Bakhdhi is the fourth nation in the Avestan Vendidad's list of nations - Airyana Vaeja (homeland of the Aryans) being the first. Bakhdhi is the ancient Avestan name while Balkh is the modern name for both the region and its old capital city.
During the middle period of Aryan history - as the Aryans moved west from Airyana Vaeja towards present day Iran - Bakhdhi (Balkh as its is known today) became the principle kingdom of the Aryan confederation of kingdoms called Airan, and the eponymous city of Balkh was its capital. As the seat of Aryan rule moved westward to what is the Iranian province of Khorasan today, Balkh became part of greater Khorasan and remained an important regional capital as well as a cultural and trading centre.
According to Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, it was during this middle period of Aryan history that Zarathushtra (in later language, Zardhusht) carried his message (see Shahnameh page 30) to the kingdom of Bakhdhi [This is, however, a latter tradition. For a further discussion on the lands of Zarathushtra's ministry see our page on Airyana Vaeja]. Balkh's King Vishtasp (in later language, Gushtasp) accepted Zarathushtra's teachings and became the patron king and defender of Zarathushtra's Mazdayasni faith. One tradition informs us that Zarathushtra died in Balkh. Some authors conclude that in addition to Bakhdhi / Balkh being one of the areas of Zarathushtra's ministry, that he was also born in Bakhdhi / Balkh. The Avesta, however, states that Zarathushtra was born in Airyana Vaeja, and the Vendidad lists Airyana Vaeja and Bakhdhi as separate nations, Airyana Vaeja being the first and Bakhdhi the fourth.
Bakhdhi would come to be known as Bakhtrish during Achaemenian times (675 - 330 BCE), Bactra city and greater Bactria from the Greek version of its name during Alexander's and the Seleucid occupation (330 - c. 246 BCE), and briefly Takharistan or Toharistan after the overthrow of the Seleucids. In 246 BCE, allied with Parthava (Parthia), Bakhdhi (Balkh) was one of the first Aryan nations to revolt against Seleucid rule. The "great and noble city" as Marco Polo called it, was destroyed by first by the Arabs and eventually by Mongols in 1220CE. Today, the site of the kingdom and its ancient city is called Balkh, and the once mighty kingdom has been reduced to the fairly small province in Afghanistan. Balkh's provincial capital is now Mazar-e Sharif, a city some twenty kilometres east of Balkh city. Our discussion on Bakhdhi includes the Greater Bakhdhi lands (see map above).
Near Mazar-e Sharif (present provincial capital)
Salang valley
History very literally flows through and around Bakhdhi. The central portion of a river famous in legend and history, the Amu Darya River - the section that is downstream from the Sherabad River - formed the border between Bakhdhi and Sughdha (the second ) in the northwest of Bakhdhi. The upper part of the Amu Darya River - upstream from the Sherabad River - ran through the heart of eastern Bakhdhi until it entered the Badakhshan / Pamir region. Across the Amu Darya, the kingdom of Sugd lay to the north, while the Badakhshan region and Pamir mountains lay to the east and northeast. The kingdom of Mouru (Merv) lay to Bakhdhi's northwest and west, and the kingdom of Haroyu (Harirud) lay across its south-western border.
The southern and south-eastern borders of Bakhdhi was formed by the Hindu Kush (meaning Hindu killer) mountains. The name Hindu Kush leads us a believe that the fifteenth Avestan nation, Hapta Hindu, the seven Indus lands, lay across the Hindu Kush, the mountains forming the border between the two nations, and further that the relations between the two neighbours on either side of the Hindu Kush were not always peaceful.
The Hindu Kush mountains
Balkh's desert
A modern-day mini caravan
The topography of ancient Bakhdhi included the varied landscape of fertile plains, deserts and rugged mountains. Balkh's desert lies to the north towards the Amu Darya River. The desert is famous in the legends of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.
The kingdom was renowned through the known world for it beauty, abundant crops, and a large variety of fruits. There are several almond and apricot orchards. While certain parts of Balkh are still relatively fertile, war and poor leadership has reduced the once famed land to a dusty shadow of its former self.
In ancient Bakhdhi, an excellent breed of sheep was raised in green lower slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains. Bakhdhi was also famous for a breed of camels known today as the Bactrian camel.
Bactrian Camel
Bactrian camel
The two-humped Bactrian camel was, if we may be forgiven this term, the work-horse of the caravans that plied the Silk Roads radiating north and south, east and west out of Bakhdhi. It was particularly suited to this task for it could carry heavy loads over great distances and through extremes in climate and temperature - from freezing cold to blistering heat.
While the Silk Roads have long since fallen into disuse, the Bactrian camel is still prized throughout the region as a beast of burden. The camels have a remarkable ability to go without water for months at a time, but when water is available they can drink up to 57 litres at once. When well fed, the camels store excess food in their humps which become plump. When food is not readily available, the camel uses this stored food and the humps shrink and lean to one side. They are steady walkers and fast runners. They can walk consistently for hours at an end, and they have been recorded as running at speeds up to 65 kmph / 40 mph. As pack animals, they are able to carry 170-270 kg / 375-600 lbs at a rate of 47 km per day, or 4 kmph over a period of four days. They can swim. see well and have a keen sense of smell.
It is no wonder that they were the preferred pack animal for caravans, and they must have played a significant role in Bakhdhi being a major trading centre on the ancient Silk Roads.
Bones of the camel have been found in the region dating back to the first half of the third millennium BCE. By the late third and early second millennium BCE, images of the Bactrian camel were being used in the iconography of copper stamp seals and figurines found in the Kopet Dag hills of neighbouring Turkmenistan, but which are thought have originated in Bakhdhi / Bactria.
Silk Roads Trading Centre
A caravan using Bactrian camels
As with all the other Avestan Vendidad nations, Balkh lay on the Aryan Trade Roads (also called the Silk Roads) and was a significant centre of trade as well as caravan a stop over point. Balkh lay at the junction of the east-west route (between China and Asia Minor) and the north-south route between Merv, the northern lands beyond and India in the south. The route through Balkh was the preferred route for traders between the west and India as it was shorter and provided the easiest route through the Hindu Kush.
Even today, the Provincial capital Mazar-e Sharif is an important trading centre, importing goods for distribution throughout Afghanistan and exporting goods to the rest of Central Asia. Locally grown almonds and apricots as well as other dried nuts and fruits have their own bazaar and are exported. A fledgling silk industry, a traditional Aryan occupation, has also started to re-emerge.
There is perhaps no greater testimony to Bakhdhi / Balkh being at the cross-roads of the Aryan world and trade than its multi-ethnic population. Broken up today into a multitude of northern Afghan provinces, greater Bakhdhi / Balkh is home to several ethnicities native to its surrounding regions. The pared-down province of present-day Balkh has a majority Tajik population (which may speak to the original Aryan migration from the east) surrounded by Uzbek and Turkmen populations. Also present are Pashtuns and Hazaras. In war ravaged Afghanistan, Balkh is a relatively peaceful province.
The languages spoken are Dari Persian spoken by ethnic Tajiks (50%), Pashto (27%), Turkmen (11.9%) and Uzbek (10.7%).
The Buzkashi is a team sport and a public tournament where the goal is for riders to grab the carcass of a goat or calf (often headless) from the ground while riding a horse at full gallop and to pitch it across a goal line, into a target circle, or into a container. Opposing riders try to stop others from picking up the carcass or carrying it to the goal. The opposition can be fairly violent.
Ancient Balkh City
Satellite image of ancient and modern Balkh cities. Base image courtesy Google Earth
The fortress wall of Balkh
One of the first impressions when looking at the panorama of a portion of the walls of the ancient city of Balkh (see banner at the top of this page) is its vastness. The walls encircle an area of about 1,000 acres (400 hectares) and some of the walls disappear into villages, while in other parts of the wall there live squatters. It is not without justification, that Balkh was called the mother of all cities during its prime. Archaeological excavation of the site could not begin until 2003.
According to some accounts, Zarathushtra made Balkh his home after King Vishtasp of Bakhdhi became a patron king of Zoroastrianism. By these accounts Zarathushtra also died in Balkh at the hands of a Turanian invader.
After a 1924 French excavation expedition that was looking for an ancient Alexandrian city, no professional archaeologist has been able to work in Balkh until recently, when the French returned an mapped out 135 sites of archaeological interest in the region. The treasure of information that may lie buried at Balkh still waits to be discovered and we can only hope that any discoveries do not instigate a wave of looting.
Cheshm-e-Shafa. The City of Infidels
In the spring of 2008 French and Afghan archaeologists announced that they had uncovered the ruins of a vast, hither-to unknown, ancient city at Cheshm-e-Shafa, the City of Infidels, some 20 miles (30 kilometres) from the ruins of Balkh fortress. They found centuries-old shards of pottery mingle with spent ammunition rounds from the recent civil war on Cheshm-e-Shafa's wind-swept mountainside.
For years, villagers have dug the baked earth on the heights of Cheshm-e-Shafa for pottery and coins to sell to antique smugglers. Tracts of the site look like a battleground, scarred by craters.
The name, City of Infidels, suggests the locals knew that this was once an important Zoroastrian city. The dig team have uncovered a 6-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) anvil-like stone believed to have been an altar at a fire temple dating back to around the 6th century BCE. An Afghan working at the excavation was anxious that media coverage could bring the unwanted attention of extremists to the site.
Excavations on the heights of Cheshm-e-Shafa
Excavations on the heights of Cheshm-e-Shafa
Surkh Kotal / Atashkadeh-ye Sorkh Kowtal
Surkh Kotal seen from afar Note the wide terraces leading to the top
In the predominantly Tajik northern Afghan province of Baghlan, about 32 km (20 miles) southwest of the town of Baghlan and 18.5 km (11.5 miles) north of the provincial capital of Pol-i Khomri, on the road to Mazar-e-Sharif, are the ruins of the Atashkadeh-ye Sorkh Kowtal (also spelt Surkh Kotal), a 1st century CE Zoroastrian fire temple believed to have been built by the Kushan emperor Kaniska I (c. 50 - 120 CE) whose statue was found within the temple.
The site was excavated archaeologically by 1952 and again in 1966 by Prof. Schlumberger of the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan. The ruins have since been plundered, statues stored in a museum smashed by the Taliban, and artefacts looted. A statue of the king has been pieced together by French conservationists.
Built on the top and side of a hill, the temple complex would have been a imposing site, before its destruction, towering over the vast valley plains below. It was accessed by a long flight of steps leading to a stairwell, above which was a monumental stairway some fifty five metres high, rising in four flights, flanked by four terraces, to the temple on top of the hill.
The stairs led to a temple containing a 11m. x 11m. sanctuary - a cella - in which there was a platform flanked by four columns, and on which rested a fire altar.
The terraces of Surkh Kotal when excavated
The terraces of Surkh Kotal today
Lower staircase
Kushan emperor Kaniska I
Altar platform inside the sanctuary
During excavations, three statues wearing trousers and a long mantle. One of the statues resembles a similar one found in Mathura, India and bears an inscription, "The great king, king of king, his majesty Kaniska." The script of the inscriptions is Greek while the language is Irano-Bactrian.
Layout plan of the sanctuary and staircase
Top sanctuary level and view of the valley plains
The texts of the inscriptions found at Surkh Kotal are similar to the the text of the inscriptions found at the Rabatak site just north of Surkh Kotal. The foundation inscription in the Bactrian language, was made up of a series of stone blocks that originally lined the front of the third terrace. One inscription at the entrance reads "Kaniska the Victorious", and another inscription records that the temple was restored by a local lord named Nukunzuk (Nokonzoko)who restored the water supply to the temple that had dried up.
Attached to the main building is a subsidiary fire-temple where a large pile of fine ash was found.
One report gives Chashma-i Shir and Sar-i Chashma as alternative names for Surkh Kotal.
Ancient Fire Temple of Naubahar / No Gombad
Video of the Atash Kadah (Fire Temple) at Naubahar / No Gombad. Narrated in the Dari / Farsi language
Design-work at the Gonbad ruins
The Naubahar / No Gombad ruins are located just south of the city of Balkh and are variously described as being those of a mosque, a Zoroastrian fire temple, and a fire temple that was converted into a Buddhist temple and then into a mosque. 'Nau' or 'no' can mean 'new' or 'nine'. 'Bahar' can mean 'spring'. 'No Gombad', a more recent name, means nine domes. The ruins are also known as Khoja Piada, Masjid-E Haji Piyada, and Haji Nau Peyodya (new walking pilgrim to Hajj). An alternative spelling is Noh Gumbad.
The indications are that the present structure, dated between 850 - 900 CE, was built over an earlier structure that could have been constructed as early as the first century BCE.
The structure measures some 20 by 20 metres or 65 by 65 feet. The design work on the columns also features a paisley-like boteh motif.
Various Islamic authors such as twelfth and thirteenth century CE Islamic authors, Yaqut ibn-Abdullah (al-Rumi) and Shams ibn-Khallikan, note that the Naubahar structure was a Zoroastrian temple. An earlier tenth century CE author, al-Masoudi, adds in Muruuju dh Dhabab that Barmak, the eponymous ancestor of the renowned Barmaki (also Barmakiyan) family was a Magian (cf. magi, Zoroastrian priests - a name that Islamic authors gave Zoroastrians) and high priest of great fire-temple at Naubahar.
The Barmaks / Barmaki / Barmakiyan
Tenth century CE Islamic author, al-Masoudi, wrote in Muruuju dh Dhabab that "He who exercised these functions (of high priest) was respected by the kings of this country and administered the wealth offered to the temple. He was called Barmak, a name given to those invested with this dignity, whence is derived the name of the Barmecides (Barmaki, from Baramika); for Khalid bin Barmak was the son of one of these great pontiffs."
The Barmakiyans appear to have adapted themselves quite well to Islamic rule, converting to Islam and making themselves indispensible to their Islamic overlords even becoming vazir (first mininster). Tenth century author, Ibn al-Nadim (a Persian with an Arabic name) is quoted as noting in his Kitab al-Fihrist (The Catalogue), that the Barmaki conversion to Islam was not considered as genuine.
Zakariya al-Qazwini (1203 - 1283 CE), another Persian author with an Arabic name, is quoted as having written in his geographical dictionary, Athar al-Bilad, that, "The Persians and Turks used to revere it (the Nawabahar temple) and perform pilgrimages to it and present offerings to it. Its length was one hundred cubits, its breadth the same, and its height somewhat more, and the care of it was invested in the Baramika. The Kings of India and China used to come to it, and when they reached it they worshipped and kissed Barmak's hand, and Barmak's rule was paramount in all these lands. And they ceased not, Barmak after Barmak, until Khurasan was conquered in the days of Uthman b. Affan and the guardship of the temple came at length to Barmak, the father of Khalid."
