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Bamyan Province
Bamyan Province ( prs, ولایت بامیان) also spelled Bamiyan, Bāmīān or Bāmyān is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the central highlands of the Afghanistan. The terrain in Bamyan is mountainous or semi-mountainous, at the western end of the Hindu Kush mountains concurrent with the Himalayas. The province is divided into eight districts, with the town of Bamyan serving as its capital. The province has a population of about 495,557 and borders Samangan to the north, Baghlan, Parwan and Wardak to the east, Ghazni and Daykundi to the south, and Ghor and Sar-e Pol to the west. It is the largest province in the Hazarajat region of Afghanistan and is the cultural capital of the Hazara ethnic group that predominates in the area. It was a center of commerce and Buddhism in the 4th and 5th centuries. In antiquity, central Afghanistan was strategically placed to thrive from the Silk Road caravans that crisscrossed the region, trading betwe ...
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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 P ...
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Daykundi Province
Daykundi ( prs, دایکندی) also spelled as Daikundi, Daykondi, Daikondi or Dai Kundi, is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the central part of the country. It has a population of about 516,504, and is a Hazara Province. Daykundi Province was carved out of the northern part of Uruzgan Province in 2004, becoming a separate province. It falls into the traditionally ethnic Hazara region known as the Hazaristan (Hazarajat) and the provincial capital is Nili. It is surrounded by Bamyan Province in the northeast, Ghazni Province in the southeast, Uruzgan Province in the south, Helmand Province in the southwest, and Ghor Province in the northwest. History Daykundi was established on March 28, 2004, when it was created from the isolated Hazara-dominated northern districts of neighboring Uruzgan Province. Development and security The province maintains its own security through the Afghan police and military. While the Government of Afghanistan, ...
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Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins,  3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene,  11,650 cal BP. The Paleolithic Age in Europe preceded the Mesolithic Age, although the date of the transition varies geographically by several thousand years. During the Paleolithic Age, hominins grouped together in small societies such as bands and subsisted by gathering plants, fishing, and hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic Age is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, incl ...
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Band-e Amir National Park
__NOTOC__ Band-e Amir National Park ( fa, بند امیر) Afghanistan established its first national park on April 22, 2009, to promote and protect the natural beauty of a series of intensely blue lakes created by natural dams high in the Hindu Kush. Band-e-Amir is a chain of six lakes in the mountainous desert of central Afghanistan. The lakes formed from mineral-rich water that seeped out of faults and cracks in the rocky landscape. Over time, the water deposited layers of hardened mineral (travertine) that built up into walls that now contain the water. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, who helped the Afghan government set up the park, Band-e-Amir is one of the few travertine systems in the world. They were created by the carbon dioxide rich water oozing out of the faults and fractures to deposit calcium carbonate precipitate in the form of travertine walls that today store the water of these lakes. Band-e Amir is one of the few rare natural lakes in the world ...
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Buddhas Of Bamiyan
The Buddhas of Bamiyan (or Bamyan) were two 6th-century monumental statues carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of Hazarajat region in central Afghanistan, northwest of Kabul at an elevation of . Carbon dating of the structural components of the Buddhas has determined that the smaller "Eastern Buddha" was built around 570 CE, and the larger "Western Buddha" was built around 618 CE, which would date both to the time when the Hephthalites ruled the region. The statues represented a later evolution of the classic blended style of ancient art in Afghanistan. Present-day inhabitants of the area, who follow Islam and speak the Hazaragi dialect of Dari Persian, call the larger statue Salsal ("the light shines through the universe") and identify it as male. The shorter statue is called Shamama ("Queen Mother") identifying it as a female figure. Technically both were reliefs, as at their backs they merged into the cliff wall. The main bodies were hewn directly from the ...
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Greco-Buddhism
Greco-Buddhism, or Graeco-Buddhism, is the cultural syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism, which developed between the fourth century BC and the fifth century AD in Gandhara, in present-day north-western Pakistan and parts of north-east Afghanistan. It was a cultural consequence of a long chain of interactions begun by Greek forays into India from the time of Alexander the Great. A few years after Alexander's death, the Easternmost fringes of the empire of his general Seleucus were lost in a war with the Mauryan Empire, under the reign of Chandragupta Maurya. The Mauryan Emperor Ashoka would convert to Buddhism and spread the religious philosophy throughout his domain, as recorded in the Edicts of Ashoka. This spread to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, which itself seceded from the Seleucid empire. Within its borders, the Greek fondness for statuary produced the first statues of the Buddha, leading ultimately to the modern tradition. Following the collapse of the Maur ...
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South Asia
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;;;;; Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and defined largely by the Indian Ocean on the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir mountains on the north. The Amu Darya, which rises north of the Hindu Kush, forms part of the northwestern border. On land (clockwise), South Asia is bounded by Western Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is an economic cooperation organization in the region which was established in 1985 and includes all eight nations comprising South Asia. South Asia covers about , which is 11.71% of the Asian continent or 3.5% of the world's land surface area. The population of South Asia is about 1.9 billion or a ...
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Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which are colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as the countries all have names ending with the Persian suffix " -stan", meaning "land of". The current geographical location of Central Asia was formerly part of the historic region of Turkistan, also known as Turan. In the pre-Islamic and early Islamic eras ( and earlier) Central Asia was inhabited predominantly by Iranian peoples, populated by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians, Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Dahae. After expansion by Turkic peoples, Central Asia also became the homeland for the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tatars, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Uyghurs; ...
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Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the East and West. The name "Silk Road", first coined in the late 19th century, has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe. The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk textiles that were produced almost exclusively in China. The network began with the Han dynasty's expansion into Central Asia around 114 BCE, which largely pacified the once untamed region. Imperial envoy Zhang Qian was commissioned to explore the unknown lands beyond the regio ...
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Buddhism
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 gradually spread throughout much of Asia via the Silk Road. It is the world's fourth-largest religion, with over 520 million followers (Buddhists) who comprise seven percent of the global population. The Buddha taught the Middle Way, a path of spiritual development that avoids both extreme asceticism and hedonism. It aims at liberation from clinging and craving to things which are impermanent (), incapable of satisfying ('), and without a lasting essence (), ending the cycle of death and rebirth (). A summary of this path is expressed in the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind with observance of Buddhist ethics and meditation. Other widely observed practices include: monasticism; " taking refuge" in the Buddha, the , and ...
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Hazara People
The Hazaras ( fa, , Həzārə; haz, , Āzərə) are an ethnic group and the principal component of the population of Afghanistan, native to, and primarily residing in the Hazaristan (Hazarajat) region in central Afghanistan and generally scattered throughout Afghanistan. They are one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and are also significant minority groups in neighboring Pakistan, mostly in Quetta, and as well as in Iran. They speak the Hazaragi dialect of Persian, which is mutually intelligible with Dari, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. Hazaras are considered to be one of the most persecuted groups in Afghanistan, and their persecution has occurred various times across previous decades. Etymology The etymology of the word "Hazara" remains disputed, but some have differing views on the term. *Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire in the early 16th century, records the name "Hazara" in Baburnama. He has mentioned "Hazara" as "Turkoman H ...
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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 bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. , its population is 40.2 million (officially estimated to be 32.9 million), composed mostly of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. Kabul is the country's largest city and serves as its capital. Human habitation in Afghanistan dates back to the Middle Paleolithic era, and the country's strategic location along the historic Silk Road has led it to being described, picturesquely, as the ‘ro ...
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