Tower and Town, October 2021

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Only A Dash Of Afghan History And Mindset

Balkh, 2000 -1500 BC, in North Western Afghanistan, is known as ‘The Mother of All Cities’. The first well organised city on Earth? To the Zoroastrians, the first organised religion and a precursor to the other great religions, perpetuating a one God creator of good and evil, Balkh is the birthplace of Zoroaster or Zarathustra (Persian). Balkh, Herat, Ghazni and other centres, in science and many other fields, produced for centuries men of learning second to none. The mighty Afghan Barmecides wrote the first books on Algebra, pioneered research in medicine, philosophy and astronomy. Jabir ibn el-Hayyan, known to the west as Geber, the father of Western chemistry, who wrote more than 100 works on the subject, lived in Afghanistan for a time. Down the centuries, the list of Afghan poets and luminaries is endless. Rumi, the Sufi Mystic, buried in Konia, Turkey, was also born in Balkh, but left with his father knowing the Mongol invasion was imminent. His poetry and stories, although of their time, are still read today. It is purported that, on occasions, Rumi used miracle teaching methods like those of Jesus.

Afghans are descended from the original Aryan Race, from the armies of Alexander the Great -- the Nuristanis whose blondes and redheads abound, eat at tables and bury their dead in coffins -- and from the progenitors of the Hindus as well as the Mongol Mughals and others. Genghis Khan and Tamerlane fought many battles here. Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs saw Afghan Lapis Lazuli as a magical stone and may have built the white marbled snow-capped Pyramids as imitations of the mountains of Afghanistan. Buddhism also blossomed here during the Kushan dynasty, hence the Bamiyan Buddhas, brutally destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. To The Hindus, it is the land from which came their ancestors and from where the beautiful Hindu Vedantic texts were composed. Alexander the Great’s armies also brought Aristotelian and Platonic, ‘The Brotherhood of Man’ thinking to Afghanistan, again as a forerunner to the flowering of Christianity. Even Judaism and Islam have complicated connections to Afghanistan, via the basic ‘inner kernel’ of all religions.

A mysterious country, Afghanistan is not quite like anywhere else, more like a strange magical 1001 Arabian Nights Shangri La Twilight Zone. Whether you spend 5 minutes or 50 years in Afghanistan or even much time with the Afghan diaspora, as I have, you will know that Afghans seem to be ‘wired up’ differently. Not behaving like most people due to a back to front, inside out kind of Mulla Nasrudin, their National Fool, logic, this acts as a secret weapon survival mechanism which has protected them for 1000s of years. Sounds a bit like the English, does it not, and, surprise, surprise, there is more and more evidence that the nomadic Angles were from much further afield, in fact, Scythian Afghans wandering from Sakasina in Central Asia to Schleswig Holstein, and, eventually after about 200 years, found themselves on Albion’s shores.

The majority of Afghans are not fanatical, instead a dutiful, honourable, almost medieval people, but with a sophisticated sense of humour. However, the Taliban are homegrown, perhaps, genetic throwbacks to those who follow a Darth Vader thinking or sons of those indoctrinated zealots in the Pakistani refugee camps. Therefore, the Taliban, a linear thinking, hateful, obvious, boring mob, really has no chance of long term Afghan governance.

Whatever your religious leaning, a ‘Person of the Book’, Buddhist, Mormon, and so on, we all owe a debt to Afghanistan for having nurtured the extraordinary Covenant I believe we humans still have with an Almighty somewhere in the Universe. In my view, Jesus Christ was the most perfect soul to have set foot on this planet. He advised us to ‘Love one another’. Amina Shah, Afghan writer and poet agrees in her poem, There is No End to Love (see p.11). The Afghan positive mindset will endure, as will all people of goodwill, whatever dangers lie ahead this century. Keep Calm and Carry On.

Lucinda Hall