Kandahar
Kandahar is a city in southern Afghanistan, serving as the capital and largest city of Kandahar Province. It is within the jurisdiction of Kandahar District and has an estimated population of 732,629 settled residents. Mullah Hekmatullah is the current mayor of the city. His predecessor was Haji Nimatullah Hassan.
Kandahar is located between the Arghandab River and the Tarnak River, at an elevation of approximately above sea level. It is the center of the larger cultural region called Loy Kandahar. The Kandahar Municipality is administratively divided into 15 city districts, covering a land area of. It has a number of industrial parks, public parks, bazaars, business centers, banks, hotels, restaurants, mosques, hospitals, universities, tourist sites, and places to play sports or just relax.
The region around Kandahar is one of the oldest known areas of human settlement. A major fortified city existed at the site of Kandahar, probably as early as 1000–750 BC, and it became an important outpost of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC. Alexander the Great laid the foundation of what is now Old Kandahar in the 4th century BC and named it Alexandria Arachosia. Many empires have long fought over the city due to its strategic location along the trade routes of southern, central and western Asia. In 1709, Mirwais Hotak turned the region into an independent kingdom and made Kandahar the capital of the Hotak dynasty. In 1747, Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Durrani dynasty, made Kandahar the capital of the Durrani Empire. It was briefly occupied by the British in the 19th century, the Soviets in the 1980s, and recently by NATO forces.
Kandahar is the founding city and spiritual center of the Taliban. Despite the nation's capital being Kabul, where all government ministries and institutions are based, Kandahar is the seat of power in Afghanistan as the supreme leader and his spiritual advisers are based there. Kandahar has therefore been called the de facto capital of Afghanistan, though the Taliban maintain Kabul as the official capital.
Kandahar is one of the most culturally significant cities of the Pashtun community and has been their traditional seat of power for more than 300 years. It is a major industrial and trading center. The region produces some of the finest fruits, especially grapes and pomegranates, and the city has plants for canning, drying, and packing fruits.
Name
The modern name of the city derives from the name of the original city built here, Alexandria. This city was founded after the invasion of Alexander the Great in 330 BC. The name "Alexander" in the local Pashto language is rendered as "Iskandar". It is believed that over time this transformed into "Scandar", and eventually the modern "Kandahar". The change of the name from "Scandar" to Candar is mentioned by the 16th-century Portuguese historian João de Barros in his most famous work, Décadas da Ásia.A folk etymology offered is that the word "kand" or "qand" in Persian and Pashto is the origin of the word "candy". The name "Candahar" or "Kandahar" in this form probably translates to candy area. This probably has to do with the location being fertile and historically known for producing fine grapes, pomegranates, apricots, melons and other sweet fruits.
Ernst Herzfeld claimed Kandahar perpetuated the name of the Indo-Parthian king Gondophares, who re-founded the city under the name Gundopharron. However, modern historians and linguists generally find this derivation implausible.
History
Prehistory
Excavations of prehistoric sites by archaeologists such as Louis Dupree and others suggest that the region around Kandahar is one of the oldest known human settlements known so far.British excavations in the 1970s discovered that Kandahar existed as a large fortified city during the early 1st millennium BC; while this earliest period at Kandahar has not been precisely dated via radiocarbon, ceramic comparisons with the latest period at the major Bronze Age city of Mundigak have suggested an approximate time-frame of 1000 to 750 BC. This fortified city became an important outpost of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th to 4th centuries BC, and formed part of the province of Arachosia.
Ancient history
The main inhabitants of Arachosia were the Pakhtas, an ancient Indo-Iranian tribe, who might have been among the ancestors of today's Pashtuns. Mundigak served as the provincial capital of Arachosia and was ruled by the Medes followed by the Achaemenids until the arrival of the Macedonians. The now called "Old Kandahar" was founded in 330 BC by Alexander the Great, near the site of the ancient city of Mundigak. Kandahar was named Alexandria, a name given to some cities that Alexander founded during his conquests.Kandahar was a frequent target for conquest because of its strategic location in Asia, controlling the main trade route linking the Indian subcontinent with the Middle East and Central Asia. The territory became part of the Seleucid Empire after the death of Alexander. The city eventually became part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and continued that way for two hundred years under the later Indo-Greek Kingdom.
File:AsokaKandahar.jpg|thumb|left|Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription by Emperor Ashoka, from the Chilzina Complex in Kandahar, 3rd century BC.
It is mentioned by Strabo that a treaty of friendship was established eventually between the Greeks and the Mauryas. While the Diadochi were warring amongst themselves, the Mauryas were developing in the northern part of Hindustan. The founder of the empire, Chandragupta Maurya, confronted a Macedonian invasion force led by Seleucus I in 305 BC and following a brief conflict, an agreement was reached as Seleucus ceded Gandhara and Arachosia and areas south of Bagram to the Mauryas. During the 120 years of the Mauryas in southern Afghanistan, Buddhism was introduced and eventually become one of the major religions alongside Zoroastrianism.
Inscriptions made by Emperor Ashoka, a fragment of Edict 13 in Greek, as well as a full Edict, written in both Greek and Aramaic has been discovered in Kandahar. It is said to be written in excellent Classical Greek, using sophisticated philosophical terms. In this Edict, Ashoka the great used the word Eusebeia as the Greek translation for the ubiquitous "Dharma" of his other Edicts written in Prakrit.
Medieval history
Muslim conquestIn the 7th century AD, Arab armies conquered the region but failed to convert the entire population to Islam. The leader of the expedition was Abbad ibn Ziyad, who governed Sijistan between 673 and 681. In AD 870, Yaqub ibn Layth Saffari, a local ruler of the Saffarid dynasty, made Islam the official religion of the area. During that time, the Kandahar region was between Persia and Hindustan and ruled by the Zunbil dynasty, while others claim it was an Eastern Persian realm where the inhabitants practiced Zurvanism.
Ghanavids
The region fell to Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century followed by Muhammad of Ghor. Kandahar appears to have been renamed Teginābād in the 10th–12th centuries, but the origin of the new name is unclear. During this period, nearby Panjwayi served as the administrative center for the area. However, Kandahar was of much more strategic importance, to the extent that Minhaj-i-Siraj attributes the downfall of the Ghaznavids to the loss of Kandahar. The city's name was changed back to Kandahar by the 13th century, after Ala ad-Din Husayn Jahansuz sacked Lashkari Bazar, near Bost. Again, the reason for the name change is not clear.
Mongols
File:The Surrender of Kandahar.jpg|thumb|upright|A miniature from Padshahnama depicting the 1638 surrender of the Safavid garrison to the Mughal army of Shah Jahan next to what is now Kandahar Central Jail
Kandahar was besieged by a Mongol army in 1221, although Jalal al-Din Mangburni defeated them. In 1251, upon accession to the Mongol throne, Möngke Khan granted Kandahar, along with other lands in Afghanistan, to Shams ad-Din Mohammad Kart of the Kart dynasty. However, the city is mentioned as being under Chagatai control in 1260–61; Kandahar did not come under Kart control until 1281. Later, in 1318, a Chagatai prince raised an army from Kandahar against the Ilkhanid governor of Sistan. Kandahar was described by Ibn Battuta in 1333 as a large and prosperous town three nights journey from Ghazni.
Timur, founder of the Timurid Empire, captured Kandahar in 1383 and later made his grandson Pir Muhammad the governor of the region. Following his death in 1405, the region was ruled by other Timurid governors. Kandahar was entrusted to the Arghuns in the late 15th century, who eventually achieved independence from the Timurids. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, is believed to have visited the town during his journey between Hindustan and Mecca in Arabia.
Mughals and Safavids
Timur's descendant, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, annexed Kandahar in 1508. In 1554, Babur's son, Humayun, handed it over to the Safavid Shah Tahmasp in return of 12,000 soldiers he received from the Shah to reconquer India. In 1595, Humayun's son Akbar the Great took back the city by diplomacy. When news about Akbar's death reached the Persian court, Shah Abbas ordered his army to besiege the city which finally failed due to the reinforcements sent by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir that forced the Safavid retreat. In the Mughal–Safavid War, Kandahar was once again lost to the Safavids. In 1698, Balochs under Samandar Khan and Mir Abdullah Khan Ahmadzai of Kalat State recaptured Kandahar. The city was important to Delhi because it was one of the gateways to Hindustan, and Mughal control over Kandahar helped to prevent foreign intrusions. The memory of the wars fought over Kandahar at this time is preserved in the epic poem Qandahār-nāma, a major work of Saib Tabrizi which is a classic of Persian literature.