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Evolution of Afghanistan as an Independent State

Afghanistan, a mountainous and landlocked country having an area of 6,50,000 sq. kms. and an estimated population of 16 million finds earliest reference in Bharat Samhita, a treatise by Varah Mihira, the famous Indian astronomer. The ancient names of the present cities of Kandhar (Gandhara), Kabul (Kubah) and Balkh (Balhika) find their earliest mention in the Rigveda. It was in the region presently known as Afghanistan that Brahminism and Zorastrianism had their origin and two of the most important monuments Rigveda and Avesta came into being. Again it was Afghanistan through which Buddhism penetrated into Sinkiang and later on in the eleventh century Islam found its way into the Indian sub-continent. Earlier, part of the Persian and Alexander's empire, the region came under the rule of the Turkoman Dynasty in the tenth century; later it was conquered by Mongol Emperor Tamerlane about 1400. A new Asian empire began to emerge under Babur who captured Kabul in 1504 and Delhi twenty two years later. It was, however, only in 1747 that Ahmad Shah Abdali unified different autonomous tribes to give the present Afghanistan a definite shape. That has been described by some as the Durrani Empire and not a nation state.1 The state boundaries of Afghanistan could be firmly identified only by the end of the nineteenth century and Afghanistan emerged as an independent state after the third Afghan War in 1919.