, situated above sea level in a narrow valley, wedged between the Hindu Kush mountains The high altitudes of the mountains have historical significance in South and Central Asia. The Hindu Kush range was a major center of
Buddhism with sites such as the
Bamiyan Buddhas. and a scene of modern era warfare in Afghanistan. Buddhism was widespread in the ancient Hindu Kush region. The ancient artwork of Buddhism includes the giant rock-carved statues called the Bamiyan Buddhas, in the southern and western end of the Hindu Kush. These statues were destroyed by Taliban Islamists in 2001. One of the
early Buddhist schools, the
Mahāsāṃghika-
Lokottaravāda, was prominent in the area of Bamiyan. The Chinese Buddhist monk
Xuanzang visited a Lokottaravāda monastery in the 7th century CE, at Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
Birchbark and
palm leaf manuscripts of texts in this monastery's collection, including
Mahāyāna sūtras, have been discovered in the caves of Hindu Kush, and these are now a part of the
Schøyen Collection. Some manuscripts are in the
Gāndhārī language and
Kharoṣṭhī script, while others are in
Sanskrit and written in forms of the
Gupta script. According to
Alfred Foucher, the Hindu Kush and nearby regions gradually converted to Buddhism by the 1st century CE, and this region was the base from where Buddhism crossed the Hindu Kush expanding into the
Oxus valley region of Central Asia. Buddhism later disappeared and locals were forced to convert to Islam.
Richard Bulliet also proposes that the area north of Hindu Kush was center of a new sect that had spread as far as
Kurdistan, remaining in existence until the
Abbasid times. The area eventually came under the control of the
Hindu Shahi dynasty of Kabul. The Islamic conquest of the area happened under
Sabuktigin who conquered
Jayapala's dominion west of
Peshawar in the 10th century.
Ancient The significance of the Hindu Kush mountain ranges has been recorded since the time of
Darius I of the
Achaemenid Empire. The
Greeks under
Alexander entered the Indian subcontinent through the Hindu Kush as
his army moved past the Afghan Valleys in the spring of 329 BCE. He moved towards the Indus Valley river region in the Indian subcontinent in 327 BCE;_his armies built several towns in this region over the intervening two years. After Alexander died in 323 BCE, the region became part of the
Seleucid Empire, according to the ancient history of
Strabo written in the 1st century BCE, before it became a part of the Indian
Maurya Empire around 305 BCE. The region became a part of the
Kushan Empire around the start of the common era.
Medieval era The lands north of the Hindu Kush, in the
Hephthalite dominion, Buddhism was the predominant religion by mid 1st millennium CE. This Central Asia region along the Hindu Kush was taken over by Western Turks and Arabs by the eighth century, facing wars with mostly Iranians. One major exception was the period in the mid to late seventh century when the
Tang dynasty from China destroyed the Northern Turks and extended its rule all the way to the Oxus River valley and regions of Central Asia bordering all along the Hindu Kush. The subcontinent and valleys of the Hindu Kush remained unconquered by the Islamic armies until the 9th century, even though they had conquered the southern regions of the Indus River valley such as
Sind. Kabul fell to the army of
Al-Ma'mun, the seventh Abbasid caliph, in 808 and the local king agreed to accept Islam and pay annual tributes to the caliph. When the extraction of silver from the mines in the Hindu Kush was at its greatest (c.850), the value of silver in relation to gold dropped, and the content of silver in the Carolingian
denarius was increased so that it should maintain its intrinsic value. The range came under the control of the
Hindu Shahi dynasty of Kabul He began a military campaign that rapidly brought both sides of the Hindu Kush range under his rule. From his mountainous Afghani base, he systematically raided and plundered kingdoms in north India from east of the Indus river to west of Yamuna river seventeen times between 997 and 1030. Mahmud of Ghazni raided the treasuries of kingdoms, sacked cities, and destroyed Hindu temples, with each campaign starting every spring, but he and his army returned to Ghazni and the Hindu Kush base before monsoons arrived in the northwestern part of the subcontinent. In 1017, the Iranian Islamic historian
Al-Biruni was deported after a war that Mahmud of Ghazni won, to the northwest Indian subcontinent under Mahmud's rule. Al Biruni stayed in the region for about fifteen years, learnt Sanskrit, and translated many Indian texts, and wrote about Indian society, culture, sciences, and religion in Persian and Arabic. He stayed for some time in the Hindu Kush region, particularly near Kabul. In 1019, he recorded and described a solar eclipse in what is the modern era
Laghman Province of Afghanistan through which Hindu Kush pass. In the late 12th century, the historically influential Ghurid empire led by
Mu'izz al-Din ruled the Hindu Kush region. He was influential in seeding the
Delhi Sultanate, shifting the base of his Sultanate from south of the Hindu Kush range and Ghazni towards the Yamuna River and Delhi. He thus helped bring Islamic rule to the northern plains of the Indian subcontinent. In the
Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire,
Genghis Khan invaded the region from the northeast in one of his many conquests to create the huge
Mongol Empire. The Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta arrived in the
Delhi Sultanate by passing through the Hindu Kush.
Timur, also known as Temur or Tamerlane in Western scholarly literature, marched with his army to Delhi, plundering and killing all the way. He arrived in the capital Delhi with his army. Then he carried the wealth and the captured slaves, returning to his capital through the Hindu Kush.
Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, was a patrilineal descendant of Timur with roots in Central Asia. He first established himself and his army in Kabul and the Hindu Kush region. In 1526, he made his move into north India, and won the Battle of Panipat, ending the last Delhi Sultanate dynasty, and starting the era of the Mughals.
Slavery Slavery, as with all major ancient and medieval societies, has been a part of
Central Asia and
South Asia history. The Hindu Kush mountain passes connected the slave markets of Central Asia with slaves seized in South Asia. The seizure and transportation of slaves from the Indian subcontinent became intense in and after the 8th century CE, with evidence suggesting that the slave transport involved "hundreds of thousands" of slaves from India in different periods of Islamic rule era. According to John Coatsworth and others, the slave trading operations during the pre-Akbar Mughal and Delhi Sultanate era "sent thousands of Hindus every year north to Central Asia to pay for horses and other goods". However, the interaction between Central Asia and South Asia through the Hindu Kush was not limited to slavery, it included trading in food, goods, horses and weapons. The practice of raiding tribes, hunting, and kidnapping people for slave trading continued through the 19th century, at an extensive scale, around the Hindu Kush. According to a British Anti-Slavery Society report of 1874, the governor of Faizabad, Mir Ghulam Bey, kept 8,000 horses and cavalrymen who routinely captured non-Muslims as well as Shia Muslims as slaves. Others alleged to be involved in the slave trade were feudal lords such as Ameer Sheer Ali. The isolated communities in the Hindu Kush were one of the targets of these slave-hunting expeditions.
Modern era '' by
William Barnes Wollen. The last stand of the
44th Foot, during the
1842 retreat from Kabul The people of
Kafiristan had practiced ancient polytheistic traditions until the 1896 invasion and conversion to Islam at the hands of Afghans under Amir
Abdur Rahman Khan. The first
British invasion of Afghanistan ended in disaster in 1842, when 16,000 British soldiers and camp followers were massacred as they
retreated through the Hindu Kush back to India.
After 1947 In the colonial era, the Hindu Kush was considered, informally, the dividing line between Russian and British areas of influence in Afghanistan. During the
Cold War the Hindu Kush range became a strategic theatre, especially during the 1980s when
Soviet forces and their Afghan allies fought the
Afghan mujahideen channelled through Pakistan. After the Soviet withdrawal and the end of the Cold War, many mujahideen morphed into Taliban and al-Qaeda forces imposing a strict interpretation of Islamic law (
Sharia), with Kabul, these mountains, and other parts of Afghanistan as their base. Other Mujahideen joined the Northern Alliance to oppose the Taliban rule. == Climate change ==