History Of Buddhism In Afghanistan

The Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, carved in the sixth century AD, represented two aspects of the Buddha, universal and historical. In March 2001 the Taliban destroyed them. They were massive, 55m and 38m tall, hewn out of the solid rock face and it took weeks to bring them down. The Buddhas have a remarkable story to tell, from their creation at a time when Greek culture left behind by conquest influenced Buddhism to their role in the lead up to the destruction of two other colossi from a different era in New York in that same year. A book about the Buddhas is also a book about Bamiyan, a place that occupies one of the most strategic positions on earth and is also stunningly beautiful. And about the remarkable Hazara people who live in that valley and have played a central historical role in the history of the whole region. It is rare that a historical account of an extraordinary monument can also be of urgent contemporary relevance.

'Who is she?' asks a voice. 'A foreigner,' someone answers. 'No, she's Afghan. Can't you tell?' 'She is not Afghan - she is writing.' A young boy of about ten sidles up to me and watches my notebook intently. He looks completely puzzled. He doesn't understand that a woman can write. The image of a woman holding a pen is far more alluring and powerful than anything the politicians here today have to say. The crowd grows and grows. Some laugh and point. I am conscious of my black scarf slipping from my head. Hamida Ghafour's family fled Afghanistan after the Russian invasion, when she was just a child. In 2003 she goes back as a journalist to cover her country's reconstruction, and finds it utterly unlike the world her parents have brought her up to believe in. In the Kabul of the 1970s, women wore miniskirts and drove buses; now few dare leave the house without the chadari. It is a society divided: between communists and mujahideen, between those who stayed and those who left - like Hamida herself. All around her is the West's first post-9/11 experiment with Islamic democracy. But the ordinary people she meets are engaged in a different kind of nation building: a 'beautician without borders' whose school teaches its female pupils economic independence; a woman campaigning fiercely against warlords and armed thugs for a seat in her country's new parliament; an archaeologist digging for a giant sleeping Buddha, a symbol of Afghanistan's lost civilisation. Hamida must sift through the rubble of her family's past to understand the nation's future - and to reclaim her sense of what it means to be Afghan.

This Open Access book explores heritage conservation ethics of post conflict and provides an important historical record of the possible reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in Danger in 2003 as “Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley”. With the condition that most surface of the original fragments of the Buddha statues were lost due to acts of deliberate destruction, this publication explores a reference point for conservation practitioners and policy makers around the world as they consider how to respond to on-going acts of destruction of cultural heritage. Whilst there has been an emerging debate to the ethics and nature of heritage reconstruction, this volume provides a plethora of ideas and approaches concerning the future treatment of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. It also addresses a number of fundamental questions on potential heritage reconstruction: how it will be done; who will decide; and what it should be done for. Moreover when it comes to the inscribed World Heritage properties, how can reconstructed heritage using non-original materials be considered to retain authenticity? With a view to serving as a precedent for potential decisions taken elsewhere in the world for cultural properties impacted by acts of violence and destruction, this volume introduces academic researches, experiences and observations of heritage conservation theory and practice of heritage reconstruction. It also addresses the issue not merely from the point of a material conservation philosophy but within the context of holistic strategies for the protection of human rights and promotion of peace building.

In the contemporary world the meeting of Buddhism and Islam is most often imagined as one of violent confrontation. Indeed, the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 seemed not only to reenact the infamous Muslim destruction of Nalanda monastery in the thirteenth century but also to reaffirm the stereotypes of Buddhism as a peaceful, rational philosophy and Islam as an inherently violent and irrational religion. But if Buddhist-Muslim history was simply repeated instances of Muslim militants attacking representations of the Buddha, how had the Bamiyan Buddha statues survived thirteen hundred years of Muslim rule? Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road demonstrates that the history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction is much richer and more complex than many assume. This groundbreaking book covers Inner Asia from the eighth century through the Mongol empire and to the end of the Qing dynasty in the late nineteenth century. By exploring the meetings between Buddhists and Muslims along the Silk Road from Iran to China over more than a millennium, Johan Elverskog reveals that this long encounter was actually one of profound cross-cultural exchange in which two religious traditions were not only enriched but transformed in many ways.