Bamyan

Bamyan lies in a sheltered high valley between the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba, on a route across the mountains linking Central and South Asia. The great Buddha figures and painted caves cut into the northern cliff recall an earlier Buddhist centre visited by the pilgrim Xuanzang. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the Ghurids made Bamyan the capital of a kingdom that stretched north of the Oxus. The Mongol siege of 1221 brought devastating destruction to the city and its people.

A town reappeared in the Timurid period, though the waning transcontinental caravan trade kept it smaller than its predecessor. Babur mentioned Bamyan as a district centre. In the early nineteenth century travellers found a walled town opposite the Buddha cliff, cultivated valley bottoms, fortified houses and people living in caves. Trade remained important: transit duties brought revenue to the district. The surrounding mountains were home to Hazara communities, while the town itself lay amid competing Afghan and northern Uzbek claims.