Bamyan

Bamyan owes everything to its position on a route across the Hindu Kush linking India, Central Asia and the Iranian plateau. From about the 3rd century AD it was a Buddhist centre, and by the 6th and early 7th centuries monks had cut hundreds of cells, halls and sanctuaries into its soft sandstone cliff and carved two colossal standing Buddhas, the taller about 55 metres, painted and gilded and visible far down the valley. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who passed through in the 630s, described a thriving community of monasteries and thousands of monks.

Islam reached the valley in stages, and by the 11th and 12th centuries Bamyan was a minor capital under a branch of the Ghurid dynasty, when the fortress towns of Shahr-e Zuhak and Shahr-e Gholghola were built above the river. In 1221 Genghis Khan's army besieged Gholghola after a grandson of his was killed nearby and destroyed it; the valley's population and irrigation never fully recovered, and the place became a remote farming district on a road that mattered less than before.

The modern town grew as the administrative centre of the Hazarajat. Bamyan was fought over in the 1990s, and in March 2001 the two Buddhas were dynamited over several days, an act condemned worldwide. Since 2003 the valley has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed as the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley and placed at the same time on the List of World Heritage in Danger, and international teams have worked to stabilise the cliff, the niches and the surviving wall paintings. Whether the statues should be rebuilt has been debated ever since.

Bamyan is the centre of the Hazarajat, the mountain homeland of the Hazara, a Shia Muslim people who speak Hazaragi, a dialect of Persian close to Dari. Hazara history has been marked by persecution — mass killings and displacement under Emir Abdur Rahman Khan in the 1890s, and repeated attacks on Hazara communities in recent decades — and that history shapes a strong communal identity. Shia observance gives the year its rhythm, and Muharram, when the martyrdom of Husayn is mourned, is marked with processions and gatherings.

The town's culture is rural and practical: family compounds of mud brick with flat roofs, wheat and potato fields divided among relatives, and an economy of mutual help at harvest and at weddings. Poetry and song in Hazaragi, often accompanied by the dambura, a two-stringed long-necked lute, are the characteristic local music, and their melodies are plainer and more insistent than the classical music of Kabul.

Bamyan has also carried a reputation for openness. After 2001 it had one of the country's higher rates of girls' schooling, a provincial university, a growing domestic tourist trade around the cliff and the lakes, and Afghanistan's first female provincial governor. Restrictions since 2021 on women's education, work and travel have fallen heavily on a town where much of that progress was recent and visible. Manners follow the wider Afghan pattern: unhurried greetings, the right hand for eating and giving, and hospitality treated as an obligation.

Bamyan town has roughly 100,000 people in its wider district and is small enough to cross on foot, though it serves a province of scattered mountain villages. Most households farm: wheat and barley on the valley floor, and above all potatoes, which grow well at this altitude and are trucked to Kabul in autumn. Sheep, goats and a few cows graze the slopes, and walnut and mulberry trees mark the irrigated strips.

Work beyond farming means the bazaar, transport, government offices, the university and, before 2021, a small but real tourism economy built on domestic visitors to the cliff and to Band-e Amir. Money sent home by relatives working in Iran or in Kabul supports many families. Poverty is deep, winters are expensive in fuel, and drought in recent years has cut harvests and pushed people to move.

The day starts early and ends early. Bread comes from tandoors in the morning, the bazaar is busiest in the middle of the day, and in winter life contracts into heated rooms while snow closes the higher roads. Friday is for prayer and family. Electricity has long been patchy, with solar panels on many roofs, and the town's isolation — a full day's drive from Kabul over passes that snow can shut — remains the single biggest fact of life here.

Food in Bamyan is plainer and more filling than in Kabul, shaped by altitude and a short growing season. Potatoes are the local staple and a point of pride: boiled, fried, cooked into stews or sold hot from stalls in the bazaar. Wheat bread from a clay tandoor accompanies everything, and shorwa, a thin mutton broth with bread torn into it, is the everyday winter meal. Rice dishes, including Kabuli palaw, appear for guests and at weddings rather than on ordinary days.

Dairy does much of the work of a mountain diet. Qurut, yoghurt dried into hard white balls and later crushed and soaked, gives a sharp, salty sauce poured over bread, dumplings or potatoes; fresh yoghurt, butter and clotted cream are made at home. Hazara kitchens are known for dumplings — mantu filled with minced meat and onion, and aushak filled with chives or leeks — both served under yoghurt and a meat or lentil sauce, and for kichiri, a thick porridge of rice and pulses.

The valley's fruit and nuts are eaten fresh in late summer and dried for the winter: mulberries, apples, apricots and walnuts. Dried mulberries ground with walnuts into a sweet paste are a traditional highland food. Green tea, drunk with rock sugar or a sweet held in the mouth, is served constantly and offered to anyone who arrives; alcohol is prohibited.