Naqsh-e Rustam
Naqsh-e Rustam is an ancient necropolis located about 12 km northwest of Persepolis, in Fars Province, with a group of ancient Iranian rock reliefs cut into the cliff, from both the Achaemenid and Sassanid periods. It lies a few hundred meters from Naqsh-e Rajab, with a further four Sassanid rock reliefs, three celebrating kings and one a high priest. Naqsh-e Rustam is the necropolis of the Achaemenid dynasty, with four large tombs cut high into the cliff face; these have architectural decoration, but the facades include large panels over the doorways, each similar in content, with figures of the king being invested by a god, above a zone with rows of smaller figures bearing tribute, with soldiers and officials. The three classes of figures are differentiated in size; the entrance to each tomb is at the center of each cross, which opens onto a small chamber, where the king lay in a sarcophagus. Well below the Achaemenid tombs, near ground level, are rock reliefs with large figures of Sassanian kings, some meeting gods, others in combat.
The most famous shows the Sassanian king Shapur I on horseback, with the Roman Emperor Valerian bowing to him in submission, Philip the Arab holding Shapur's horse, while the dead Emperor Gordian III, killed in battle, lies beneath it. This commemorates the Battle of Edessa in 260 AD, when Valerian became the only Roman Emperor, captured as a prisoner of war, a lasting humiliation for the Romans; the placing of these reliefs suggests the Sassanid intention to link themselves with the glories of the earlier Achaemenid Empire. The oldest relief at Naqsh-e Rustam dates back to c. 1000 BC. Though it is damaged, it depicts a faint image of a man with unusual head-gear, is thought to be Elamite in origin; the depiction is part of a larger mural, most of, removed at the command of Bahram II. The man with the unusual cap gives the site its name, Naqsh-e Rustam, because the relief was locally believed to be a depiction of the mythical hero Rustam. Four tombs belonging to Achaemenid kings are carved out of the rock face at a considerable height above the ground.
The tombs are sometimes known after the shape of the facades of the tombs. The entrance to each tomb is at the center of each cross, which opens onto a small chamber, where the king lay in a sarcophagus; the horizontal beam of each of the tomb's facades is believed to be a replica of a Persepolitan entrance. One of the tombs is explicitly identified, by an accompanying inscription, as the tomb of Darius I; the other three tombs are believed to be those of Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, Darius II respectively. The order of the tombs in Naqsh-e Rustam follows: Darius II, Artaxerxes I, Darius I, Xerxes I; the matching of the other kings to tombs is somewhat speculative. A fifth unfinished one might be that of Artaxerxes III, who reigned at the longest two years, but is more that of Darius III, the last king of the Achaemenid Dynasts; the tombs were looted following the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great. An inscription by Darius I, from c.490 BCE referred to as the "DNa inscription" in scholarly works, appears in the top left corner of the facade of his tomb.
It mentions the conquests of his various achievements during his life. Its exact date is not known. Like several other inscriptions by Darius, the territories controlled by the Achaemenid Empire are listed, in particular the areas of the Indus and Gandhara in India, referring to the Achaemenid occupation of the Indus Valley. Ka'ba-ye Zartosht is a 5th-century B. C Achaemenid square tower; the structure is a copy of a sister building at Pasargadae, the "Prison of Solomon". It was built either by Darius I when he moved to Persepolis, by Artaxerxes II or Artaxerxes III; the building at Pasargadae is a few decades older. There are four inscriptions in three languages from the Sasanian period on the lower exterior walls, they are considered among the most important inscriptions from this period. Several theories exist regarding the purpose of the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht structure. Seven over-life sized rock reliefs at Naqsh-e Rustam depict monarchs of the Sassanid period, their approximate dates range from 225 to 310 AD, they show subjects including investiture scenes and battles.
The founder of the Sassanid Empire is seen being handed the ring of kingship by Ohrmazd. In the inscription, which bears the oldest attested use of the term Iran, Ardashir admits to betraying his pledge to Artabanus V, but legitimizes his action on the grounds that Ohrmazd had wanted him to do so; the word ērān is first attested in the inscriptions that accompany the investiture relief of Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rustam. In this bilingual inscription, the king calls himself "Ardashir, king of kings of the Iranians"; this is the most famous of the Sassanid rock reliefs, depicts the victory of Shapur I over two Roman emperors and Philip the Arab. Behind the king stands Kirtir, the mūbadān mūbad, the most powerful of the Zoroastrian Magi dur
Baloch people
The Baloch or Baluch are an Iranian peoples who live in the Balochistan region of the southeastern-most edge of the Iranian plateau in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as in the Arabian Peninsula. They speak the Balochi language, a branch of Northwestern Iranian languages. About 50 % of the total Baloch population live in a western province of Pakistan, they make up nearly 3.6% of the Pakistani population, about 2% of Iran's population and about 2% of Afghanistan's population. Baloch people co-inhabit desert and mountainous regions along with Pashtuns. Baloch people practice Islam, are predominantly Sunni, use Urdu as the lingua franca to communicate with other ethnic groups such as Pashtuns and Sindhis; the exact origin of the word'Baloch' is unclear. Rawlinson believed that it is derived from the name of god Belus. Dames believed that it is derived from the Persian term for cockscomb, said to have been used as a crest on the helmets of Baloch troops in 6th century BCE. Herzfeld proposed that it is derived from the Median term brza-vaciya, which describes a loud or aggressive way of speaking.
Naseer Dashti presents another possibility, that of being derived from the name of the ethnic group'Balaschik' living in Balashagan, between the Caspian Sea and Lake Van in present day Turkey and Azerbaijan, who are believed to have migrated to Balochistan during the Sassanid times. The remnants of the original name such as'Balochuk' and'Balochiki' are said to be still used as ethnic names in Balochistan; some writers suggest a derivation from Sanskrit words bal, meaning strength, och meaning high or magnificent. An earliest Sanskrit reference to the Baloch might be the Gwalior inscription of the Gurjara-Pratihara ruler Mihira Bhoja, which says that the dynasty's founder Nagabhata I repelled a powerful army of Valacha Mlecchas, translated as "Baluch foreigners" by D. R. Bhandarkar; the army in question is that of the Umayyad Caliphate after the conquest of Sindh. According to Baloch lore, their ancestors hail from Aleppo in, they are descendants of uncle of the prophet Muhammad, who settled in Halab.
They fled to the Sistan region, remaining there for nearly 500 years until they fled to the Makran region following a deception against the Sistan leader Badr-ud-Din. However, based on an analysis of the linguistic connections of the Balochi language, one of the Western Iranian languages, the original homeland of the Balochi tribes was to the east or southeast of the central Caspian region; the Baloch began migrating towards the east in the late Sasanian period. The cause of the migration is unknown but may have been as a result of the unstable conditions in the Caspian area; the migrations occurred over several centuries. By the 9th century, Arab writers refer to the Baloch as living in the area between Kerman, Khorasan and Makran in what is now eastern Iran. Although they kept flocks of sheep, the Baloches engaged in plundering travellers on the desert routes; this brought them into conflict with the Buyids, the Ghaznavids and the Seljuqs. Adud al-Dawla of the Buyid dynasty launched a punitive campaign against them and defeated them in 971–972.
After this, the Baloch continued their eastward migration towards what is now Balochistan province of Pakistan, although some remained behind and there are still Baloch in eastern part of the Iranian Sistan-Baluchestan and Kerman provinces. By the 13th–14th centuries waves of Baloch were moving into Sindh, by the 15th century into the Punjab. According to Dr. Akhtar Baloch, Professor at University of Karachi, the Balochis migrated from Balochistan during the Little Ice Age and settled in Sindh and Punjab; the Little Ice Age is conventionally defined as a period extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, or alternatively, from about 1300 to about 1850. Although climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. According to Professor Baloch, the climate of Balochistan was cold and the region was inhabitable during the winter so the Baloch people migrated in waves and settled in Sindh and Punjab.
The area where the Baloch tribes settled was disputed between the Persian Safavids and the Mughal emperors. Although the Mughals managed to establish some control over the eastern parts of the area, by the 17th century, a tribal leader named Mir Hasan established himself as the first "Khan of the Baloch". In 1666, he was succeeded by Mir Aḥmad Khan Qambarani who established the Balochi Khanate of Kalat under the Ahmadzai dynasty. In alliance with the Mughals, the Khanate lost its autonomy in 1839 with the signing of a treaty with the British colonial government and the region became part of British Raj. Gold ornaments such as necklaces and bracelets are an important aspect of Baloch women's traditions and among their most favoured items of jewellery are dorr, heavy earrings that are fastened to the head with gold chains so that the heavy weight will not cause harm to the ears, they wear a gold brooch, made by local jewellers in different shapes and sizes and is used to fasten the two parts of the dress together over the chest.
In ancient times during the pre-Islamic era, it was common for Baloch women to perform dances and sing folk songs at different events. The tradition of a Baloch mother singing lullabies to her children has played an important role in the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation since ancient t
Balochistan
Balochistan is an arid desert and mountainous region in south-western Asia. It comprises the Pakistani province of Balochistan, Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, the southern areas of Afghanistan including Nimruz and Kandahar provinces. Balochistan borders the Pashtunistan region to the north and Punjab to the east, Persian regions to the west. South of its southern coastline, including the Makran Coast, are the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman; the name "Balochistan" is believed to derive from the name of the Baloch people. However, the Baloch people are not mentioned in pre-Islamic sources, it is that the Baloch were known by some other name in their place of origin and that they acquired the name "Baloch" after arriving in Balochistan sometime in the 10th century. Johan Hansman relates the term "Baloch" to Meluḫḫa, the name by which the Indus Valley Civilisation is believed to have been known to the Sumerians and Akkadians in Mesopotamia. Meluḫḫa disappears from the Mesopotamian records at the beginning of the second millennium B.
C. However, Hansman states that a trace of it in a modified form, as Baluḫḫu, was retained in the names of products imported by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Al-Muqaddasī, who visited the capital of Makran - Bannajbur, wrote c. 985 AD that it was populated by people called Balūṣī, leading Hansman to postulate "Baluch" as a modification of Meluḫḫa and Baluḫḫu. Asko Parpola relates the name Meluḫḫa to Indo-Aryan words mleccha and milakkha/milakkhu etc. which do not have an Indo-European etymology though they were used to refer to non-Aryan people. Taking them to be proto-Dravidian in origin, he interprets the term as meaning either a proper name milu-akam or melu-akam, meaning "high country", a possible reference to Balochistani high lands. Historian Romila Thapar interprets Meluḫḫa as a proto-Dravidian term mēlukku, suggests the meaning "western extremity". A literal translation into Sanskrit, aparānta, was used to describe the region by the Indo-Aryans. During the time of Alexander the Great, the Greeks called the land Gedrosia and its people Gedrosoi, terms of unknown origin.
Using etymological reasoning, H. W. Bailey reconstructs a possible Iranian name, meaning "the land of underground channels", which could have been transformed to badlaut in the 9th century and further to balōč in times; this reasoning remains speculative. The earliest evidence of human occupation in what is now Balochistan is dated to the Paleolithic era, represented by hunting camps and lithic scatters and flaked stone tools; the earliest settled villages in the region date to the ceramic Neolithic and included the site of Mehrgarh in the Kachi Plain. These villages expanded in size during the subsequent Chalcolithic; this involved the movement of finished goods and raw materials, including chank shell, lapis lazuli and ceramics. By 2500 BCE, the region now known as Pakistani Balochistan had become part of the Harappan cultural orbit, providing key resources to the expansive settlements of the Indus river basin to the east. From the 1st century to the 3rd century CE, the region was ruled by the Pāratarājas, a dynasty of Indo-Scythian or Indo-Parthian kings.
The dynasty of the Pāratas is thought to be identical with the Pāradas of the Mahabharata, the Puranas and other Vedic and Iranian sources. The Parata kings are known through their coins, which exhibit the bust of the ruler on the obverse, a swastika within a circular legend on the reverse, written in Brahmi or Kharoshthi; these coins are found in Loralai in today's western Pakistan. Herodotus in 450 BCE described the Paraitakenoi as a tribe ruled by Deiokes, a Persian king, in northwestern Persia. Arrian describes how Alexander the Great encountered the Pareitakai in Bactria and Sogdiana, had them conquered by Craterus; the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describes the territory of the Paradon beyond the Ommanitic region, on the coast of modern Balochistan. The region was Islamized by the 9th century and became part of the territory of the Saffarids of Zaranj, followed by the Ghaznavids the Ghorids. Ahmad Shah Durrani made it part of the Afghan Empire in 1749. In 1758 the Khan of Kalat, Mir Noori Naseer Khan Baloch, revolted against Ahmed Shah Durrani, defeated him, freed Balochistan, winning complete independence.
The Balochistan region is administratively divided among three countries, Pakistan and Iran. The largest portion in area and population is in Pakistan. An estimated 6.9 million of Pakistan's population is Baloch. In Iran there are about two million ethnic Baloch and a majority of the population of the eastern Sistan and Baluchestan Province is of Baloch ethnicity; the Afghan portion of Balochistan includes the Chahar Burjak District of Nimruz Province, the Registan Desert in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces. The governors of Nimruz province in Afghanistan belong to the Baloch ethnic group. In Pakistan, insurgencies by Baloch nationalists in Balochistan province have been fought in 1948, 1958–59, 1962–63 and 1973–77 — with a new ongoing and stronger, broader insurgency beginning in 2003. "drivers" of the conflict are reported to inclu
Sasanian Empire
The Sasanian Empire known as the Sassanian, Sassanid or Neo-Persian Empire, was the last kingdom of the Persian Empire before the rise of Islam. Named after the House of Sasan, it ruled from 224 to 651 AD; the Sasanian Empire succeeded the Parthian Empire and was recognised as one of the leading world powers alongside its neighbouring arch-rival the Roman-Byzantine Empire for a period of more than 400 years. The Sasanian Empire was founded by Ardashir I, after the fall of the Parthian Empire and the defeat of the last Arsacid king, Artabanus V. At its greatest extent, the Sasanian Empire encompassed all of today's Iran, Eastern Arabia, the Levant, the Caucasus, large parts of Turkey, much of Central Asia and Pakistan. According to a legend, the vexilloid of the Sasanian Empire was the Derafsh Kaviani; the Sasanian Empire during Late Antiquity is considered to have been one of Iran's most important, influential historical periods and constituted the last great Iranian empire before the Muslim conquest and the adoption of Islam.
In many ways, the Sasanian period witnessed the peak of ancient Iranian civilisation. The Sasanians' cultural influence extended far beyond the empire's territorial borders, reaching as far as Western Europe, Africa and India, it played a prominent role in the formation of both Asian medieval art. Much of what became known as Islamic culture in art, architecture and other subject matter was transferred from the Sasanians throughout the Muslim world. Conflicting accounts shroud the details of the fall of the Parthian Empire and subsequent rise of the Sassanian Empire in mystery; the Sassanian Empire was established in Estakhr by Ardashir I. Papak was the ruler of a region called Khir. However, by the year 200 he had managed to overthrow Gochihr and appoint himself the new ruler of the Bazrangids, his mother, was the daughter of the provincial governor of Pars. Papak and his eldest son Shapur managed to expand their power over all of Pars; the subsequent events are due to the elusive nature of the sources.
It is certain, that following the death of Papak, who at the time was the governor of Darabgerd, became involved in a power struggle of his own with his elder brother Shapur. Sources reveal that Shapur, leaving for a meeting with his brother, was killed when the roof of a building collapsed on him. By the year 208, over the protests of his other brothers who were put to death, Ardashir declared himself ruler of Pars. Once Ardashir was appointed shah, he moved his capital further to the south of Pars and founded Ardashir-Khwarrah; the city, well protected by high mountains and defensible due to the narrow passes that approached it, became the centre of Ardashir's efforts to gain more power. It was surrounded by a high, circular wall copied from that of Darabgird. Ardashir's palace was on the north side of the city. After establishing his rule over Pars, Ardashir extended his territory, demanding fealty from the local princes of Fars, gaining control over the neighbouring provinces of Kerman, Isfahan and Mesene.
This expansion came to the attention of Artabanus V, the Parthian king, who ordered the governor of Khuzestan to wage war against Ardashir in 224, but Ardashir was victorious in the ensuing battles. In a second attempt to destroy Ardashir, Artabanus himself met Ardashir in battle at Hormozgan, where the former met his death. Following the death of the Parthian ruler, Ardashir went on to invade the western provinces of the now defunct Parthian Empire. At that time the Arsacid dynasty was divided between supporters of Artabanus V and Vologases VI, which allowed Ardashir to consolidate his authority in the south with little or no interference from the Parthians. Ardashir was aided by the geography of the province of Fars, separated from the rest of Iran. Crowned in 224 at Ctesiphon as the sole ruler of Persia, Ardashir took the title shahanshah, or "King of Kings", bringing the 400-year-old Parthian Empire to an end, beginning four centuries of Sassanid rule. In the next few years, local rebellions occurred throughout the empire.
Nonetheless, Ardashir I further expanded his new empire to the east and northwest, conquering the provinces of Sistan, Khorasan, Margiana and Chorasmia. He added Bahrain and Mosul to Sassanid's possessions. Sassanid inscriptions claim the submission of the Kings of Kushan and Mekran to Ardashir, although based on numismatic evidence it is more that these submitted to Ardashir's son, the future Shapur I. In the west, assaults against Hatra and Adiabene met with less success. In 230, Ardashir raided deep into Roman territory, a Roman counter-offensive two years ended inconclusively, although the Roman emperor, Alexander Severus, celebrated a triumph in Rome. Ardashir I's son Shapur I continued the expansion of the empire, conquering Bactria and the western portion of the Kushan Empire, while leading several campaigns against Rome. Invading Roman Mesopotamia, Shapur I captured Carrhae and Nisibis, but in 243 the Roman general Timesitheus defeated the Persians at Rhesaina and regained the lost territories.
The emperor Gordian III's subsequent advance down the Euphrates was defea
Diadem
A diadem is a type of crown an ornamental headband worn by monarchs and others as a badge of royalty. The word derives from the Greek διάδημα diádēma, "band" or "fillet", from διαδέω diadéō, "I bind round", or "I fasten"; the term referred to the embroidered white silk ribbon, ending in a knot and two fringed strips draped over the shoulders, that surrounded the head of the king to denote his authority. Such ribbons were used to crown victorious athletes in important sports games in antiquity, it was applied to a metal crown in a circular or "fillet" shape. For example, the crown worn by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was a diadem, as was that of a baron later; the ancient Celts were believed to have used a semioval gold plate called a mind as a diadem. Some of the earliest examples of these types of crowns can be found in ancient Egypt, from the simple fabric type to the more elaborate metallic type, in the Aegean world. A diadem is a jewelled ornament in the shape of a half crown, worn by women and placed over the forehead.
In some societies, it may be a wreath worn around the head. The ancient Persians wore a erect royal tiara encircled with a diadem. Hera, queen of the Greek gods, wore; the Priest king of the Indus Valley Civilization wore what is the oldest example of a Diadem approx. 3000BC. By extension, "diadem" can be used for an emblem of regal power or dignity; the head regalia worn by Roman Emperors, from the time of Diocletian onwards, is described as a diadem in the original sources. It was this object that the Foederatus general Odoacer returned to Emperor Zeno after his expulsion of the usurper Romulus Augustus from Rome in 476 AD. Civic crown Fillet Tainia Tiara Diadem. Livius. Articles on Ancient History. Diadem Everything2.com
Balochistan, Pakistan
Balochistan is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. It is the largest province in terms of land area, forming the southwestern region of the country, its provincial capital and largest city is Quetta. Balochistan shares borders with Punjab and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the northeast, Sindh to the east and southeast, the Arabian Sea to the south, Iran to the west and Afghanistan to the north and northwest; the main ethnic groups in the province are the Baloch people and the Pashtuns, who constitute 52% and 36% of the population respectively. The remaining 12% comprises smaller communities of Brahuis, Hazaras along with other settlers such as Sindhis, Punjabis and Turkmens; the name "Balochistan" means "the land of the Baloch". Underdeveloped, its provincial economy is dominated by natural resources its natural gas fields, estimated to have sufficient capacity to supply Pakistan's demands over the medium to long term. Aside from Quetta, the second-largest city of the province is Turbat in the south, while another area of major economic importance is Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea.
Balochistan is noted for its unique culture and dry desert climate. Balochistan occupies the southeastern-most portion of the Iranian Plateau, the setting for the earliest known farming settlements in the pre-Indus Valley Civilisation era, the earliest of, Mehrgarh, dated at 7000 BC, within the province. Balochistan marked the westernmost extent of the Civilisation. Centuries before the arrival of Islam in the 7th Century, parts of Balochistan was ruled by the Paratarajas, an Indo-Scythian dynasty. At certain times, the Kushans held political sway in parts of Balochistan. A theory of the origin of the Baloch people, the largest ethnic group in the region, is that they are of Median descent. In 654, Abdulrehman ibn Samrah, governor of Sistan and the newly emerged Rashidun caliphate at the expense of Sassanid Persia and the Byzantine Empire, sent an Islamic army to crush a revolt in Zaranj, now in southern Afghanistan. After conquering Zaranj, a column of the army pushed north, conquering Kabul and Ghazni, in the Hindu Kush mountain range, while another column moved through Quetta District in north-western Balochistan and conquered the area up to the ancient cities of Dawar and Qandabil.
It is documented that the major settlements, falling within today's province, became in 654 controlled by the Rashidun caliphate, except for the well-defended mountain town of QaiQan, now Kalat. During the caliphate of Ali, revolt broke out in southern Balochistan's Makran region. In 663, during the reign of Umayyad Caliph Muawiyah I his Muslim rule lost control of north-eastern Balochistan and Kalat when Haris ibn Marah and a large part of his army died in battle against a revolt in Kalat. In the 15th century, Mir Chakar Khan Rind became the first Sirdar of Afghan and Pakistani Balochistan, he was a close aide of the Timurid ruler Humayun, was succeeded by the Khanate of Kalat, which owed allegiance to the Mughal Empire. Nader Shah won the allegiance of the rulers of eastern Balochistan, he ceded one of the Sindh territories of Sibi-Kachi, to the Khanate of Kalat. Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Afghan Empire won the allegiance of that area's rulers, many Baloch fought under him during the Third Battle of Panipat.
Most of the area would revert to local Baloch control after Afghan rule. During the period of the British Raj from the fall of the Durrani Empire in 1823, four princely states were recognised and reinforced in Balochistan: Makran, Las Bela and Kalat. In 1876, Robert Sandeman negotiated the Treaty of Kalat, which brought the Khan's territories, including Kharan and Las Bela, under British protection though they remained independent princely states. After the Second Afghan War was ended by the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879, the Afghan Emir ceded the districts of Quetta, Harnai and Thal Chotiali to British control. On 1 April 1883, the British took control of the Bolan Pass, south-east of Quetta, from the Khan of Kalat. In 1887, small additional areas of Balochistan were declared British territory. In 1893, Sir Mortimer Durand negotiated an agreement with the Amir of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, to fix the Durand Line running from Chitral to Balochistan as the boundary between the Emirate of Afghanistan and British-controlled areas.
Two devastating earthquakes occurred in Balochistan during British colonial rule: the 1935 Quetta earthquake, which devastated Quetta, the 1945 Balochistan earthquake with its epicentre in the Makran region. Balochistan contained a Chief Commissioner's province and four princely states under the British Raj; the province's Shahi Jirga and the non-official members of the Quetta Municipality opted for Pakistan unanimously on 29 June 1947. Three of the princely states, Las Bela and Kharan, acceded to Pakistan in 1947 after independence, but the ruler of the fourth princely state, the Khan of Kalat, Ahmad Yar Khan, who used to call Jinnah his'father', declared Kalat's independence as this was one of the options given to all of the 565 princely states by British Prime Minister Clement Attlee. Kalat acceded to Pakistan on March 27, 1948 after the'strange help' of All India Radio and a period of negotiations and bureaucratic tactics used by Pakistan; the signing of the Instrument of Accession by Ahmad Yar Khan, led his brother, Prince Abdul Karim, to revolt against his brother's decision in July 1948.
Princes Agha Abdul Karim Baloch and Muhammad Rahim, refused to lay down arms, leading the Dosht-e Jhalawan in unconventional attacks on the army until 1950. The Princes fought a lone battle without support from the rest of Balochistan. Jinnah and his succes
Kushan Empire
The Kushan Empire was a syncretic empire, formed by the Yuezhi, in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of Afghanistan, the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi, where inscriptions have been found dating to the era of the Kushan Emperor Kanishka the Great. Emperor Kanishka was a great patron of Buddhism, he played an important role in the establishment of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent and its spread to Central Asia and China. The Kushans were one of five branches of the Yuezhi confederation, a Iranian or Tocharian, Indo-European nomadic people who migrated from Gansu and settled in ancient Bactria; the Kushans used the Greek language for administrative purposes, but soon began to use Bactrian language. Kanishka sent his armies north of the Karakoram mountains, capturing territories as far as Kashgar and Yarkant, in the Tarim Basin of modern-day Xinjiang, China. A direct road from Gandhara to China remained under Kushan control for more than a century, encouraging travel across the Karakoram and facilitating the spread of Mahayana Buddhism to China.
The Kushan dynasty had diplomatic contacts with the Roman Empire, Sasanian Persia, the Aksumite Empire and the Han dynasty of China. While much philosophy and science was created within its borders, the only textual record of the empire's history today comes from inscriptions and accounts in other languages Chinese; the Kushan empire fragmented into semi-independent kingdoms in the 3rd century AD, which fell to the Sasanians invading from the west, establishing the Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom in the areas of Sogdiana and Gandhara. In the 4th century, the Guptas, an Indian dynasty pressed from the east; the last of the Kushan and Kushano-Sasanian kingdoms were overwhelmed by invaders from the north, known as the Kidarites, the Hepthalites. Chinese sources describe the Guishuang, i.e. the Kushans, as one of the five aristocratic tribes of the Yuezhi, with some people claiming they were a loose confederation of Indo-European peoples, though many scholars are still unconvinced that they spoke an Indo-European language.
As the historian John E. Hill has put it: "For well over a century... There have been many arguments about the ethnic and linguistic origins of the Great Yuezhi or Da Yuezhi and the Tochari, still there is little consensus"; the Yuezhi were described in the Records of the Great Historian 史記 and the Book of Han 漢書 as living in the grasslands of Gansu, in the northwest of modern-day China, until their King was beheaded by the Huns from Siberia who were at war with China, which forced them to migrate west in 176–160 BCE. The five tribes constituting the Yuezhi are known in Chinese history as Xiūmì, Guìshuāng, Shuāngmǐ, Xìdùn, Dūmì; the Yuezhi reached the Hellenic kingdom of Greco-Bactria around 135 BC. The displaced Greek dynasties resettled to the southeast in areas of the Hindu Kush and the Indus basin, occupying the western part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom; some traces remain of the presence of the Kushans in the area of Sogdiana. Archaeological structures are known in Takht-I-Sangin, Surkh Kotal, in the palace of Khalchayan.
Various sculptures and friezes are known, representing horse-riding archers, men with artificially deformed skulls, such as the Kushan prince of Khalchayan. The Chinese first referred to these people as the Yuezhi and said they established the Kushan Empire, although the relationship between the Yuezhi and the Kushans is still unclear. On the ruins of ancient Hellenistic cities such as Ai-Khanoum, the Kushans are known to have built fortresses; the earliest documented ruler, the first one to proclaim himself as a Kushan ruler, was Heraios. He calls himself a "tyrant" in Greek on his coins, exhibits skull deformation, he may have been an ally of the Greeks, he shared the same style of coinage. Heraios may have been the father of the first Kushan emperor Kujula Kadphises. Ban Gu's Book of Han tells us the Kushans divided up Bactria in 128 BC. Fan Ye's Book of the Later Han "relates how the chief of the Kushans, Ch'iu-shiu-ch'ueh, founded by means of the submission of the other Yueh-chih clans the Kushan Empire, known to the Greeks and Romans under the name of Empire of the Indo-Scythians."The Chinese Hou Hanshu 後漢書 chronicles gives an account of the formation of the Kushan empire based on a report made by the Chinese general Ban Yong to the Chinese Emperor c. 125 AD: More than a hundred years the prince of Guishuang established himself as king, his dynasty was called that of the Guishuang King.
He invaded Anxi, took the Gaofu region. He defeated the whole of the kingdoms of Puda and Jibin. Qiujiuque was more than eighty years old, his son, became king in his place. He defeated installed Generals to supervise and lead it; the Yuezhi became rich. All the kingdoms call the Guishuang king. In the 1st century BCE, the Guishuang gained prom
