Bamyan, Afghanistan

For the province, see Bamyan Province.
Bamyan
بامیان
A view of the ancient Bamyan Valley showing the two statue niches
Bamyan is located in Afghanistan
Bamyan
Location in Afghanistan
Coordinates:
Country  Afghanistan
Province Bamyan Province
Elevation 9,186 ft (2,800 m)
Population
 - Total 61,863
Time zone UTC+4:30

Bamyan (Persian: بامیان Bāmyān), also spelled Bamiyan[1] and Bamian[2], at an altitude of about 9,200 feet (2,800 m) and with a population of about 61,863, is the largest town in the region of Hazarajat, central Afghanistan and the capital of Bamyan Province. It lies approximately 240 kilometres north-west of Kabul, the national capital. Bamyan was the site of an early Buddhist monastery from which Bamyan takes its name (Sanskrit varmayana, "coloured"). Many statues of Buddha are carved into the sides of cliffs facing Bamyan city. In 2008, Bamyan was found to be the home of some of the world's oldest oil paintings.[3]

Contents

Geography

Situated on the ancient Silk Road, the town was at the crossroads between the East and West when all trade between China and the Middle East passed through it. The Hunas made it their capital in the 5th century. Because of the cliff of the Buddhas, the ruins of the Monk's caves, Shar-i-Gholghola ('City of Sighs', the ruins of an ancient city destroyed by Genghis Khan), and its local scenery, it is one of the most visited places in Afghanistan. The Shar-i-Zohak mound ten miles south of the valley is the site of a citadel that guarded the city, and the ruins of an acropolis could be found there as recently as the 1990s.[4]

The town is the cultural center of the Hazara ethnic group of Afghanistan. Most of the population lives in downtown Bamyan. The valley is cradled between the parallel mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba.

Bamyan is a small town with a bazaar at its center. It has no infrastructure of electricity, gas, or water supplies. According to Sister Cities International, Bamyan has established a sister city relationship with Gering, Nebraska, United States. It has an airport with a gravel runway.

Mountains cover ninety percent of the province, and the cold, long winter, lasting for six months, brings temperatures of three to twenty degrees Celsius below zero.Mainly Daizangi people live in the area. Transportation facilities are increasing, but sparse.

The main crops are wheat, barley, mushung, and baquli, grown in Spring. When crops are damaged by unusually harsh weather, residents herd their livestock down to Ghazni and Maidan Provinces to exchange for food.

In these years bamyan produce the best quality potato.

History

Bamyan in 600 AD, capital of a Kushano-Hephthalite Kingdom. (#25 on map)
History of Afghanistan
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See also
Ariana · Khorasan
Timeline

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The city of Bamyan was part of the Buddhist Kushan Empire in the early centuries of the Christian era. After the Kushan Empire fell to the Sassanids, Bamyan became part of the Kushansha, vassals to the Sassanids. The Hephthalites conquered Bamyan in the 5th century. After their Khanate was destroyed by the Sassanids and Turks in 565, Bamyan became the capital of the small Kushano-Hephthalite kingdom until 870, when it was conquered by the Saffarids. The area was conquered by the Ghaznavids in the 11th century.

For decades, Bamyan has been the center of combat between zealous Muslim Taliban forces and the anti-Taliban alliance – mainly Hizb-i-Wahdat – amid clashes among the warlords of local militia. Bamyan is also known as the capital of Daizangi.

Buddhas

Main article: Buddhas of Bamyan

On the cliff face of a mountain nearby, three colossal statues were carved 4,000 feet apart. One of them was 175 feet (53 m) high, the world's tallest standing statue of Buddha. The ancient statue was carved during the Kushan period in the fifth century. The statues were destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001, on the grounds that they were an affront to Islam. Limited efforts have been made to rebuild them, with negligible success.

At one time, two thousand monks meditated in caves among the sandstone cliffs. The caves were also a big tourist attraction before the long series of wars in Afghanistan. The world's earliest oil paintings have been discovered in caves behind the partially destroyed colossal statues. Scientists from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have confirmed that the oil paintings, probably of either walnut or poppy seed oil, are present in 12 of the 50 caves dating from the 5th to 9th century.[5]

The caves at the base of these thousands of years old statues had been used by Taliban for storing weapons. After the Taliban were driven from the region by American troops, civilians made their homes in the caves. Recently, Afghan refugees escaping the persecution of the Taliban regime by hiding in caves in the Bamiyan valley, accidentally found a fantastic collection of Buddhist statues and jars having more than ten thousand fragments of ancient Buddhist manuscripts, a large part of which is now in the famous Schoyen collection. This has created a sensation among the scholars and the find has been compared with the discovery of the Christian Dead Sea Scrolls.

Since about 2002, a Provincial Reconstruction Team has been based in Bamyan, first manned by U.S. forces, and, since about 2003, by personnel from the New Zealand Defence Force.

Sister cities

Gallery

Bearded men with cap, probably Scythian, Bamyan, 3-4thCentury

Welcome sign.

Destroyed Statue, July 17, 2005

Bamyan Valley View

Notes

  1. ↑ e.g. Unesco, BBC
  2. ↑ Library of Congress country study
  3. ↑ nationalgeographic.com: accessed June 6, 2008
  4. ↑ Ring, Trudy;Salkin, Robert M.;Schellinger, Paul E; La Boda, Sharon (1995) International Dictionary of Historic Places: Asia and Oceania, P.79. Taylor & Francis, ISBN 1884964044
  5. ↑ www.esrf.eu report on findings of Marine Cotte, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2008, 23, DOI: 10.1039/b801358f
  6. ↑ Sister Cities International
  7. ↑ Sister Cities International

References