Bamyan, Afghanistan
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| Bamyan بامیان |
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  Bamyan
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| Coordinates: 34°49′N 67°49′E / 34.817°N 67.817°E | |
| 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. It is notable for its ancient quarter, where the Buddhas of Bamyan stood for sixteen centuries until destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. In 2008, Bamyan was found to be the home of some of the world's oldest oil paintings.[3] 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.
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[edit] 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 Ghengis 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, USA. 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. 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.
[edit] History
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.
[edit] Buddhas
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 prayed 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]
[edit] Calls for Ethnic Cleansing in Bamyan and Panjsher
In support of the territory's fierce resistance to the Taliban and its mainly Pashtun supporters, a movement arose in 1999-2001 to purge Bamyan of its native non-Pashtun Tajik and Hazara Shia Muslim inhabitants and to replace them with Sunni Muslim Pashtuns from the south. A book (or tract or booklet), "The Second Water Bearer", written in Pashto, was translated into English, reported on French television, and publicized in the Western media, including UPI and Genocide Watch. This occurred as the destruction of Bamyan and its artistic heritage, and the ethnic cleansing of its Hazara population had already gone on for years.
It said, "The national (Taliban) government has the right to move people temporarily or permanently from one region to another if their presence is a threat to national unity." "To cut off Iran's hand in the Bamyan area, the Hazara population there should be removed and replaced by Sunni Muslims from Pashtun areas."[6]
The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban ended these efforts, but not without serious harm to communal relations in Afghanistan.
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.
[edit] Sister cities
[edit] Gallery
 Bearded men with cap, probably Scythian, Bamyan, 3-4thCentury |
 Welcome sign. |
 Destroyed Statue, July 17, 2005 |
 Bamyan Valley View |
[edit] Notes
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Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Bamian. |
- ^ e.g. Unesco, BBC
- ^ Library of Congress country study
- ^ nationalgeographic.com: accessed June 6, 2008
- ^ 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
- ^ www.esrf.eu report on findings of Marine Cotte, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2008, 23, DOI: 10.1039/b801358f
- ^ (United Press International Saturday, 19 May 2001, http://www.genocidewatch.org/afghanistan.html
- ^ Sister Cities International
[edit] References
- Dupree, Nancy Hatch (1977) [1st Edition: 1970]. An Historical Guide to Afghanistan (2nd Edition, Revised and Enlarged ed.). Afghan Tourist Organization. http://www.zharov.com/dupree/index.html.
