The Bactrian revolt was subsequent to the adoption of the thureophoros
in the Seleucid army, and the thureophoros appears in Bactrian art. It is
likely that Hellenistic colonist infantry were now similarly armed. A Bactrian
army raised by Euthydemos in 208 BC to foil an attempted Seleucid reconquest
consisted entirely of cavalry. The Greek cavalry were probably originally
standard Hellenistic lancers, adopting the bow later in response to enemy horse
archers and elephants. A Graeco-Indian coin depicts a rider in Greek armour
with a bow, but also a short spear carried in his quiver. This could have been
shortened to fit the available space, but the method of carriage makes it
unlikely to have been long enough to be classified as a lance. Another
cavalryman in Iranian dress is depicted on a silver dish with a cased bow but
using a long lance in both hands as his primary weapon. This could be one of
the Iranian nobility, but has also
recently been interpreted
both as a Chionite
Hun and as
a Sassanid Persian,
both of whom
occupied Bactria in
the 4th-5th centuries
AD. A find of cataphract equipment in a government armoury dates to
around 150 BC.
The Kushans were originally one of the five Yueh-chi clans who occupied
Sogdia and overran the Bactrian Greek kingdom shortly before 130 BC. In the 1st
century AD the Kushans conquered the other clans and established the Great
Kushan empire over northern India, eastern Iran and much of central Asia. The
Kushans became Sassanid vassals in 262 AD, revolted in 356 with Chionite help
but were defeated in 358, revolted again in 370 and established their
independence by 390 under Kidara, again with Chionite aid. The Chionites
settled among the Kushan and became known to the Romans as “Kidarite
Huns”. This new “Little Kushan” state lost its northern
territories to the Sassanids after a defeat in 468, but remained in being south
of the Hindu Kush until it fell to the Hephthalite Huns sometime after 477.
Frescoes from a Yueh-chi palace at Khalchayan show a cataphract cavalryman and
several horse archers, looking very like Parthian types. Figures equipped as
Hellenistic phalangites are shown on the rare “Macedonian soldier”
type of Kushan coin, suggesting that remnants of the Bactrian or Indo-Greek
forces were incorporated in early Kushan armies.
Macedonian invasion
of Bactria
The Macedonian invasion of Bactria heralded a new phase in
the offensive in Asia, for now Alexander would be fighting Bactrians, who had
played only a minor role in the Persian Wars. The burning of Persepolis and the
death of Darius, the last Achaemenid king, had achieved the aims of the
invasion that Philip had first outlined to the League of Corinth in 337.
Bessus’s threat to the stability of Alexander’s empire was not the Greeks’
problem, but in taking his army into Bactria Alexander was moving well beyond
anything the Greeks or his father had envisaged. The young king’s pothos (desire
or yearning) was to create an empire that was without parallel, to outdo
everyone before him including even Cyrus the Great, and to ensure his fame long
after his death. Even at this time Alexander may have intended to travel to the
Southern (Indian) Ocean to determine whether his old teacher Aristotle was
right when he described India as a small triangular promontory on this ocean.
These motives explain why he discharged some of the soldiers provided by the
League of Corinth, who went home with a generous bonus; those who remained were
now enlisted in his army as mercenaries. The composition of the Macedonian army
was also changing. That autumn (of 330) 300 cavalry and 2,600 infantry from
Lydia joined the Macedonian army. These were the first of the recruits
Alexander had had trained in Macedonian tactics even as early as his campaigns
in Asia Minor. The following year 1,000 cavalry and 8,000 infantry arrived from
Lycia and Syria. Unfortunately, Alexander’s thirst for fighting, relentless
march eastward, and integration of foreigners into his army and administration
still proved to be his undoing.
With his men doubtless grumbling the army left Hecatompylus
and marched north to Zadracarta (Sari), capital of Hyrcania, by the southern
shore of the Caspian Sea. While en route Nabarzanes (an assassin of Darius)
wrote to Alexander begging for mercy and offering his surrender. This
unexpected event gave Alexander and his men cause to assume that Bessus was not
as powerful after all, an assumption that received further support when
Artabazus (father of Barsine) and other Persian dignitaries came to Zadracarta
seeking Alexander’s friendship. They had in their armies some 1,500 Greek
mercenaries, whom he incorporated into his ranks.
Alexander’s troop numbers were increasing, but not so his
horses. In the past few months a goodly number of these animals had died from
the forced pursuits as well as the intense heat. With this in mind he invaded
the territory of the Mardi peoples of the Zagros (not to be confused with the
Mardi in southern Persis, against whom he had previously campaigned), who were
known for their horses and cavalry skills. In reprisal the Mardi kidnapped
Bucephalas, Alexander’s horse, but quickly returned him when Alexander vowed to
slaughter all of them and lay waste to their lands. They sent envoys to him who
would have brought presents, presumably including horses, which replenished
Alexander’s cavalry numbers.
When Nabarzanes surrendered to Alexander in Zadracarta he
gave the king various presents including the eunuch Bagoas. Alexander was so
taken with this extraordinarily beautiful man that he entered into a lengthy
sexual relationship with him. Zadracarta was also the venue for Alexander’s
alleged encounter with Thalestris, the Amazon Queen, who wanted to bear his
child. She seems to have been more attracted to Alexander by his reputation
than anything else, for his short stature surprised her, and she said that it
did not live up to his “illustrious record.” Her insatiable sexual
appetite was said to have been too much for him, and after two weeks he bade
her leave.
From Zadracarta the Macedonians marched to Susia in Areia,
on the crossroads of Bactria to the north, India to the east, and Drangiana to
the south. There, Satibarzanes, another of Darius’s murderers, submitted to
Alexander. His information that Bessus was levying more troops than Alexander
had imagined, including many from the tribes living beyond the river Oxus (Amu
Darya), which marked the southern boundary of Bactria, motivated him to chase
Bessus as quickly as he could. Leaving behind Satibarzanes as satrap with a
small garrison of 40 javelin men at the capital Artacoana, Alexander set off
along the Kopet Dag massif. His treatment of Satibarzanes shows that he
intended to continue using native satraps when and where he could. He had been
marching three or four days and had covered about 70 miles when he received the
news that Satibarzanes had thrown his weight behind Bessus after all: he had
murdered the Macedonian garrison and engineered the revolt of Areia.
At all costs Alexander had to protect his rear. He
immediately took a contingent of troops and in just two days was back at
Artacoana. A startled Satibarzanes took flight with 2,000 cavalry into Bactria.
The other troops with him were not so lucky. They took refuge on a nearby hill,
but an impatient Alexander set it on fire, killing them all. With Areia now his
again, Alexander installed Arsaces, another Persian nobleman, as satrap and
returned to his main army. It was also at this time that the rebellious
Barsaentes (also one of Darius’s murderers), satrap of Drangiana and Arachosia,
was apprehended as he fled toward the Indus; Alexander wasted no time executing
him, thereby removing another potential threat to the Macedonians.
At Phrada (Farah), the capital of Drangiana, Alexander
halted and decided to rest his men for the remainder of that winter. Here he
was faced with a conspiracy against his life that brought to the surface the
critical mood of his men toward his growing orientalism.
The Seleucids
Under the Seleucids, Bactria-Sogdiana formed one vast
satrapy , under the rule of a single satrap, as in the Achaemenid period. The
division into several satrapies, which Strabo refers to (XI 11,2), came with
the rise of an independent Bactrian kingdom. Under the Seleucids the frontier
zone (to the north ) was not a cut-off point of no contact between the empire
and a ‘remote beyond’ of barbarian nomads: that lay to the north of Sogdiana –
the river Syr Darya , beyond which stretched the vast steppes of Central Asia
and Siberia, far distant. Bactria was not on the geographic periphery of
empire. Also, it must be remembered that the line between nomads and sedentary
peoples is not a socio-cultural caesura (Lattimore 1979).
The revolt of Bactria
By the early 230s, on any chronology, all are agreed that a
separate kingdom, claiming independence from the ruler Seleucus II, had been
created by a Greek named Diodotus , who took the title basileus (king), a
satrap who had usurped royal power. The chronology – tied (by inadequate
sources) to revolt and to an invasion of Parthia (cf. above p. 87) – presents a
mess hardly capable of being unravelled. The ‘high’ chronology sets secession
in the early 240s, before the dynastic split between Seleucus II and his
brother Antiochus Hierax; the lower chronology sets the revolt later (239/8).
This boils down to a ‘choice’ between a time when Seleucus was facing invasion
from Ptolemy III, or a time of internal upheaval (‘the War of the Brothers’).
Another approach is to see it as a product of ‘neglect’ by Antiochus II (and
his immediate successors) of the eastern provinces; according to this the main
focus of Seleucid power was in the west. This latter solution will not do. First,
it is based upon an argument a silentio; secondly, there is evidence of
Seleucus II’s personal, and therefore important, action in the east, for
example against the Parthians; furthermore, there is Antiochus II’s appointment
of a satrap of Parthia and his rulings for Babylonia (van der Spek 1986, 241-8
(= no. 11); Falkenstein 1941, 4-5). There is no particular reason to suppose
that a decision to face Ptolemy’s threats, which seems to have been given
priority, meant that ‘the east’ was neglected. The wars of the Seleucids
elsewhere may have provided an opportunity but that is not to say that they
caused secession. But what sort of factors may have played a part in the
secession?
The Successors saw the region of Bactria as a ripe plum,
because of its reputed wealth and resources of manpower as a base for expansion
– it was not seen as ‘the back of beyond’ (cf. D. S. XVIII 7, where it is
described as the base for controlling the Upper Satrapies; Plutarch Dem. 46,
noting Demetrius’ plan to carve out a kingdom for himself based on Media and
regions east). The joint kingship of Seleucus I and Antiochus was linked
directly to Antiochus I’s energetic activity in this region (cf. Plutarch Dem.
46). It is likely to have been the case that any Bactrian satrap was aware of
the possibility of secession if he established a concordat with the Bactrian
inhabitants, as Seleucus had in Babylonia. That individual ambition played a
part is indeed probable, but seems insufficient as an explanation.
Anti-Macedonian or pro-Greek elements (Wolski 1977) are not incredible given
the massacres of Alexander’s first settlers by Macedonian soldiers, even if
these were not as total as claimed in the sources (Narain 195 7; Bevan 1902,
286-7). We are not in a position to guess whether the local population had a
‘better’ deal under the Greek-Bactrians than under the Seleucids, but we can
perhaps say that the old idea underlying this view, that the Seleucids were
operating an anti-Iranian exclusion policy (e. g. Will and see further below)
is wrong, so this approach is suspect. Rostovtzeff 1941, Will 1979-82 and
Wolski 1982 tend, in general terms, to see in Bactria an exceptional symbiosis
engendered by the threat of Scythian nomad tribes beyond the frontiers of the
Seleucid empire (primarily beyond the Syr Darya). The idea of some sort of
agreement between ruled and new rulers would follow an earlier pattern: see,
for example, Antigonus’ retention of Stasanor as satrap of Bactria, and of
Tlepolemos in Carmania, ‘because it was not easy to remove them by letter since
their administration had been good with regard to the local inhabitants and
they had many supporters’ (D. S. XIX 48,1). The process may have been
comparable to that of Seleucus I in Babylonia, who used the resources and power
of his position as satrap to form the basis of what was to be built into a
kingdom in the end. There is no evidence of a ‘Bactrian’ independence movement,
any more than in the Achaemenid period (cf. Briant 1984), because no single
Bactrian ‘nation’ existed – that would be an anachronism.
As to the question of the eventual secession of Bactria from
the Seleucid kingdom, which, it should be noted, was not final until the second
century, many scholars see a sort of external pressure for its lasting in the
supposed consequences of what is seen as a total cut-off from the Seleucid
empire by Parthia. But this view is untenable: there was no impenetrable
barrier erected between these regions (see above pp. 79-89) – traders were
passing from Bactria to Parthia, from Parthia to Iran and Mesopotamia; economic
and cultural interplay between places under Seleucid rule and the mainstream
Greek world, evident in the material finds, and places under non-Greek rule (e.
g. Arachosia under the Mauryas), is attested in sculptt1re (imports), pottery,
jewellery and epigraphy. The idea of an Iron Curtain descending is
anachronistic and out of keeping with practical realities, such as the
impossibility of total surveillance of routes across ‘political’ frontiers. It
is an argument a silentio in as much as there is a total vacuum of evidence on
diplomatic relations between the Seleucid empire and Parthia and Bactria, while
there is evidence of intercourse in terms of goods (trade) and culture.
Secondly, it misconstrues the gradual course and nature of the impact of the
Parthians’ capture of Parthyene a. nd of their temporary incursions into
Hyrcania, which could not cut the link with north-east Iran, i. e. the routes
from Iran to the eastern satrapies. Only in the course of the second century did
the Parthians gain control of the southern side of the Elburz mountains (see
above p. 189), winning control of the Caspian Gates (the ‘keys of the earth of
Asia’, ap. Isidore of Charax), and begin territorially to occupy it by
settlement. The route to the still Seleucid provinces of Margiana and Aria, and
so to Drangiana, was reachable from south of the Elburz, via Meshed and Herat,
or, with more difficulty, via Carmania.
A second, external danger has been conjured up to ‘explain’
secession in the spectre of ‘a powerful Chorasmian state’ north-east of the
Seleucid empire at the north end of the river Amu Darya. Much is uncertain
here, since we know of no single ruler or unified empire in the sources. While
archaeology has shown urbanisation from the seventh century in the oases and
river valleys, and therefore a sedentary population existed, the political
structure is a blank, the concept of a powerful state a figment (cf. Briant
1984, 23ff. for excellent critique). What there is evidence of in this area is
Greek artifacts and Greek influence in art from sites showing that contacts
existed beyond areas under direct Greek-Macedonian rule (Ghirshman 1962; Will
1979, 269). While to the Greeks of the ‘old Greek world’ this area may have
remained the ‘back of beyond’ it does not seem to have been so to those nearer
at hand.
The ancient Greek sources, going back to the hellenistic
period, billed the Greek-Bactrian kings as rulers of ‘a thousand cities ‘. Here
a boast is being made in that the many villages of Bactria, including fortified
ones, are called ‘cities’, and it should be stressed that these villages are
not differentiated from pole is, which in Greece could be very small. However,
it would suggest that, in the limited areas where settled life was possible,
places organised as communities and recognised as such by Greeks existed in
great numbers. This very much recalls other areas in the Seleucid empire, for
example the socio-economic pattern of the Iranian region of Rhagae, which had
two thousand villages according to Posidonius (in Strabo XI 9,1). Indeed 56,000
villiages have been counted in modern Iran. We may remember also the four
hundred villages plundered by the Roman general, Murena, in Cappadocia (Appian
Mithr. 9.65). Concentration on the large number of settled communitie s under
the rule of the central authority and the perception of this as a reflection of
power are not misplaced. The reality was that ‘villages ‘, like other organised
communities, functioned as fiscal units and unit s of production, of great
importance to the crown.
In Bactria, as elsewhere in the Seleucid empire, space was
also found for the land-holdings and oikoi of the cavalry. It has traditionally
been accepted that the eight thousand cavalry (a record in terms of the size of
cavalry forces in ancient warfare) reputedly produced on the field by
Euthydemus again st Antiochus III, were recruited from local people settled in
the area. This is the basis of the symbiosis view (see above p. 108). In fact
this is not peculiar to Bactria, but is found throughout the Seleucid empire
(cf. pp. 55-7 ; 78).
We are thus opposed to the views of several scholars that
the reason for the Seleucids ‘ failure in the eastern regions was their
inability to solve two problems: first, that of the administration of satrapies
at a great distance and their defence; secondly, the (bad ) relations of the
rulers with the colonised. Neither of these explanations can be accepted. The
first is true of all empires and has nothing specifically to do with Seleucid
policy as such : maintaining control over a great distance is always a problem
for imperial rulers; the second should simply be rejected as the evidence does
not support it. There is no evidence that Bactria and other ‘upper satrapies’
were perceived as, in some sense, more peripheral to Seleucid interests and
more difficult to deal with than, for-example, Asia Minor; while Seleucid rule
had to accommodate itself to a specific complex of existing socio-economic
patterns and local cultural traditions, nothing suggests that this was an
unusual political problem demanding, and resulting in, a unique solution.
#
The Persian tribal migrations from Central Asia into
present-day Afghanistan and Iran began after Alexander the Great’s conquests
and a century before the Parthians blocked Crassus’s way east. From roughly 200
b. c. to a. d. 200, wave after wave of Persian-speaking Parthian, Saka, and
Kushan nomads burst out of the Central Asian grasslands and attacked the Greek
cities of Afghanistan. Ancient Balkh, the “Mother of all Cities” and
the Bactrian Greek capital south of contemporary Mazar-i-Sharif in northern
Afghanistan, was repeatedly sacked.
Credible, comprehensive written records about the varied
peoples inhabiting the vast Central Asian steppe in the centuries before and
after the birth of Christ are lacking. None of these cultures possessed
alphabets. It is clear, however, that this region became an incubator of
nomadic tribal groups contesting one another for grazing land-the climate was
too harsh to permit agricultural surpluses large enough to support the growth
of cities.
A population explosion may have fueled the piecemeal nomadic
migration out of Central Asia into the wealthier, more settled, and more
organized ancient civilization of the time, which stretched from Rome through
Persia and Afghanistan to China. In Europe, German barbarians under Arminius
defeated a Roman army at the Battle of Teutoburger Forest south of the Elbe in
a. d. 9, driving it back to the Rhine. Thereafter, Rome was consistently on the
defensive against the endless chain of tribe driving tribe stretching back
through the Central Asia steppe, west into Mongolia and the Takla Mekan, a
desert located in contemporary China’s far western Xinjiang Province. The nomadic
invasions cast Afghanistan into a shatter zone for groups in search of booty
and land. The Persian-speaking Parthian, Saka, and Kushan tribes, distant
relatives of most contemporary Afghans, were the first to arrive. They attacked
the Hellenistic cities established by Alexander the Great, pillaging, one by
one, Balkh and then the Greek principalities at Kandahar, Ghazni, Jalalabad,
Peshawar, and Badakhshan. Alexandria, near Kabul, was the last Greek city to
fall in about 70 b. c., during the reign of the Greek king Hermaeus, but it was
by no means the end of turmoil in the area. The Huns, and then the Turks and
Mongols, continued to invade Afghanistan over the next 1,300 years.
In the first century a. d. the Kushans overran Afghanistan
and built an empire based near Peshawar in the region of Gandhara. Kushan kings
adopted Buddhism. Their empire profited from its location at the center of the
Great Silk Road network of trade routes linking Han China to the Roman Empire.
Caravans traversed Eurasia east to west, passing through the Afghan cities of
Balkh, Kabul, Bamian, and Herat, and robust trade also moved along the
north-south corridors linking Balkh, Kabul, Jalalabad, Peshawar, and Delhi.
During the third to fifth centuries a. d., Buddhist missionaries traveling the
Silk Road carved two giant Buddha statues into the soaring mountain cliffs of
the Bamian Valley about 70 miles northwest of Kabul. The two standing Buddhas,
180 and 121 feet tall, survived invading armies for 1,500 years. In March 2001,
the Taliban destroyed them for inciting idolatry and blasphemy and for
violating their extremist “Islamic order.”
The White Hun tribes, whom historians also identify as the
Hephthaliti or Ephthalite Huns, burst out of the Takla Mekan into Central Asia
and began flooding into Afghanistan in the fifth century a. d. As their name
implies, the White Huns were Caucasians; according to the Byzantine historian
Procopius, they had “white bodies and countenances that are not
ugly.” The White Huns were unrelated to Attila’s Black Huns rampaging
through Europe at the same time. They obliterated the Kushan Empire and
everything else in their path as they proceeded into northern India.
The White Huns, like the Persian Parthians, Sakas, and
Kushans, contributed to the bloodlines of most contemporary Afghans. Their
empire, covering present-day Afghanistan, western Iran, and northern India,
lasted into the second half of the sixth century. The current Pashtun tribal
structure, customs, and language retain the imprint of the White Huns. They
brought with them words that are prominent in today’s Pashto vocabulary,
including the word for “tribe,” ulus, and khan, an honorific name for
an important tribal elder or landowner. The nineteenth-century British
anthropologist H. W. Bellew listed White Hun and Pashtun shared attributes:
“the rigid law of hospitality, the protection given to the refugee, the
jealousy of female honour, the warlike spirit and in sufferance of control, the
pride of race, the jealousy of national honour and personal dignity, the spirit
that loves to domineer.” Instability and political anarchy shook
Afghanistan and Central Asia after the White Huns marched through. Turkish
tribes invaded in the tenth century, ransacking and pillaging down to the Indus
Basin and through Persia into Anatolia. (In 1453, the Saljuk Turks overthrew
the Byzantine Empire and established the Ottoman Dynasty, which lasted until
World War I.) The great Arab expansion after Mohammed’s death in 632 largely
missed Afghanistan, but it extended into Central Asia north of the Amu Darya,
converting Turkish-speaking tribes to Islam; Arab and Turkish Muslim spiritual
proselytes followed the Turkic sword into Afghanistan, conveying Islam’s
message. Arab Sayyids, whose name connotes ancestry extending back to the
Prophet’s daughter, Fatima, went to Afghanistan to spread Islam, married
locally, and settled down. Most inhabitants of Afghanistan had embraced Islam
by the mid-nineteenth century.
