Bagram

This article is about the city. For United States military base, see Bagram Air Base.

Bagram
Bazaar and part of the city of Bagram.
Country	Afghanistan
Province	Parwan
District	Bagram
Elevation	4,895 ft (1,492 m)
Time zone	+ 4.30

Bagram (Persian: بگرام Bagrām), founded as Alexandria on the Caucasus and known in medieval times as Kapisa, is a small town in Parwan Province of Afghanistan, about 60 kilometers north of the capital Kabul. It is the site of an ancient city located at the junction of the Ghorband and Panjshir Valley, near today's city of Charikar, Afghanistan. The town of Bagram also sits right next to Bagram Air Base, which is the largest U.S. military base in the region.

The location of this historical town made it a key passage from Ancient India along the Silk Road, leading westwards through the mountains towards Bamiyan.

History

It is unknown when the site was originally settled. In the mid 500s BC, Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Dynasty destroyed the city as part of his campaign against the Saka nomads in the region. The town, however, was soon rebuilt by his successor Darius I.

In the 320s BC, Alexander the Great captured the city and established a fortified colony named Alexandria of the Caucasus. The new town, laid out in the "hippodamian plan" or iron-grid pattern--a hallmark of Greek city planning, had brick walls reinforced with towers at the angles. The central street was bordered with shops and workshops.

After his death in 323 BC, the city passed to his general Seleucus, who traded it to the Mauryan Dynasty of India in 305 BC. After the Mauryans were overthrown by the Sunga Dynasty in 185 BC, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom invaded and conquered Northwestern India with an army led by Demetrius I of Bactria. Alexandria became a capital of the Eucratidian Indo-Greek Kingdom after they were driven out of Bactria by the Yuezhi in 140 BC.

Bagram (Kapisa) became the summer capital of the Kushan Empire in the 1st century, whereas their winter capital was in Peshawar.

The emperor Kanishka started many new buildings there. The central palace building yielded a very rich treasure, dated from the time of emperor Kanishka in the 2nd century: ivory-plated stools of Indian origin, lacquered boxes from Han China, Greco-Roman glasses from Egypt and Syria, Hellenistic statues in the Pompeian style, stuc moldings, and silverware of Mediterranean origin (probably Alexandria).

The "Begram 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 Begram are either quite purely Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese or Indian, with only little indications of the cultural syncretism found in Greco-Buddhist art.

The city was apparently abandoned after the campaigns of the Sassanian emperor Shapur I, in 241 that moved the commerce to Peshawar--a city rebuilt, expanded and renamed by him, Veh Shapor, whence BehShawur ("beautiful deed of Shapor").

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  An Indian ivory from Begram, 2nd century.
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  Statue of Harpocrates, Begram, 2nd century.
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  Statuette of Serapis from Begram.
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  Statuette of the young Alexander the Great.
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  A Greco-Roman gladiator on a glass vessel, Bagram, 2nd century.
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  Begram vase depicting the rape of Ganymede by Zeus.
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  Begram vase fragments depicting a fighting scene.
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  Plaster mold from Begram.
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  Plaster mold from Begram depicting a cupid.
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  Plaster mold from Begram.
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  Plaster mold from Begram.
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  Plaster mold from Begram depicting a Greek soldier.

Recent history

Bagram school children

Bagram hosts the strategic Bagram Airfield from which most US air activity in Afghanistan takes place. There is also a Provincial Reconstruction Team which is led by the US.

Bagram is a district of Parwan Province.

References and footnotes

• Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul (2008). Eds., Friedrik Hiebert and Pierre Cambon. National Geographic, Washington, D.C. ISBN 978-1-4262-0374-9.

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)