In Miran a Buddhist temple was found consisting of a cella that was square on the outside and circular on the inside, where there was a stupa. It is possible that the whole was vaulted over. Several other monasteries were founded there in the third and fourth century AD. Many of their shrines were set up in caves, the walls and ceilings of which were covered with paintings. Miran’s art stemmed from India and Gandhara, but was of a subtler character than either of these and attached importance to figural compositions.6 Miran’s style and iconography were then adopted by Tun-huang and numerous other centres in eastern Xinjiang. From the period of Tibetan occupation (eighth and ninth centuries) Stein noticed a Buddhist stupa and scraps of paper and wood inscribed with Tibetan texts. A ruined fort on the same site also yielded a large amount of Tibetan documents.
Niya, further west, is an important site on the river of that name, where in 1901 Stein found wooden tablets and manuscripts in Kharosthi and Sanskrit, as well as seals and figurines with motifs of Greek origin. Stein visited the site again in 1906 and, among other things, found in the ruins of a large building a whole set of Kharosthi records and a cellar with a complete archive.
Beyond a small room which seemed to have served as an antechamber for attendants, there adjoined a large apartment. It was a room twenty-six feet square with a raised platform of plaster running along three of its sides, very much as in the ‘Aiwan’ or hall of any modern Turkistan house of some pretension … a raised roof had been arranged to admit light and air just as in large modern houses.7
The houses at Niya were decorated with frescoes of which some fragments were found. There was a stupa and a temple with a hall where the excavations also yielded fragments of frescoes.
The site of Endere was abandoned already around AD 645. The fort, or citadel, which dates from the time of the Tibetan invasion, was surrounded by a circular wall within which was a temple and a palace. North of the fort a stupa was found built on a square three-tier base on which stood a cylindrical drum.
North-east of Khotan, the site of Dandan-Uilik yielded a number of Chinese documents dating from the years 781–90. (See 48.) Obviously, the Tibetan invasion that marked the end of the Tang domination in the Tarim basin was also the reason for the abandonment of these places. Documents found here were also in Khotanese Saka language, written in the Indian Brahmi alphabet while others were in Sanskrit. The Saka texts were mostly translations from Sanskrit and Tibetan. (See also p.163.)
66 The citadel walls, Balkh
67 Friday Mosque, Herat (detail)
68 Tower of Masud III, Ghazni
69 Tower of Masud III, Ghazni (detail)
70 Balbal. Turkish gravestone. Tashkent Museum
71 Balbal. Turkish gravestone. Tashkent Museum
72 Parthian art. Ivory rhyton from Nisa
Fig. 27 Kashgar
A century after Stein, in 2002, the site of Dandan-Uilik was explored by a Chinese team who found here a temple with a statue of a sitting Buddha in Gandharan style from the seventh century AD, remains of frescoes typical of the kingdom of Khotan, sheep bones, textiles, as well as a coin from the Tang period of China. The site of Domoko, lying on a river flowing parallel with the Keriya, was also explored.8
When the small eighth-century temple was excavated, the external walls were found to have been adorned originally with paintings which included figural scenes. One showed a group of youths riding camels and horses. Some riders are Chinese looking, others Persian and more particularly Sasanian. All have haloes to indicate that they are not only legendary but also holy personages. Dandan-Uilik was abandoned in 791, but in Tang times Chinese influence had made itself particularly strongly felt there.9
The paintings of Dandan-Uilik are among the most important ones found in Xinjiang. Fragments of frescoes, paintings on wood, stucco and clay were also found on the site of Farhad-Beg Yailaki, which was a vast complex containing six temples inside an enclosure with a further one outside it. At Rawak there was a monastery with a huge stupa built on a three-tier base and accessible by four stairways, a feature also found at Taxila, Pakistan. Among the paintings found at Balawaste, east of Khotan, the best known is the Buddha Vairocana, head and upper part of the body with tattooed chest and arms.
Not only was the Khotanese school strongly influenced by China, it was also highly appreciated there, and Chinese artists were in turn influenced by it. It was also greatly esteemed in Tibet. Khotanese artists followed Buddhist monks there, bringing with them styles and traditions that they imposed on the Tibetans. All communities along the Tunhuang trade-route further east were profoundly influenced by the art of Khotan.
Keriya
The River Keriya, carrying waters from the Kuen-lun mountains, used to flow much further into the Taklamakan desert before it disappeared in the sands. On its lower reaches were a number of settlements, the traces of which were noticed by travellers such as Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin and Paul Pelliot, but excavations began there only very recently, after the Franco-Chinese cooperation agreement was signed.
Karadong
By 1908 Aurel Stein had already noticed remnants of a building buried in the sand. In the years 1991–94, excavations carried out on the site allowed him to firmly link Karadong as well as the kingdom of Khotan, to the Indo-Gandharian cultural area and, dated approximately to the early thirdrd century BC, to be among the earliest Buddhist settlements in Xinjiang.
Two sanctuaries were unearthed with remnants of statues and paintings. There were large Buddhas and small Buddhas with mandorlas in grey and orange and dressed in robes in corresponding colours. Certain gestures of the hands point to sculptures of Gandhara and Hadda. Historically, these finds provide a missing link between the spreading of Buddhism in China and in Central Asia. Khotan is known to have been an important Buddhist centre at around AD 400, but comparison of Karadong and Miran shows that well before that a certain variety of styles already existed in this area.
Djumbulak Kum
Some fifteen sites were found in the protohistoric delta of the Keriya, north-west of Karadong, in an area until then totally unknown, providing evidence of being populated before the Han period, at around 500 BC. Djumbulak Kum was a fortified settlement with massive walls 2–4m high and 4–5m thick, of clay and large pakhsa bricks, built in a different way from the Chinese and showing a Central Asian influence. The inhabitants were sedentary shepherds and farmers with irrigated agriculture as their economic basis. Wheat, millet and barley were grown. Wooden implements and iron utensils were found, too. Mummies found in some thirty tombs were of Caucasian Europoid stock and were buried in a similar way to those found earlier in the south of Xinjiang, at Zhaganluk near Charchan. Mummies found in the Charchan oasis seem to have been of mixed race. Textiles found in these tombs – bits of clothing and decoration – show techniques of spinning and weaving similar to those found in Lou-lan and now deposited in the museum of Urumchi (see earlier) and allow us to reconstruct the dresses and ornaments of the inhabitants. Decorative motives show Iranian influence.10
In the city of Kashgar (Kashi in Chinese) the most interesting monument is the mausoleum of Apak Khoja. (See 44 and 46.) It is an important shrine with a number of tombs, built in the late Timurid style in the seventeenth century. The walls are lined with ceramic tiles of rather inferior quality, the dominant colours being green and yellow, with some blue. With its tiled dome and four minarets it is reminiscent of a brightly coloured and not-so-magnificent Taj Mahal.
The mausoleum of Yusuf Kader Khan is the tomb of an eleventh-century sage. It was also built in the Timurid style, and the original date of the building is not known. It is now in full reconstruction with tiles predominantly blue and white. The Great Mosque (Id-Kah) is a nineteenth-century building of limited interest. The mausoleum of Sayid Ali Arslan Khan is a modest structure of unbaked bricks, next to a vast cemetery with many vaulted mazars. (See 45.)
The old town is a maze of little lanes opposite the Id-Kah Mosque. A short stretch of the old city wall
, perhaps late medieval, can still be seen not very far from the old British Consulate building.
The main attraction of present-day Kashgar is its huge Sunday market.
North of Kashgar, on the outskirts of the town of Artush, is the mausoleum of the Karakhanid ruler Bugra Khan. Built in the eleventh century, it has undergone several reconstructions and little now remains of its original outlook.
West of Kashgar, the road to the Ferghana valley was first opened in 1935 when the Russian penetration of Xinjiang was on the increase. It was closed again for most of the time after the Second World War and was reopened only recently when the Central Asian republics became independent.
South of Kashgar, on the road to the Pamir, the small town of Tashkurghan (not to be confused with the town of the same name in north Afghanistan) boasts an ancient fort, now in a rather dilapidated state, which is most probably late medieval, but may have more ancient origins. In fact, Ptolemy mentions it as a stop on the road to China.
The road south of Tashkurghan is a modern one leading to the Khunjerab Pass and links with the Karakorum Highway of Pakistan.
The ancient caravan road branched west of it towards the Kilik and Mintaka Passes and from there to Kashmir. Between Kashgar and Tashkurghan two more roads, or rather tracks, branch off to the west, the first one to the former Russian Pamir (which is now Tajikistan’s), the second to the Wakhan valley and into Afghanistan.
* * *
NOTES ON CHAPTER XIV
Full details of abbreviations and publications are in the Bibliography
1 Professor de Loczy, head of the Hungarian Geological Survey, was a member of Count Szechenyi’s expedition and thus a pioneer of modern geographical exploration in Kansu.
2 Talbot-Rice, Ancient Art, p.219.
3 Stavisky, Bongard, Levin, Abstracts of Papers.
4 Stein, Ancient Tracks, pp.190–207.
5 Hopkirk, P., The Great Game, p.201.
6 Talbot-Rice, Ancient Art, p.214.
7 Stein, Ancient Tracks, p.71.
8 Hopkirk, P., The Great Game, p.80.
9 Talbot-Rice, Ancient Art, p.206.
10 Lebaine-Francfort, C., ‘Les Oasis retrouvées de Keriya’, Archéologia, 375/01.
PART IV
AFGHANISTAN
Fig. 28 Afghanistan
XV
HISTORY
The history of Afghanistan is so complex that every attempt at simplification must inevitably lead to superficiality and confusion. Perhaps, in view of what has been said in Chapter 2 it may suffice to say that all the nomadic incursions that affected Central Asia also played their role in the history of Afghanistan. The Saka, the Yue-chi, the Hephthalites, the Turks, the Arabs, the Seljuks, the Mongols – they all left their traces in the economic as well as the cultural pattern of the country. They destroyed irrigation, diverted caravan trade and decimated the population, but they also brought new impetus to the arts, new elements in ornament and design, and provided, broadly speaking, a sort of cross-fertilisation between one area and the other, between the civilisation of the nomads and that of the sedentary peoples.
At the time of the Achaemenids, Afghanistan was a loosely administered set of eastern satrapies of the empire. The Greeks brought in an alien element implanted on the Iranian cultural base, which, in its turn, got mixed with Indian influences brought in by the westward expansion of Buddhism. In the Kushan times, the art of Gandhara flourished and expanded north as far as Xinjiang (see p.49 and Chapter 12). Then, for a century and a half, the Afghan provinces were again part of the Persian Empire under the Sasanians, with a corresponding increase in Iranian cultural influence. Buddhism and Zoroastrianism co-existed peacefully until the Arab invasion produced a new religion and with it a new cultural pattern.
At the court of the Ghaznavid and Ghorid sultans (the tenth to twelfth century) the settled Iranian culture mingled with the nomadic Turkish one while the repeated raids into the Indian subcontinent inevitably exercised some influence upon the rulers of both dynasties.
After the devastating incursions of the Mongols and of Timur, Afghanistan, or more precisely its western part, experienced a century of prosperity under Timur’s successors, Shahrukh and Husayn Baykara.
After a lengthy period of war between principalities, Afghanistan became part of the empire of a Turkish usurper, Nadir Shah, who in turn defeated the Safavid shah of Persia and the Moghul sultan of Delhi. After his assassination, the chief of the Durrani (Abdali) tribe, Ahmad Shah, gained supremacy over other Afghan tribes and in quick succession extended his holdings as far as Khorassan in the west and the Punjab in the east.
In the first half of the nineteenth century Afghanistan became a pawn in the ‘Great Game’ between the two great powers of the time: Britain advancing into the Punjab and Russia moving into Central Asia. In 1839, the British army moved into Afghan territory while the Russians moved against Khiva. Both expeditions ended in disaster. The Russians became bogged down in the desert without ever reaching their target, while the British, in 1842, had to retreat from Kabul and on the way to Jalalabad were massacred by the Afghans.
While the tug-of-war between Britain and Russia continued for the rest of the century, Afghanistan was, after 1880, reunited under the firm rule of Amir Abdurrahman who, in a series of radical reforms, tried to modernise the country, break the power of local strongmen and introduce an administrative structure based on provinces governed by appointed governors. In 1884 the occupation of Merv brought the Russians into the vicinity of Afghanistan, and both the amir and the British were worried about the possibility of a Russian advance on Herat. The town’s defences were hastily strengthened and it was in the course of these works that the remnants of the famous Musalla were destroyed.
In 1893 the boundaries between Afghanistan and India, as well as between Afghanistan and Russia, were fixed by the Durand Commission. The McMahon Commission similarly established, in 1903, the border between Afghanistan amd Persia. Nevertheless, a stretch of this border was definitely fixed as late as 1935.
The rivalry between Britain and Russia continued after the First World War, with both sides competing for influence in Kabul. The reforms aimed at westernstyle modernisation introduced in the late 1920s by King Amanullah provoked an uprising and had to be partially revoked by the king’s successor, Nadir Shah. Under King Zahir Shah, Afghanistan accepted aid from Germany, Italy and Japan, and prior to the Second World War the Germans had become the most important foreign community in Kabul.
After the war the Afghans supported the idea of an independent ‘Pushtunistan’ comprising also the north-western province of Pakistan. Frustrated by the American aid to Pakistan, the Afghans turned to the Soviet Union, whose aid led to the increased influence of the Soviets in Kabul. In the late 1950s Afghan officers were trained in the USSR and Soviet advisers were active in Afghan military schools. A crisis over ‘Pushtunistan led to the closure of the Pakistani border in 1961 and left Afghanistan wholly dependent on the USSR. In 1973, King Zahir was deposed and the prime minister, Muhammad Daoud, proclaimed a republic with himself as president. The Soviet penetration increased under his rule until, in 1978, a group of Moscow-trained officers staged a bloody coup in which Daoud was assassinated. A Communist-led government under Nur Muhammad Taraki took power, but factional strife within the party led to another coup in 1979. After only three months, in December 1979, the Russians invaded Afghanistan and installed a puppet government with Babrak Karmal as president. This sparked off a guerilla war that lasted ten years, without the Russians ever being able to pacify the country. Their ignominious retreat in 1989, after heavy casualties, triggered off the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan their retreat provoked a civil war, with millions of refugees in Iran and Pakistan, and with the risk of militant Islamism spreading over into the newly independent Central Asian republics.
By the end of 2010 and after nine years of fighting, the bleak prophecy of Ahmed Rashid seems to have been confirmed.1 The central government is w
eak and its writ does not extend far beyond the Kabul area, which may be the reason why most recent archaeological work has been done in this area. Although Kabul is slowly rising from ‘the miles of rubble’, it had been at the turn of the century, the infrastructure that can sustain society is still rather chaotic. The economy is still too dependent on poppy and drugs and tribal chiefs are still calling the shots in the provinces, preventing the realisation of any large state-wide reconstruction project. The building of security forces, the army and the police, is proceeding at a snail’s pace with many setbacks, and the Taliban, still finding refuge and supplies in Pakistan’s Tribal territories, are in fact gaining ground, not only in the south, but also in the east and north-east. The main supply line of the allied forces, the Peshawar–Jalalabad–Kabul road, is frequently disrupted or blocked, whereas the Taliban supplies can get into the country by the Quetta–Kandahar road mostly undisturbed. The interior situation in Pakistan and the Iran-Pakistan differences over the Sunni-Shia relations are beyond the scope of this book, but their repercussions contribute in no insignificant way to the rising sectarianism in Afghan society. Seen in this way, a fragmentation or even partition of the country remains a possibility. Its unification under Amir-Abdurrahman thus looks like an exceptional event in its history.2
Treasures of the Great Silk Road Page 24