हिंदीOn this day
Excavated

Shortugai

The farthest north of all known Harappan settlements, on the Amu Darya near the Kokcha, hundreds of kilometres from the Sindhu. It was set up to reach the lapis lazuli of Badakhshan.

Built: Sindhu–Sarasvati trading settlement, c. 2500–2000 BCEWhere: Takhar province, on the Amu Darya, Afghanistan37.35° N, 69.50° E
  1. c. 2500–2000 BCE
  2. 1975 CE
  3. 1977 CE onwards
Photo: Udimu · CC BY-SA 3.0

01A Harappan town on the Oxus

A French archaeological mission found the site in 1975, and Henri-Paul Francfort excavated it from 1977. What came out of the ground was plainly Harappan: pottery of the Sindhu valley forms and paintings, bricks in the standard Harappan proportion of 1:2:4, beads of carnelian, and a square seal with a rhinoceros and Indus script signs. Wheat and barley were grown with canals from the Kokcha. The settlement was small, a few hectares, but it was laid out and run in the same way as the towns of Gujarat and Sindh.

02Why so far north

The deep blue lapis lazuli used in Harappan beads and inlay comes from the mines of Sar-i Sang in Badakhshan, up the Kokcha valley from Shortugai. Tin and gold were also traded through this country. Shortugai shows that the Harappans did not wait for such goods to reach them; they planted a settlement of their own people at the source, some 1,000 km from Harappa. In its later levels the Harappan character fades and local Central Asian ways take over.

The life of this place

  1. c. 2500–2000 BCEA Harappan settlement flourished on the Amu Darya near the Kokcha.
  2. 1975 CEThe site was discovered by a French archaeological mission.
  3. 1977 CE onwardsHenri-Paul Francfort excavated the settlement.

Nearby

KabulStanding
The long resistance: Sindh to Tarain

Kabul

The city on the river the Rigveda calls the Kubha, for centuries a seat of kings of the Indic world: the Turk Shahis and then the Hindu Shahis, until the Saffarids took it around 870. Hindus and Sikhs lived here until the last decades, worshipping at the Asamai temple.

Jamrud Fort (Fatehgarh)Standing
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Jamrud Fort (Fatehgarh)

The fort Hari Singh Nalwa built in 54 days at the mouth of the Khyber Pass in 1836, the farthest western bastion of the Sikh empire. He fell defending it against the Afghans on 30 April 1837.

Peshawar (Purushapura)Standing
Shungas, Satavahanas, Kharavela and the Sangam Kingdoms

Peshawar (Purushapura)

Purushapura, the city at the foot of the Khyber, was Kanishka’s capital and later a city of the Hindu Shahis, before whose walls Jayapala fell to Mahmud in 1001. Hari Singh Nalwa governed it for the Sikh empire in the 1830s.

Waihind (Udabhandapura, Hund)Ruined
The long resistance: Sindh to Tarain

Waihind (Udabhandapura, Hund)

Udabhandapura, the Waihind of the Arab writers, on the right bank of the Indus above Attock, was the capital of the Hindu Shahi kings Jayapala and Anandapala. Near it in 1008–09 Anandapala’s allied army fought Mahmud of Ghazni and lost.