Main description: For 1,400 years, two colossal figures of the Buddha overlooked the fertile Bamiyan Valley on the Silk Road in Afghanistan. Witness to a melting pot of passing monks, merchants, and armies, the Buddhas embodied the intersection of East and West, and their destruction by the Taliban in 2001 provoked international outrage. Llewelyn Morgan excavates the layers of meaning these vanished wonders hold for a fractured Afghanistan. Carved in the sixth and seventh centuries, the Buddhas represented a confluence of religious and artistic traditions from India, China, Central Asia, and Iran, and even an echo of Greek influence brought by Alexander the Great's armies. By the time Genghis Khan destroyed the town of Bamiyan six centuries later, Islam had replaced Buddhism as the local religion, and the Buddhas were celebrated as wonders of the Islamic world. Not until the nineteenth century did these figures come to the attention of Westerners. That is also the historical moment when the ground was laid for many of Afghanistan's current problems, including the rise of the Taliban and the oppression of the Hazara people of Bamiyan. In a strange twist, the Hazaras-descendants of the conquering Mongol hordes who stormed Bamiyan in the thirteenth century-had come to venerate the Buddhas that once dominated their valley as symbols of their very different religious identity. Incorporating the voices of the holy men, adventurers, and hostages throughout history who set eyes on the Bamiyan Buddhas, Morgan tells the history of this region of paradox and heartache.

This Open Access book explores heritage conservation ethics of post conflict and provides an important historical record of the possible reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in Danger in 2003 as “Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley”. With the condition that most surface of the original fragments of the Buddha statues were lost due to acts of deliberate destruction, this publication explores a reference point for conservation practitioners and policy makers around the world as they consider how to respond to on-going acts of destruction of cultural heritage. Whilst there has been an emerging debate to the ethics and nature of heritage reconstruction, this volume provides a plethora of ideas and approaches concerning the future treatment of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. It also addresses a number of fundamental questions on potential heritage reconstruction: how it will be done; who will decide; and what it should be done for. Moreover when it comes to the inscribed World Heritage properties, how can reconstructed heritage using non-original materials be considered to retain authenticity? With a view to serving as a precedent for potential decisions taken elsewhere in the world for cultural properties impacted by acts of violence and destruction, this volume introduces academic researches, experiences and observations of heritage conservation theory and practice of heritage reconstruction. It also addresses the issue not merely from the point of a material conservation philosophy but within the context of holistic strategies for the protection of human rights and promotion of peace building.

Contributed articles presented at the International Seminar on Bamiyan: Challenge to World Heritage at India International Centre, New Delhi on 17-18 Sept. 2001.

In the contemporary world the meeting of Buddhism and Islam is most often imagined as one of violent confrontation. Indeed, the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 seemed not only to reenact the infamous Muslim destruction of Nalanda monastery in the thirteenth century but also to reaffirm the stereotypes of Buddhism as a peaceful, rational philosophy and Islam as an inherently violent and irrational religion. But if Buddhist-Muslim history was simply repeated instances of Muslim militants attacking representations of the Buddha, how had the Bamiyan Buddha statues survived thirteen hundred years of Muslim rule? Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road demonstrates that the history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction is much richer and more complex than many assume. This groundbreaking book covers Inner Asia from the eighth century through the Mongol empire and to the end of the Qing dynasty in the late nineteenth century. By exploring the meetings between Buddhists and Muslims along the Silk Road from Iran to China over more than a millennium, Johan Elverskog reveals that this long encounter was actually one of profound cross-cultural exchange in which two religious traditions were not only enriched but transformed in many ways.

Using contemporary case studies, this book offers a novel legal perspective on the protection of cultural heritage during war.

Rory Stewart recounts the experiences he had walking across Afghanistan in 2002, describing how the country and its people have been impacted by the Taliban and the American military's involvement in the region.

Art through the Ages in Afghanistan, written in two volumes is a major work. It is the product of many years of research, including frequents visits to Kabul Museum and important archeological sites in Afghanistan, as well as visits to major museums in Europe and America housing important artifacts from Afghanistan. In completing his work Hamid Naweed has also made use of numerous interviews with Afghan and international scholars, local artist and local people living in the vicinity of historical sites. The second volume covering the art of Afghanistan from the advent of Islam through present time is expected to be published shortly after the publication of the first volume.

A magnificent work of original research that unravels history through textiles and cloth—how we make it, use it, and what it means to us. How is a handmade fabric helping save an ancient forest? Why is a famous fabric pattern from India best known by the name of a Scottish town? How is a Chinese dragon robe a diagram of the whole universe? What is the difference between how the Greek Fates and the Viking Norns used threads to tell our destiny? In Fabric, bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and asking how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it, and made symbols out of it. And sometimes why they have fought for it. She beats the inner bark of trees into cloth in Papua New Guinea, fails to handspin cotton in Guatemala, visits tweed weavers at their homes in Harris, and has lessons in patchwork-making in Gee's Bend, Alabama - where in the 1930s, deprived of almost everything they owned, a community of women turned quilting into an art form. She began her research just after the deaths of both her parents —and entwined in the threads she found her personal story too. Fabric is not just a material history of our world, but Finlay's own journey through grief and recovery.

Author of War Horse, and bestselling storyteller Michael Morpurgo touched our hearts with this beautiful story of a boy, his lost dog, and the lengths he would go to be reunited. This timely story of battle-scarred Afghanistan delivers a masterful portrait of war, love, and friendship. With the horrors of war bearing down on them, Aman and his mother are barely surviving in an Afghan cave, and staying there any longer will end horribly. The only comfort Aman has is Shadow, the loyal spaniel that shows up from places unknown, it seems, just when Aman needs him most. Aman, his mother, and Shadow finally leave the destroyed cave in hopes of escaping to England, but are held at a checkpoint, and Shadow runs away after being shot at by the police. Aman and his mother escape--without Shadow. Aman is heart-broken. Just as they are getting settled as free citizens in England, they are imprisoned in a camp with locked doors and a barbed wire fence. Their only hope is Aman's classmate Matt, his grandpa, and the dream of finding his lost dog. After all, you never lose your shadow.