Kabul Facts and History

Kabul is a historic city in eastern Afghanistan, for the last two centuries capital of the Durrani kings and, since 1973, of successive secular and religious republics. It lies on the Kabul River in a basin between the Hindu Kush and other high mountains at an elevation of 5,900 feet (1,800 meters). It has always been important from its position on a corridor along which invaders from Central Asia have made their way to the Indian plains. It is now a focal point for paved roads leading southwestward to Kandahar and Iran, eastward to the Khyber Pass and Pakistan, and northward to northern Afghanistan and Central Asia. The city itself is mainly Dari (Persian) in speech, although it is surrounded by Pashto speakers.

Kabul's strategic position has ensured it a long history. In pre-Muslim times it was part of the Hellenized Bactrian states system and then a center of Gandhara and of the Indian cultural and religious world. Buddhism flourished there, attested by Buddhist antiquities in the region and at nearby Bamiyan. (The Taliban destroyed the statues in 2001.) The Muslims raided as far as Kabul in the 7th century, but the Hindu Shahi rulers were not replaced by Muslim rulers until the coming of the Ghaznavids at the end of the 10th century. Kabul now flourished as a commercial center for trade between India and Central Asia, though towns such as Kandahar and Ghazni held political supremacy. In 1504 Kabul formed the springboard for the Turko-Mongol adventurer Babur—founder of the Mughul empire in India—whose tomb and garden are beauty spots of the modern city. It remained under Mughul rule until captured by Nadir Shah of Persia in 1738.

After the founding of the modern Afghan state in 1747, Timur Shah (reigned 1773–1793) moved the capital to Kabul from Kandahar. But the kings still had far from total control of the country, with other focuses of power, such as Herat and Kandahar, at times in the hands of rival princes. Kabul was occupied by British forces in 1839–1841 and again in 1842, when the British burned the bazaar in retaliation for the massacre of British troops. In 1879 the British mission in the capital was slaughtered, and the city was reoccupied until 1880. In 1929 it was temporarily held by the rebel Bacha-i Saqqao (Habibullah Khan). The city then developed peacefully until the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan in 1979.

 

Kabul suffered relatively little during the fighting between the Soviet-backed regime and Muslim rebels (1979–1989), but it was heavily damaged by factional fighting among the victorious rebels (1992–1996). After the fall of the idiosyncratic Islamic regime of the Taliban (1996–2001), factional violence, such as a car bombing in September 2002, returned despite the presence of an international peacekeeping force in the city.

Urban Development

Kabul began to industrialize about 1940, the most prominent industries being food processing and the manufacture of textiles and construction materials. After 1950 the city acquired an airport, paved streets, and modern hotels, while retaining its traditional mazelike bazaar and its ancient citadel, or Bala Hisar. It greatly expanded northwestward in the Shahr-i Nau ("New Town") suburb. Kabul's population surged with refugees during the 1980s and then declined as fighting came to the city in the 1990s.

 

The parliament and government ministries were housed in a former royal palace, the Dar al-Aman, until it was destroyed in the 1990s. Kabul University was established in 1932 and officially inaugurated in 1946, but it was largely closed from 1992 to 2002. The city fell to the Taliban in 1996, after a long seige. It was recaptured by the opposition Northern Alliance, aided by U.S. air strikes, on Nov. 11, 2001. Since that time, large numbers of refugees have returned. Population: 2,536,300 (2006 est.).