![]() Back to Cities and Architecture Click on thumbnails to enlarge them ![]() |
HERAT by Frank Harold ![]() (Click map to enlargen) |
![]() |
|
![]() ![]() |
Herat owes its existence to the Hari Rud, which flows past the city just a few miles away. The river rises in the mountains of Ghor to the east, turns north along the present border with Iran, and eventually vanishes in the sands of the Karakum desert. Along the way it sustains a narrow but fertile oasis, cultivated continuously since antiquity, and flanked by some of the richest grazing grounds in all of Central Asia. Herat was also a crossroads of commerce: routes ran north along the Hari Rud to Merv and Bukhara, south to Kerman and into Iran, east to Balkh, Samarkand and China, and west to Nishapur and Constantinople. Herat lost its pivotal position in the 1880’s with the construction of the Trans-Caspian Railway, which passes far to the north. But it remains a place where the manifold peoples of Central Asia mingle ---- Tadjik farmers, Turkoman nomads, Uzbeks and Hazara ( in the 19th century there were also Hindu bankers and pawnbrokers, Armenian craftsmen and a sizeable Jewish community). The population, estimated at 40 - 50,000 in the 19th century, is double that today, augmented by refugees and pilgrims to local shrines. ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
|
Later Mongol khans ruled indirectly through local governors, and it was this Kart dynasty (1245 - 1389 C.E.) that laid the groundwork for Herat’s revival. They restored canals and bridges, rebuilt the walls and refurbished the great mosque; the city began to asume its contemporary shape. The Kart ruler of the day did not offer serious resistance to Timur Khan ( Tamerlane, 1381 C.E.), and the city got off with only a massacre and a pyramid of skulls. It will not have been obvious to the citizenry, as they watched Timur’s soldiers tear down their walls and drag off their prized iron gateway as booty, that this was the stormy dawn of a golden age! Herat was destined to become the chief capital of an empire that stretched from China into Iran, and a pinnacle of Muslim civilization. |
|
The upturn began with the appointment of Timur’s youngest son, Shah Rukh, as governor of Herat (1397 C.E.). A pious and scholarly man who preferred the rewards of peace to wider conquests, he must have been a sore disappointment to his ferocious father. But Shah Rukh seeems to have been a capable ruler, and he benefited from his marriage to an extraordinary woman. Gowhar Shad Begum (“Happy Pearl”), a Mongol princess and a strong personality in her own right, is one of just a handful of women to leave an impress on Islamic history; the chroniclers called her the Bilkis ( Queen of Sheba) of her age. Shah Rukh became supreme ruler upon Timur’s death (1405 C.E.), and held the vast empire together for the next fifty years with Herat (rather than Timur’s Samarkand) as its capital. Herat reached its apogee under Husayn Baikara (1470 - 1506 C.E.), when the splendor of the city and the court were celebrated across the Muslim East. Babur, who went on to conquer India and to found the Mughal dynasty, was a nephew of Sultan Husayn and visited Herat just before the latter’s death. Years later he paid tribute in his autobiography: “ The whole habitable world had not such a town as Herat had become under Sultan Husayn Mirza... Khorasan, and Herat above all, was filled with learned and matchless men. Whatever work a man took up, he aimed to and aspired to bring it to perfection” (Cited in Byron, 1937). |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
|
The Uzbeks did not hold Herat for long. It fell to the rising power of Safavid Iran, which imposed Shi’ism on a predominantly Sunni population. No longer the center of an empire, Herat remained an important regional capital, and the place where the crown princes were sent in their youth to learn how to govern. Despite incessant conflict with the Uzbeks, Iranian rule lasted until 1746 when, under pressure from the British, it was incorporated into the new state of Afghanistan. Iran did not finally relinquish its claim to the city until 1857, and even today Herat retains a markedly Iranian character and a Shia majority. The Afghans, with British support held the city against the Russian empire; the Musalla, on the city’s outskirts, fell victims to those maneuverings in 1885, demolished in order to clear the field of fire for the artillery. A century later the Russians came again, followed by civil war. Herat is not presently on the front lines and some of the damage is being repaired; but it will take the will and commitment of the international community to ensure that Afghanistan’s long agony is over. |
|
Sources
|
![]() Back to Top |
|