Bagram (;
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
/ fa, بگرام) is a town and seat in
Bagram District
Bagram District ( prs, ولسوالی بگرام) is a Districts of Afghanistan, district of Parwan Province, Afghanistan. Its seat lies at Bagram, which lies about 60 kilometers north of the capital of Kabul. It borders Kabul District to the so ...
in
Parwan Province
Parwan (Dari: ), also spelled Parvan, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 751,000. The province is multi-ethnic and mostly rural society. The province is divided into ten districts. The town of Imam Abu Hani ...
of
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
, about 60 kilometers north of the capital
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...
. It is the site of an ancient city located at the junction of the
Ghorband and
Panjshir Valley
The Panjshir Valley (also spelled Panjsher or Darah-I-Panjshir; Pashto/Dari: – ''Dare-ye Panjšēr''; literally ''Valley of the Five Lions'') is a valley in northeastern Afghanistan, north of Kabul, near the Hindu Kush mountain range. It is di ...
, near today's city of
Charikar
Imam Abu Hanifa ( fa, امام ابو حنیفه), historically known as Charikar (Persian: چاریکار) but renamed by Talibans recently to Imam Abu Hanifa, is the main town of the Koh Daman Valley and the capital of Parwan Province in northe ...
, Afghanistan. The location of this historical town made it a key passage from
Ancient India
According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...
along the
Silk Road, leading westwards through the mountains towards
Bamiyan, and north over the
Kushan Pass
The Kushan Pass or Kaoshan Pass (el. about 4,370 m or 14,340 ft) is a mountain pass just west of the famous Salang Pass (3,878 m. or 12,723 ft.) in the Hindu Kush mountain range of northern Afghanistan. These two passes provided the most ...
to the
Baghlan
Baghlan (Dari: بغلان ''Baġlān'') is a city in northern Afghanistan, in the eponymous province, Baghlan Province. It is located three miles east of the Kunduz River, 35 miles south of Khanabad, and about 500 metres above sea level in the ...
Valley and past the Kushan archeological site at
Surkh Kotal, to the commercial centre of
Balkh and the rest of northern Afghanistan. Bagram was also a capital of Kushan empire
Climate
According to the
Köppen climate classification
The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...
system, Bagram has a hot-summer
humid continental
A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freez ...
climate (''Dsa'') with brief, but cold winters and long, hot and dry summers. Precipitation is most likely between the months of October and April. Dust storms and sand storms occur frequently during certain times of the year and the city is often blanketed by snow in winter months. The annual mean temperature is
History
Ancient history
The ancient city of
Kapisi
Kapisi (, ) or Kapisa was the capital city of the former Kingdom of Kapisa (now part of modern Afghanistan). While the name of the kingdom has been used for the modern Kapisa Province, the ancient city of Kapisa was located in Parwan Province, ...
is identified with present-day Bagram. The figures of ancient
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
and
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
sculptures show that the city was initially ruled by
Indic people
Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse collection of Indo-European peoples speaking Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent. Historically, Aryan were the Indo-European pastoralists who migrated from Central Asia into South Asia and intr ...
who have either migrated or intermingled with the
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
populations who moved into the region like
Kambojas
Kamboja ( sa, कम्बोज) was a kingdom of Iron Age India that spanned parts of South and Central Asia, frequently mentioned in Sanskrit and Pali literature. Eponymous with the kingdom name, the Kambojas were an Indo-Iranian people o ...
from
Bactria.
While the
Diadochi
The Diadochi (; singular: Diadochus; from grc-gre, Διάδοχοι, Diádochoi, Successors, ) were the rival generals, families, and friends of Alexander the Great who fought for control over his empire after his death in 323 BC. The War ...
were warring amongst themselves, the
Mauryan Empire was developing in the northern part of the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
. The founder of the empire,
Chandragupta Maurya, confronted a Macedonian invasion force led by
Seleucus I
Seleucus I Nicator (; ; grc-gre, Σέλευκος Νικάτωρ , ) was a Macedonian Greek general who was an officer and successor ( ''diadochus'') of Alexander the Great. Seleucus was the founder of the eponymous Seleucid Empire. In the pow ...
in 305 BC and following a brief conflict, an agreement was reached as Seleucus ceded
Gandhara and
Arachosia
Arachosia () is the Hellenized name of an ancient satrapy situated in the eastern parts of the Achaemenid empire. It was centred around the valley of the Arghandab River in modern-day southern Afghanistan, and extended as far east as the ...
(centered on ancient
Kandahar
Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118. It is the c ...
) and areas south of Bagram (corresponding to the extreme south-east of modern Afghanistan) to the Mauryans. During the 120 years of the Mauryans in southern Afghanistan, Buddhism was introduced and eventually become a major religion alongside Zoroastrianism and local pagan beliefs.
Bagram became the capital of the
Kushan Empire in the first century. The "Bagram treasure" as it has been called, is indicative of intense commercial exchanges between all the cultural centers of the classical time, with the Kushan empire at the junction of the land and sea trade between the east and west. However, the works of art found in Bagram, such as the
Begram ivories, are either quite purely Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese or Indian, with only little indications of the cultural
syncretism found in
Greco-Buddhist art.
Islamic conquest
The
Islamic conquest of Afghanistan
The Muslim conquests of Afghanistan began during the Muslim conquest of Persia as the Arab Muslims migrated eastwards to Khorasan, Sistan and Transoxiana. Fifteen years after the Battle of Nahāvand in 642 AD, they controlled all Sasanian dom ...
and the adjoining Pashtun region began in seventh century right after
conquest of Persia. However, the complete Islamization of Afghanistan wasn't achieved until the
Ghaznavid
The Ghaznavid dynasty ( fa, غزنویان ''Ġaznaviyān'') was a culturally Persianate, Sunni Muslim dynasty of Turkic ''mamluk'' origin, ruling, at its greatest extent, large parts of Persia, Khorasan, much of Transoxiana and the northwest ...
rule. The modern-day town is believed to be founded by
Babur at the site of the ancient city. In Babur's memoirs, the ''
Baburnama'', the emphasis of his visit in 1519 is on the colony of Hindu ascetics at Gurh Kattri (Kur Katri), who fascinated him.
Recent history
Bagram hosts the strategic
Bagram Airfield
Bagram Airfield-BAF, also known as Bagram Air Base , is located southeast of Charikar in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan. It is under the Afghan Ministry of Defense. Sitting on the site of the ancient Bagram at an elevation of above sea lev ...
, from which most US air activity in Afghanistan took place. The runway was built in 1976, and it was a
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
air base
An air base (sometimes referred to as a military air base, military airfield, military airport, air station, naval air station, air force station, or air force base) is an aerodrome used as a military base by a military force for the operation ...
from 1979 to 1989. There was also a
Provincial Reconstruction Team
A Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) was a unit introduced by the United States government, consisting of military officers, diplomats, and reconstruction subject matter experts, working to support reconstruction efforts in unstable states. PRT ...
when the US were present in Afghanistan and implemented their counter-insurgency strategy.
Bagram is also the location of the
Parwan Detention Facility
The Parwan Detention Facility (also called Detention Facility in Parwan or Bagram prison) is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. during ...
; this detention facility was the last prison in Afghanistan under management of the US. It was handed back to the Afghan government on 25 March 2013.
[Aljazeera news]
US hands over Bagram prison to Afghanistan
25 March 2013 The detention centre had earlier come into the attention of the news media as it was claimed that prisoners were tortured (see the article
Bagram torture and prisoner abuse
In 2005, '' The New York Times'' obtained a 2,000-page United States Army investigatory report concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. military personnel in December 2002 at the Bagram Theater Internment Facil ...
). At the time of the hand-over of the facility, human-rights groups like
Amnesty International have raised concerns about the treatment of prisoners there.
On December 21, 2015, Bagram was the site of a
suicide bombing killing 6 people.
On July 1, 2021, US troops departed from the air base, abandoning the outpost over to the Afghan government after 20 years. According to the Afghan commander at the time, the US evacuated the base during the night without any previous official notice to the Afghan army.
See also
*
Bagram District
Bagram District ( prs, ولسوالی بگرام) is a Districts of Afghanistan, district of Parwan Province, Afghanistan. Its seat lies at Bagram, which lies about 60 kilometers north of the capital of Kabul. It borders Kabul District to the so ...
*
Parwan Province
Parwan (Dari: ), also spelled Parvan, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 751,000. The province is multi-ethnic and mostly rural society. The province is divided into ten districts. The town of Imam Abu Hani ...
Footnotes
References
* ''The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, Including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang''.
Alexander Cunningham. Trübner and Co., London. Complete and unabridged reprint (2006): Low Price Publications, Delhi.
*''Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul'' (2008). Eds., Friedrik Hiebert and Pierre Cambon. National Geographic, Washington, D.C. .
External links
Map of Bagram and the surrounding area, Afghanistan Information Management Service (AIMS)
*Human Rights First
Undue Process: An Examination of Detention and Trials of Bagram Detainees in Afghanistan in April 2009 (2009)*Human Rights First
Arbitrary Justice: Trial of Guantánamo and Bagram Detainees in Afghanistan (2008)
{{Authority control
Populated places in Parwan Province
Populated places along the Silk Road