Never the name of a place intrigued me more than the name, 'Balkh'!My grandfathers name was Jamir Shah whose shrine is in the Comilla district of Bangladesh. The first Shah to arrive in Bengal from Afghanistans Balkh region in the 10th century was Sultan Shah Balkhi who was also known as Mahishawar or The Fish Rider!Sultan took up the life of a Dervish and embraced the Sufy path.
In all the hand written cronicles passed on to me I could trace the Sufy leaning of my family till Sultan Shah whose shrine is in the Bogra district of Bangladesh.Sultan first arived in Sylhet region of Bengal and than proceeded toward north Bengal through the Grand Trunk Road.Near the now Tripura State of India Sultan stopped for quite a while, got married and fathered a boy who was to be the great great grand father of my grand father.But all this Muslim bearing were not to my satisfaction as I wanted to know what happened before the Balkhis converted to Islam and what forced them to convert.
Another striking part is that Balkhi converts who migrated to different parts of India and the Automan Empire never conformed to the Islamic orthodoxi!Instead the Balkhis initiated the Sufy path wherever they went in the Islamic realm.Why they could not ever agree with the orthodox Islam? Did my desparate ancestors in Balkh need to hide the code of something precious which they were forced to abandon and later on found a convinient vehicle in Sufyism!My search began in earnest!
I also found out that Sufy poet Jalaluddin Rumy's parent also originated in Balkh and migrated to Turkey in the face of Ghenghis Khans onslaught!Recently while I was digging through the Buddhistic heritage, particularly the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas I found our ancestors in Balkh was once Jorasthrian and later on the whole region was Buddhistic.A heritage that just can not be blown apart by a few Taleban dynamites!
Balkh is one of the oldest cities in the world and is considered to be the first city to which the Indo-Iranian tribes moved from the North of Amu Darya, approximately between 2000 - 1500 BC.The Arabs called it Umm Al-Belaad or Mother of Cities due to its antiquity.The city was traditionally a center of Zoroastianism.The name Zariaspa, which is either an alternate name for Balkh or a term for part of the city, may derive from the important Zoroastrian fire temple Azar-i-Asp. Balkh was regarded as the first place where Zoroaster first preached his religion, as well as the place where he died.
Some scholars believe that it was from this area that different waves of Indo-Iranians spread to Iran ad Seistan, where they became today's Persians, Pashtuns, and Baluch. The ones that stayed in Bactria became modern Tajiks, who are located in modern Balkh and surrounding areas. The period between 2500s BC-1900s BC was the most important period in the history of Balkh; it's in this relatively short period that a kingdom was established, then the population started to disperse and the kingdom started to shrink in importance until the Median and Persian empires in 700 BC, around 1000 years later.
The changing climate has led to desertification since antiquity, when the region was very fertile. The city's long history and former importance are recognized by the native population, who speak of it as the Mother of Cities and the place of Zoroaster's death.Its foundation is mythically ascribed to Keyumars, the first king of the world in Persian legend ; and it is at least certain that, at a very early date, it was the rival of Ecbatana, Nineveh and Babylon. There is a long-standing tradition that an ancient shrine of Anahita was to be found here, a temple so rich it invited plunder.
For a long time the city and the country was the central seat of the Zoroastrian religion, the founder of which, Zoroaster, died within the walls, according to the Persian poet Firdowsi. Armenian sources state that the Parthian Arsac established his capital here. Some scholars believe that a number of mythological rulers of ancient Iran e.g. some kings of Kavi Dynasty or Kayanian in Persian were historically local rulers of an area centered around Balkh.
“ The chinese pilgrim Fa-Hein (c.400) found the Hinayana prevalent in Shan Shan , Kucha , Kashgar, Osh , Udayana and Gandhara. Hsuan-tsang also notices its presence in Balkh, Bamyan, and Persia . ”
According to Memoirs of Xuanzang there were about a hundred Buddhist convents in the city or its vicinity at the time of his visit there in the 7th century. There were 3,000 monks and a large number of stupas and other religious monuments. The most remarkable stupa was the Navbahar (Sanskrit, Now Vihara: New Monastery), which possessed a very costly statue of Buddha. The temple was led by Kashmiri called Pramukh, who, through the Arabized form of the name, Barmak, came to be known as the Barmakids. Shortly before the Arabic conquest, the monastery became a Zoroastrian fire-temple. A curious notice of this building is found in the writings of Arabian geographer Ibn Hawqal, an Arabian traveller of the 10th century, who describes Balkh as built of clay, with ramparts and six gates, and extending half a parasang. He also mentions a castle and a mosque.
“ Furthermore we know that a number of Buddhist religious centres had flourished in Khorasan the most important was the Nawbahar (New Temple) near the town of Balkh , which evidently served as a pilgrimage centre for political leaders who came from far and wide to pay homage to it . ”
“ A large number of Sanskrit medical, pharmacological toxicological texts were translated into Arabic under the patronage of Khalid, the vizier of AL-Mansur. Khalid was the son of a chief priest of a Buddhist monastery. Some of the family were killed when the Arabs captured Balkh ; others including Khalid survived by converting to Islam. They were to be known as the Barmikis of Baghdad.”
At the time of the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century, however, Balkh had provided an outpost of resistance and a safe haven for the Persian emperor Yedzgird who fled there from the armies of Umar. Later, in the 9th century, during the reign of Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar, Islam became firmly rooted in the local population.
Idrisi, in the 12th century, speaks of its possessing a variety of educational establishments, and carrying on an active trade. There were several important commercial routes from the city, stretching as far east as India and China.
In 1220 Genghis Khan sacked Balkh, butchered its inhabitants and levelled all the buildings capable of defense — treatment to which it was again subjected in the 14th century by Timur. Notwithstanding this, however, Marco Polo could still describe it as "a noble city and a great."
In the 16th century the Uzbeks entered Balkh. The Moghul Shah Jahan fruitlessly fought them there for several years in the 1640s. Balkh formed the government seat of Aurangzeb in his youth. In 1736 it was conquered by Nadir Shah. Under the Durani monarchy it fell into the hands of the Afghans; it was conquered by Shah Murad of Kunduz in 1820, and for some time was subject to the Emirate of Bukhara. In 1850, Dost Mohammad Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan, captured Balkh, and from that time it remained under Afghan rule. In 1866, Balkh lost its administrative status to the neighboring city of Mazar-e Sharif.
The Empty Shell Which Is All But Empty
The Navbahar Stupa:
Navbahar, the main monastery at Balkh became the center of higher Buddhist study for all of Central Asia. The Tokharian monk Ghoshaka was one of the compilers of the Vaibhashaka , a sub-division of the Sarvastivada School of Hinayana commentaries on abhidharma and established the Western Vaibhashika (Balhika) School. Navbahar emphasized the study of primarily of the Vaibhashika (Tibetan: bye-brag smra-ba) abhidharma, admitting only monks who had already composted texts of the topic. Navbahar also housed a tooth relic of the Buddha, making it one of the main centers of pilgrimage along the Silk Route from China to India.
Xuanzang's report:
From the Memoirs of Xuanzang, we learn that, at the time of his visit in 630, there were in Balkh, or its vicinity, about a hundred Buddhist convents, with 3,000 devotees, and that there was a large number of stupas, and other religious monuments and that Buddhism was flourishing in the Bactrian portion of Western Turk empire. He cited the monastic Navbahar jewels in accordance with local Zoroastrian custom. He also described it as having strong links with the Kingdom of Khotan in East Turkistan. The temple was led by Kashmiris called Pramukh who, under the Arabized name of Barmak, came to be known as the Barmakids.
History under the Arabs
The Umayyads captured Balkh in 663 from the Turki-Shahis who had taken over the territory from the Western Turks. Although some Buddhists and even an abbot of Navbahar converted to Islam most Buddhists kept their faiths and accepted dhimmi status, as loyal non-Muslim protected subjects within an Islamic state by paying a poll tax {jizya} in lieu of the Zakat tax levied and compulsory military service for Muslims, and the monastery remained open and functioning.
The Barmakids, who attained great power under the Abbasid caliphs, are regarded as having their origin in a line of hereditary priests at Navbahar, who had convereted to Islam.
An Arab author, Omar ibn al-Azraq Al-Kermani, wrote a detailed account of Navbahar at the beginning of the eighth century that is preserved in a later tenth-century work, the Kitab al-Buldan by Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani. He described Navbahar in terms strikingly similar to the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest site of Islam. He described that the main temple had a stone cube in the center, draped with cloth, and that devotees circumambulated it and made prostration, as is the case with the Kaaba. The stone cube referred to the platform on which a stupa stood, as was the custom in Bactrian temples. The cloth that draped it was in accordance with Persian custom of showing veneration that applied equally to Buddha statues as well as to stupas.This observations suggests that the pilgrimage to Kaaba and revering the black stone there might have Bactrian influences!Dynamite can destroy statues, but it's hard to destroy the forencic influences!
On 8 September 2008 archeologists searching for a legendary 300-meter statue at the site of the already dynamited Buddhas announced the discovery of a new 19-meter (62-foot) "sleeping Buddha", a pose representing Buddha's passage into nirvana. This discovery may have confirmed the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang's mention of a large Buddha in a sleeping posture in this area, recorded fourteen centuries ago.
CKH
A compilation
Elaborations could be found in The British Library.
