|
Guldara Stupa
The Guldara stupa is not far from the village of Guldara (or ''Gol Darreh'') in, Kabul Province, Afghanistan, set on the summit of a high hill at the end of the Valley of Guldara ('Valley of Flowers'). It appears to have been established in the late 2nd century CE, as it contained six gold coins of the Kushan king Vima Kadphises ruled c. 113-127 CE, the father of Kanishka I, and two from Huvishka, Kanishka's son, who is thought to have ruled c. 150-190 CE. None of the coins appear very worn, and the two Huvishka coins look to be in almost mint condition. Description The Guldara stupa is about 22 km or 14 miles south of the city of Kabul. It is a large stupa, a solid mass made of rough stone and mud and is probably the best-preserved in Afghanistan. A small stupa, a replica of the main one, is set on the side of the hill and, nearby, are the remnants of a fortified monastery. Facing the monastery "was a group of very large standing figures" of which the excavators only found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Provinces Of Afghanistan
Afghanistan is divided into 34 provinces (, '' wilåyat''). The provinces of Afghanistan are the primary administrative divisions. Each province encompasses a number of districts or usually over 1,000 villages. Provincial governors played a critical role in the reconstruction of the Afghan state following the creation of the new government under Hamid Karzai. According to international security scholar Dipali Mukhopadhyay, many of the provincial governors of the western-backed government were former warlords who were incorporated into the political system. Provinces of Afghanistan Regions of Afghanistan UN Regions Former provinces of Afghanistan During Afghanistan's history it had a number of provinces in it. It started out as just Kabul, Herat, Qandahar, and Balkh but the number of provinces increased and by 1880 the provinces consisted of Balkh, Herat, Qandahar, Ghazni, Jalalabad, and Kabul. * Southern Province – dissolved in 1964 to create Paktia Provinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schist
Schist ( ) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock showing pronounced schistosity. This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a low-power hand lens, oriented in such a way that the rock is easily split into thin flakes or plates. This texture (geology), texture reflects a high content of platy minerals, such as micas, talc, chlorite group, chlorite, or graphite. These are often interleaved with more granular minerals, such as feldspar or quartz. Schist typically forms during regional metamorphism accompanying the process of mountain building (orogeny) and usually reflects a medium Metamorphism#Metamorphic grades, grade of metamorphism. Schist can form from many different kinds of rocks, including sedimentary rocks such as mudstones and igneous rocks such as tuffs. Schist metamorphosed from mudstone is particularly common and is often very rich in mica (a ''mica schist''). Where the type of the original rock (the protolith) is discernible, the schist is us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddhism In Afghanistan
Buddhism, an Indian religion founded by Gautama Buddha, first arrived in modern-day Afghanistan through the conquests of Ashoka (), the third emperor of the Maurya Empire. Among the earliest notable sites of Buddhist influence in the country is a bilingual mountainside inscription in Greek and Aramaic that dates back to 260 BCE and was found on the rocky outcrop of Chil Zena near Kandahar. Many prominent Buddhist monks were based in Afghanistan during this period: Menander I (), a Greco-Bactrian king, was a renowned patron of Buddhism and is immortalized in the ''Milinda Panha'', a Pali-language Buddhist text; Mahadharmaraksita, a 2nd-century BCE Indo-Greek monk, is said to have led 30,000 Buddhist monks from "Alasandra, the city of the Yonas" (a colony of Alexander the Great, located approximately to the north of modern-day Kabul) to Sri Lanka for the dedication of the Mahathupa in Anuradhapura, according to the ''Mahavamsa'' (Chap. XXIX); Lokaksema, a 2nd-century Ku ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kushan Empire
The Kushan Empire ( grc, Βασιλεία Κοσσανῶν; xbc, Κυϸανο, ; sa, कुषाण वंश; Brahmi: , '; BHS: ; xpr, 𐭊𐭅𐭔𐭍 𐭇𐭔𐭕𐭓, ; zh, 貴霜 ) was a syncretic empire, formed by the Yuezhi, in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of modern-day territory of, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and northern India, at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares), where inscriptions have been found dating to the era of the Kushan Emperor Kanishka the Great. The Kushans were most probably one of five branches of the Yuezhi confederation, an Indo-European nomadic people of possible Tocharian origin, who migrated from northwestern China (Xinjiang and Gansu) and settled in ancient Bactria. The founder of the dynasty, Kujula Kadphises, followed Greek religious ideas and iconography after the Greco-Bactrian tradition, and being a follower of Shaivism. The Kushans in general were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.Among the national museums in London, sculpture and decorative and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings. The National Gallery holds the national collection of Western European art to about 1900, while art of the 20th century on is at Tate Modern. Tate Britain holds British Art from 1500 onwards. Books, manuscripts and many works on paper are in the British Library. There are significant overlaps between the coverage of the various collections. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. The museum was established in 1753, largely b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nancy Hatch Dupree
Nancy Hatch Dupree ( ps, نانسي دوپري, translit=Nansi dupri; October 3, 1927 – September 10, 2017) was an American-Afghan historian whose work primarily focused on the history of modern Afghanistan. She was the director of the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University and author of five books that she compiled while studying the history of Afghanistan from 1962 until the late 1970s, writing about tourism and history of Bamyan, Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and so on. She was fondly called the "grandmother of Afghanistan", having spent more of her life there or with Afghans abroad. Early life and education Nancy Dupree was born as Nancy Hatch in Cooperstown, New York. She spent most of her childhood in India, then under the British Raj. Her parents were working in Kerala, where her father was an adviser to the Maharaja of Travancore. Her mother, a Broadway actress, was drawn to Indian art and theatrical dance forms and embarked on the first PhD on Kathakali in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encyclopedia Iranica
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries. Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on '' factual information'' concerning the subject named in the article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, such as their etymology, meaning, pronunciation, use, and grammatical forms.Béjoint, Henri (2000)''Modern Lexicography'', pp. 30–31. Oxford University Press. Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years and have evolved considerably during that time as regards language (written in a major international or a vernac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Masson
Charles Masson (1800–1853) was the pseudonym of James Lewis, a British East India Company soldier and reporter, independent explorer and pioneering archaeologist and numismatist. He was the first European to discover the ruins of Harappa near Sahiwal in Punjab, now in Pakistan. He found the ancient city of Alexandria in the Caucasus (modern Begram) dating to Alexander the Great. He unlocked the now-extinct language known as Kharoshthi. At the time of the 1838 First Anglo-Afghan War, Masson had spent more time in Afghanistan then any other British subject. He was a minority voice critical of the invasion and accurately predicted it would be a disaster for the Empire. The first book-length biography was published in 2021, ''Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City'', by Edmund Richardson. Early life British by birth, Masson joined the Bengal Artillery wing of the East India Company Army in India. Travels In 1827, while stationed at Agra, he and a colleague deserted and tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reliquary
A reliquary (also referred to as a ''shrine'', by the French term ''châsse'', and historically including ''wikt:phylactery, phylacteries'') is a container for relics. A portable reliquary may be called a ''fereter'', and a chapel in which it is housed a ''feretory''. Relics may be the purported or actual physical remains of saints, such as bones, pieces of clothing, or some object associated with saints or other religious figures. The authenticity of any given relic is often a matter of debate; it is for that reason, some churches require documentation of the relic's provenance. Relics have long been important to Buddhism, Buddhists, Christianity, Christians, Hinduism, Hindus and to followers of many other religions. In these cultures, reliquaries are often presented in shrines, churches, or temples to which the faithful make pilgrimages in order to gain blessings. The term is sometimes used loosely of containers for the body parts of non-religious figures; in particular the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kushan
The Kushan Empire ( grc, Βασιλεία Κοσσανῶν; xbc, Κυϸανο, ; sa, कुषाण वंश; Brahmi: , '; BHS: ; xpr, 𐭊𐭅𐭔𐭍 𐭇𐭔𐭕𐭓, ; zh, 貴霜 ) was a syncretic empire, formed by the Yuezhi, in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of modern-day territory of, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and northern India, at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares), where inscriptions have been found dating to the era of the Kushan Emperor Kanishka the Great. The Kushans were most probably one of five branches of the Yuezhi confederation, an Indo-European nomadic people of possible Tocharian origin, who migrated from northwestern China (Xinjiang and Gansu) and settled in ancient Bactria. The founder of the dynasty, Kujula Kadphises, followed Greek religious ideas and iconography after the Greco-Bactrian tradition, and being a follower of Shaivism. The Kushans in general were a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kabul Province
Kabul (Persian: ), situated in the east of the country, is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. The capital of the province is Kabul city, which is also Afghanistan's capital and largest city. The population of the Kabul Province is over 5 million people as of 2020, of which over 85 percent live in urban areas. The current governor of the province is Qari Baryal. It borders the provinces of Parwan to the north, Kapisa to the north-east, Laghman to the east, Nangarhar to the south-east, Logar to the south, and Wardak to the west. Geography Kabul is located between Latitude 34-31' North and Longitude 69-12' East at an altitude of 1800 m (6000 feet) above sea level, which makes it one of the world's highest capital cities. Kabul is strategically situated in a valley surrounded by high mountains at crossroads of north-south and east-west trade routes. One million years ago the Kabul region was surrounded from south-east between Lowgar and Paghman Mountains ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corinthian Column
The Corinthian order (Greek: Κορινθιακός ρυθμός, Latin: ''Ordo Corinthius'') is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order which was the earliest, followed by the Ionic order. In Ancient Greek architecture, the Corinthian order follows the Ionic in almost all respects other than the capitals of the columns. When classical architecture was revived during the Renaissance, two more orders were added to the canon: the Tuscan order and the Composite order. The Corinthian, with its offshoot the Composite, is the most ornate of the orders. This architectural style is characterized by slender fluted columns and elaborate capitals decorated with acanthus leaves and scrolls. There are many variations. The name ''Corinthian'' is derived from the ancient Greek city of Corinth, although the style had its own model in Roman practice, following precedents set by the Te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Corinthian Column")