining 8,000 U.S. troops were assigned to counterterrorism efforts and to training Afghan security forces as part of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan. The ISAF consisted of about 31,000 troops and faced an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Taliban fighters in October 2006.

J.3. Presidential Election

Afghanistan held its first-ever presidential election on October 9, 2004. Large numbers of Afghans turned out to vote in the election, which was largely free of the violence threatened by the country’s former Taliban leaders. Karzai won 55.4 percent of the vote, easily beating 15 other candidates in the first round of voting. His victory was officially announced on November 3, following an investigation into charges of electoral fraud. According to a three-member United Nations panel set up to examine the complaints—made mostly by the losing candidates—the election’s “shortcomings...could not have materially affected the overall result.”
Karzai’s top goals after forming a new government included curbing the power of regional warlords, building an effective national security force, and pursuing national redevelopment plans. Uniting the country despite its longstanding ethnic, religious, and regional rivalries remained one of Karzai’s highest priorities.

J.4. Parliamentary Elections

Elections to the lower house of the National Assembly took place in September 2005, and in December 2005 President Karzai used his constitutional powers to appoint the members of the upper house. On December 19 Afghanistan’s first democratically elected legislature in more than 30 years officially convened. The new legislature represented a wide spectrum of the country’s political groupings and factions, including former warlords and former Taliban officials.

J.5. Continued War Against a Taliban Insurgency

Despite its initial defeat following the U.S. invasion of 2001, the Taliban regrouped, using remote areas of Pakistan for refuge and staging sporadic guerrilla attacks in areas of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. By 2007 the Taliban adopted tactics that included suicide bombings and roadside bombs, while also besieging remote U.S. and NATO outposts in the countryside. In June 2007 U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates expressed cautious optimism that the military campaign was having success against the resurgent Taliban. Defense Department officials said they believed NATO operations had helped thwart a planned spring offensive by the Taliban.

However, Afghan civilian support for the U.S. and NATO military operations waned in the spring of 2007, particularly after a series of attacks that resulted in civilian casualties. In early May, following an April ground attack and air strike on a small village in western Herāt province in which about 50 civilians were reportedly killed, Afghan president Karzai told U.S. and NATO officials that civilian deaths had reached an “unacceptable level.” About a week later lawmakers in the upper house of parliament, the Meshrano Jirga (House of Elders), passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire with the Taliban and for setting a date for the withdrawal of foreign troops. Many of the legislators cited an incident in March in which a U.S. Marine Special Operations force opened fire on civilians lining a highway as the marines fled the scene of a suicide bombing attack. The incident in the eastern Afghanistan province of Nangarhār resulted in the deaths of 19 Afghan civilians and the wounding of about 50 others. A U.S. military commander later determined that the marines had used excessive force and he referred the incident for a possible criminal inquiry.

By June 2007 the Associated Press reported a death toll of 2,300 in insurgency-related violence in 2007 alone. The International Red Cross said that violence was occurring throughout Afghanistan. The Department of Defense reported nearly 400 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, and Great Britain reported the deaths of 60 British soldiers during that same period.

Contributed By:

John Ford Shroder, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.

Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2008