Pre-Islamic period of Afghanistan |
Prehistory
Archaeological exploration began in Afghanistan in earnest after World War II and proceeded
until the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan disrupted it in December of 1979. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages were found. It is not yet clear, however, to what extent these periods were
contemporaneous with similar stages of development in other geographic regions. The area that is now Afghanistan seems in
prehistory - as well as ancient and modern times - to have been closely connected by culture and trade with the neighboring
regions to the east, west, and north. Urban civilization in the Iranian plateau, which includes most of Iran and Afghanistan, may have begun as early as 3000 to 2000 BC (see also Bactria-Margiana Archaeological
Complex). About the middle of the 2nd millennium BC people
speaking an Indo-European language may have entered the
eastern part of the Iranian Plateau, but little is known about the area until the middle of the 1st millennium BC, when its history began to be recorded during the Achaemenid Empire.
The area that is present-day Afghanistan comprised several satrapies
(provinces) of the Achaemenid Empire when it was at its most
extensive, under Darius the Great (ca. 500 BC). Bactriana,
with its capital at Bactria (which later became Balkh), was reputedly the home of Zoroaster, who founded the Zoroastrian religion.
By the fourth century B.C., Iranian control of outlying areas and the internal cohesion of the empire had become tenuous.
Although outlying areas like Bactriana had always been restless under Achaemenid rule, Bactrian troops nevertheless fought on the
Iranian side in the decisive Battle of Gaugamela (330 BC). They were defeated by Alexander the Great.
Alexander and Greek Rule, 330 BC - ca. 150
BC
It took Alexander only six months to conquer Iran, but it
took nearly three years (from about 330 BC - 327
BC) to subdue the area that is now Afghanistan and the adjacent regions
of the former Soviet Union. Moving eastward from the area of Herat, the Macedonian leader encountered fierce resistance from local rulers of what had been
Iranian satraps. In a letter to his mother, Alexander described the situation thus: "I am
involved in the land of a 'Leonine' (lion-like) and brave people, where every Foot of the ground is like a well of steel,
confronting my soldier. This is the land of the Afghans [in] which children are fighting valiantly against my steel forces. You
have brought only one son into the world, but Everyone in this land can be called an Alexander.” Although his expedition
through Afghanistan was brief, Alexander left behind a Hellenic cultural influence
that lasted several centuries.
Upon Alexander's death in 323 BC, his empire, which had never been politically
consolidated, broke apart. His cavalry commander, Seleucus, took nominal control of
the eastern lands and founded the Seleucid dynasty. Under the
Seleucids, as under Alexander, Greek colonists and soldiers entered the region of the Hindu Kush, and many are believed to have remained. At the same time, the Mauryan Empire was developing in the northern part of the Indian
subcontinent. It took control, thirty years after Alexander's death, of the southeasternmost areas of the Seleucid domains,
including parts of present-day Afghanistan. The Mauryans introduced Indian culture, including Buddhism, to the area. With the Seleucids on one side and the Mauryans on the other, the people of the Hindu Kush were in what would become a familiar quandary in ancient as well as modern
history - that is, caught between two empires.
In the middle of the 3rd century BC, an independent, Greek-ruled
state was declared in Bactria. Graeco-Bactrian rule spread until it included most of
the territory from the Iranian deserts to the Ganges River and from
Central Asia to the Arabian
Sea by about 170 B.C. Graeco-Bactrian rule was eventually defeated by a combination of the internecine disputes that plagued
Greek rulers to the west, the ambitious attempts to extend control into northern India, and the pressure of two groups of nomadic
invaders from Central Asia - the Parthians and Sakas (perhaps the Scythians).
Central Asian and Sassanian Rule, ca. 150 BC - 700
In the third and second centuries BC, the Parthians, a nomadic people
speaking Indo-European languages, arrived on the
Iranian Plateau. The Parthians established control in most of what is Iran as early as the
middle of the 3rd century BC; about 100 years later another
Indo-European group from the north - the Kushans (a subgroup of the tribe called the
Yuezhi by the Chinese) - entered Afghanistan and established an empire lasting almost four centuries.
The Kushan Empire spread
from the Kabul River valley to
defeat other Central Asian tribes that had previously conquered parts of
the northern central Iranian Plateau once ruled by the Parthians. By the middle of the 1st century BC, the Kushans' control stretched from the Indus River valley to the Gobi Desert and as far west as
the central Iranian Plateau. Early in the 2nd century under Kanishka, the most powerful of the Kushan rulers, the empire reached its greatest
geographic and cultural breadth to become a center of literature and art. Kanishka extended Kushan control to the mouth of the
Indus River on the Arabian Sea, into Kashmir, and into what is today the Chinese-controlled area north of Tibet.
Kanishka was a patron of religion and the arts. It was during his reign that Mahayana Buddhism, imported to northern India earlier by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (ca.
260 BC - 232 BC), reached its zenith in
Central Asia.
In the 3rd century, Kushan control fragmented into semi-independent
kingdoms that became easy targets for conquest by the rising Iranian dynasty, the Sassanians (ca. 224 - 561). These
small kingdoms were pressed by both the Sassanians from the west and by the growing strength of the Guptas, an Indian dynasty established at the beginning of the 4th
century.
The disunited Kushan and Sassanian kingdoms were in a poor position to meet the threat of a new wave of nomadic, Indo-European
invaders from the north. The Hepthalites (or White Huns) swept out of Central
Asia around the fourth century into Bactria and to the south, overwhelming the last
of the Kushan and Sassanian kingdoms. Historians believe that their control continued for a century and was marked by constant
warfare with the Sassanians to the west.
By the middle of the sixth century the Hepthalites were defeated in the territories north of the Amu Darya (the Oxus River of antiquity) by another group of Central Asian nomads, the Gokturks, and by the resurgent Sassanians in the lands south of the Amu Darya. It was the
ruler of western Gokturks, Sijin (aka Sinjibu,
Silzibul and Yandu Muchu Khan) who led the forces against the Hepthalites who were defeated at the Battle of Chach (Tashkent) and at the Battle of Bukhara. The name Afghanistan derives from the name of the defeated Hepthalite
king, Faganish. Up until the advent of
Islam, the lands of the Hindu Kush were
dominated up to the Amu Darya by small kingdoms under Sassanian control but with local rulers who were Kushans or
Hepthalites.
Of this great Buddhist culture and earlier Zoroastrian influence there remain few, if any, traces in the life of Afghan people today. Along ancient
trade routes, however, stone monuments of Buddhist culture existed as reminders of the past. The two great sandstone Buddhas of Bamiyan, thirty-five and fifty-three meters high overlooked
the ancient route through Bamiyan to Balkh
and dated from the third and fifth centuries. They survived until 2001, when they were destroyed by
the Taliban. In this and other key places in Afghanistan, archaeologists have located frescoes, stucco decorations, statuary, and rare objects from China, Phoenicia, and Rome crafted as early as the
2nd century that bear witness to the influence of these ancient civilizations
on the arts in Afghanistan.
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