The evolution of empires, from the Mongol hordes to the Mughals

Sitting at the centre of East and West also had its downfalls: the land was sensitive to the rise and fall of neighbouring empires. The crumbling of China’s Han Dynasty and the near collapse of the Roman Empire in the third century simultaneously diminished the prosperity of Silk Road trade and contributed to the demise of the Kushan Empire. The region fell to the Sassanian Empire, one of the last great kingdoms of Persia before the cataclysmic rise of Islam in the seventh century – the force that revolutionised Afghanistan once more. The newly coalesced Arabs spread Islam in Afghanistan via the towns of Kandahar and Ghazni. The Islamic empires that rose and fell in Afghanistan during the period spanning the ninth to the thirteenth centuries included the Saffarids, the Ghaznavids and the Ghurids. Notably, it was not until the time of the Ghaznavids, whose founder was a Turkish slave, that large parts of Afghanistan, including Kabul, were united under consolidated rule. It was also during the era of the Ghurids in 1207 that Jalaloddin Balkhi – Rumi – was born, either in Balkh or nearby Vakhsh. Rumi’s verses, dedicated to otherworldly love and entrenched in a deep mysticism derived from Sufism, endure as one of the most widely celebrated bodies of Eastern poetry in the world.