Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Arrian, who chronicled Alexander the Great's invasion of India
in 327 BC , describes places the Macedonian armies visited after
crossing the Hindu Kush and before going on to cross the Indus.
Many of these are recognisably Pathan territory today.
Any aspects of Greek civilisation that Alexander and his successor
left on the Frontier were swiftly absorbed by the Mauryans, a Hindu
dynasty that converted to Buddhism in the third and second centuries
before the Christian era. They created an extraordinary civilisation
described as 'Greco-Buddhist' and known now as Gandhara. Only
recently have historians and archaeologists appreciated the extent of
this unique culture. Some of the archaeological digs represent the
largest in history.
For the thousand years that followed that period, however, there
is silence. Scant records list Central Asian tribes that harassed the
frontier, but that is all: the Parthians, the Sakas, the Kushans, the Yueh-
Chi, the White Huns or Epthelites.
By the close of the tenth century, the tribes reappear in history
books. They had already been converted to Islam by then, many
joining up with the armies of the infamous Mahmoud of Gazni, a
Turkish freebooter who invaded Hindu India a full seventeen times
in the opening years of the second millennium AD . During this
period the name Afghan was first employed in describing these hill
tribes.
Ghengis Khan pursued the fleeing Iranian king down into the
Peshawar Valley in 1221, five days behind his enemy at Kabul, so
the story goes, and closing the gap to only half a day behind when
he reached Naoshera. At the end of the fourteenth century, Ghengis's
descendant, Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane, invaded India from
Samarkand. Afghan tribes who had by now moved down from the
hills, building forts in the area near Kohat and Bannu, blocked
Timur's triumphant return from Delhi. These same tribes took
advantage of the havoc Timur wreaked in India, too. The Afghan
chief, Bahlol Lodi, boldly overran Delhi with his army and established
a dynasty there that survived for seventy-five years.
By 1505, when Babur - yet another descendant of Ghengis Khan
- launched his own invasion of India, the one that would found the
Moghul Empire, the hill tribes had divided themselves up into fairly
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