No history of China, India, Persia or Russia can be fully understood without continual reference to central Asia. At the heart of the region lie the deserts & mountain range of Afghanistan that even today remain largely unexplored. Yet in the past Afghanistan saw the rise of great cities, empires & civilizations such as the Kushan in the first few centuries AD, the Ghaznavid in the 11th century, & the Timurid in the 15th. Despite bearing witness to ancient & more recent battles, the scarred landscape of Afghanistan is strewn with the monuments to illustrate this rich history: from the recently uncovered Ai Khanum in the north-east & the spectacular 12th century minarets at Jam in the mountains of the west, to the magnificent palatial complexes of the 11th century sultans at Lashkar Bazar in the south & what remains of the 5th & 7th century Buddhist world of Bamiyan in the Hindu Kush
- notoriously destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. This book provides a general background to the history & cultural heritage of Afghanistan. It
Includes:: broad summaries of the history, architecture & archeology, together with a gazetteer of the main monuments & archeological sites.