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The Pre-Islamic Period
Archaeological exploration in Afghanistan began in earnest only after World War II and proceeded promisingly until disrupted by the Soviet invasion of December 1979. Artifacts have been found that are typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages. It is not yet clear, however, to what extent these periods were simultaneous with similar stages of development in other areas. The area that is now Afghanistan seems in prehistory-as well as in ancient and modern times-to have been closely connected 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 B.C. About the middle of the second millennium B.C., people speaking au Indo-European language may have entered the eastern part of the Iranian Plateau, but there is little information about the area until the middle of the first millennium B.C., when its history began to be recorded under the control of the Achaemenid Empire.
Achaemenid Rule, ca. 550-331 B.C.
The area that is present-day Afghanistan comprised several satrapies (provinces) of the Achaemenid Empire at its most extensive under Darius the Great (ca. 500 B.C.). The Iranians had subdued these areas to the east with only the greatest difficulty, however, and had to keep substantial garrisons in some of the satrapies in the Hindu Kush areas (see fig. 4). Bactriana, with its capital at Bactria (which later became Balkh), was reputedly the home of Zoroaster, who founded the religion that bears his name.
By the fourth century B.C., Iranian control of outlying areas and the internal cohesion of the empire had become tenuous. Although such areas as Bactriana had always been restless under Achaemenid rule, there were Bactrian troops at the decisive Battle of Gaugamela (330 B.C.) fighting on the side of the Iranians, who were defeated by Alexander the Great.
Alexander and Greek Rule, 330-ca. 150 B.C.
It took Alexander three years, about 330-327 B.C., to subdue the areas that now make up Afghanistan and adjacent areas in the Soviet Union. Moving eastward from the area of Herat, the Macedonian leader encountered fierce resistance from local rulers who had been satraps of the Iranians. Alexander overwhelmed local resistance and even married Roxane, a daughter of the satrap of Bactriana. In 327 B.C. Alexander entered the Indian subcontinent, where the progress of his conquest was stopped only by a mutiny of his troops. Although his expedition through what is now Afghanistan was brief, he left behind a Hellenic cultural influence that lasted several centuries.
Upon Alexander's death in 323 B.C., his empire, never 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 came to 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, and it managed, beginning about 30 years after Alexander's death, to take control of the southeasternmost areas of the Seleucid domains, including parts of what is now Afghanistan. The Mauryans introduced Indic culture, including Buddhism, into 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 position in modern as well as ancient history, i.e., between two empires.
The Seleucids were unable to hold the contentious eastern area of their domain, and in the middle of the third century B.C. an independent, Greek-ruled state was declared in Bactria. With the decline of even nominal Seleucid control, the period from shortly after the death of Alexander until the middle of the second century saw a variety of Greek dynasties ruling out of Bactria. The farthest extent of Graeco-Bactrian rule came in about 170 B.C., when it included most of the territory that is now between the Iranian deserts and the Ganges River and from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. Graeco-Bactrian rule fell prey to the internecine disputes that plagued Greek rulers to the west, to ambitious attempts to extend control into northern India, and to pressure from two groups of nomadic invaders from Central Asia-the Parthians and Sakas (perhaps the Scythians). Greek civilization left few, if any, permanent effects, whereas characteristics of Iranian civilization were accepted and retained by the peoples of the Hindu Kush.
Central Asian and Sassanian Rule, ca. 150 B.C.-700 A.D.
The third and second centuries B.C. witnessed the advent to the Iranian Plateau of nomadic people speaking Indo-European languages. The Parthians established control in most of what is now Iran as early as the middle of the third century B.C., and about 100 years later another Indo-European group-either the Sakas or the Kushans (a subgroup of the tribe called the Yueh-chih by the Chinese)-entered what is now Afghanistan and established an empire that lasted almost four centuries. The Kushans, whose empire was among the most powerful of its time, were pushed into the Hindu Kush area by the Hsiungnu (Huns) of Central Asia, who had themselves been thwarted in their attacks on China by the powerful Han Dynasty.
The Kushan Empire spread from the valley of the Kabul River to defeat other Central Asian tribes that had conquered parts of the northern central Iranian Plateau that had been ruled by the Parthians. By the middle of the first century B.C. the Kushans controlled the area from the Indus Valley to the Gobi Desert and as far west as the central part of the Iranian Plateau. Early in the second century A.D. under Kanishka, the greatest of the Kushan rulers, the empire reached its greatest geographic extent and became a center of literature and art. Kanishka spread Kushan control to the mouth of the Indus River, into Kashmir, and into what are now the Chinese-controlled areas north of Tibet. Although details of his rule are fragmentary, Kanishka is believed to have ruled from a capital not far from present-day Peshawar, with a summer residence at Kapisa, north of what is now Kabul (see fig. 1). Kanishka was a patron of the arts and religious learning. It was during his reign that Mahayana Buddhism, brought to Northern India earlier by the Mauryan emperor Asoka (ca. 260-232 B.C.), reached its peak in Central Asia. The Kushan Empire was a center of trade, especially in silk, and the Buddhism of its rulers followed trade routes into East Asia, with which Kanishka and his successors maintained commercial relations.
In the third century A.D. Kushan control degenerated into independent kingdoms that were easy targets for conquest by the rising Iranian dynasty, the Sassanians (c. 224-561 A.D.). Although the Sassanians conquered as far east as the Punjab, by the middle of the third century most of the kingdoms that were fragments of the Kushan Empire were in practice semiindependent. These small kingdoms were pressed not only by the Sassanians from the west but also from the Indian subcontinent by the growing strength of the Guptas, a dynasty established in northern and central India as early as the beginning of the fourth century.
The disunited Kushan and Sassanian kingdoms were in a bad 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 in the fourth or fifth century into Bactria and the areas to the south, overwhelming the last of the Kushan-Sassanian kingdoms. Although little is known of these people-as is the case with most of the preIslamic, Central Asian invaders of the Hindu Kush area-it is believed that their control lasted about a century and was marked by constant warfare with the Sassanians to the west.
By the middle of the sixth century, at the latest, the Hepthalites were defeated in the territories north of the Amu Darya (in present-day Soviet Union) by another group of Central Asian nomads the Western Turks, and by the resurgent Sassanians in the lands south of the Amu Darya (frequently cited in old texts as the Oxus River). Up to the advent of Islam, the lands of the Hindu Kush were dominated up to the Amu Darya by small kingdoms under general Sassanian overlordship but with local rulers who were Kushan or Hepthalite.
In the mid-seventh century, in the last years before the end of Buddhist and Zoroastrian cultures in the area, a Chinese pilgrim, Hsuan Tsang, passed through Balkh to India. Historian W. Kerr Fraser-Tytler recounts Hsuan Tsang's findings:
He found in the north a Turkish ruler . . , a devout Buddhist who treated his revered guest with kindness and sent him to visit Balkh before starting on his difficult journey across the mountains. At Balkh Hsuan Tsang found that, in spite of the ravages of the Ephthalites, there were still a hundred monasteries in and around a city lying amid fertile lands and valleys, where today there is only desolation and arid waste. He crossed the Hindu Kush and . . . reached Bamivan, at that time a flourishing community, including ten monasteries in that high beautiful valley in the heart of the mountains through which all the caravans from China passed on their journey down to India . . . He reached Kapisa . . , and there found a Turkish (or Ephthalite) ruler whose dominion extended as far as the Indus and who, commanding as he did the main trade routes to India, was of sufficient importance to send a present of horses, for which the country was then famous, to the son of Heaven, the Emperor Tai-tsnng, and to receive presents in exchange. Thence the pilgrim passed . . . into India, noting . . . the contrast between the fierce tribesmen of the mountains and the more effeminate Indians of the lower valleys.
Of this great Buddhist culture and earlier Zoroastrian civilization there remain few, if any, traces in the life of the people of Afghanistan. On the ancient trade routes, however, there are still stone monuments of Buddhist culture. Two great sandstone Buddhas, 35 and 53 meters high and dating from the third and fifth centuries A.D., overlook the ancient route through Barman to Balkh. In this area and other spots within what is now Afghanistan, archaeologists have found frescoes, stucco decorations, statuary, and rare objects from China, Rome, and Phoenicia that were made as early as the second century A.D. and that bear witness to the richness of the ancient civilizations of the area.
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This page maintained by Luke Griffin and last updated on 10/19/2001 .
