Bamiyan province is one of the thirty_four provinces of Afghanistan. It is in the centre of the country. Its capital city is also called Bamiyan. Bamiyan city is the largest city in the Hazarajat region of Afghanistan, and is the cultural capital of the Hazara ethnic group that predominates in the area.
In antiquity, central Afghanistan was strategically placed to thrive from the Silk Road caravans which criss-crossed the region trading between the Roman Empire, China and India. Bamiyan was a stopping off point for many travellers. It was here where elements of Greek, Persian and Buddhist art were combined into a unique classical style, known as Greco-Buddhist art.
Bamiyan was the site of an early Buddhist monastery. Many statues of Buddha are carved into the sides of cliffs facing Bamiyan city. The two most prominent of these statues were standing Buddhas, measuring 55 and 37 meters high respectively, that were the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. They were probably erected in the 4th of 5th century A.D. They were cultural landmarks for many years and are listed among UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. In March 2001 the Taliban government decreed that the statues were idolatrous and ordered them to be demolished with anti-aircraft artillery and explosives.
Bamiyan is also known for its natural beauty. The Band-i-Amir lakes in western Bamiyan province continue to be a tourist destination for Afghans.
And for 500 years, the Bamiyanvalley was one of the major Buddhist centers from the second century up to the time that Islam entered the valley in the ninth century.
The caves were full of paintings and were carved in the same period as the statues; all the caves were stretched for about 1 km between the two gigantic Buddha images set in niches at the eastern and western ends of the cliffside.
The region of Bamiyan, with the monasteries and the massive statues carved out of a sand rock, were the wonder of tourists, schools and connoisseurs of art for many centuries.
The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two monumental statues of standing Buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamiyanvalley of central Afghanistan, situated 230 km northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2500 meters.
Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsüan-tsang (Xuanzang) passed through the area around 630 AD and described Bamiyan as a flourishing Buddhist centre "with more than ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks", and he noted that both Buddha figures were "decorated with gold and fine jewels" (Wriggins, 1995).
In December 2004, Japanese researchers discovered that the wall paintings at Bamiyan were actually painted between the 5th and the 9th centuries, rather than the 6th to 8th centuries as previously believed.
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