History of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa - Pre-modern History

Pre-modern History

Early history finds the Iranians dominating the whole Indus valley. At some date later than 516 BC Darius Hystaspes sent Scylax, a Greek seaman of Karyanda, to explore the course of the river. Darius Hystaspes subsequently subdued the races dwelling west of the Indus and north of Kabul.

Gandhara, the modern District of Peshawar, was incorporated in a Persian satrapy, and the Assakenoi, with the tribes farther north on the Indus, formed a special satrapy, that of the Indians. Both satrapies sent troops for Xerxes' invasion of Greece (480 BC).

In the spring of 327 BC Alexander the Great crossed the Indian Caucasus (Hindu Kush) and advanced to Nicaea, where Omphis, king of Taxila and other chiefs joined him. Thence Alexander dispatched part of his force through the valley of the Kabul river, while he himself advanced into Bajaur and Swat with his light troops.

Craterus was ordered to fortify and repeople Arigaion, probably in Bajaur, which its inhabitants had burnt and deserted. Having defeated the Aspasians, from whom he took 40,000 prisoners and 230,000 oxen, Alexander crossed the Gouraios (Panjkora) and entered the territory of the Assakenoi and laid siege to Massaga, which he took by storm. Ora and Bazira (possibly Bazar) soon fell. The people of Bazira fled to the rock Aornos, but Alexander made Embolima (possibly Amb) his basis, and thence attacked the rock, which was captured after a desperate resistance. Meanwhile, Peukelaotis (in Hashtnagar, 17 miles (27 km) north-west of Peshawar) had submitted, and Nicanor, a Macedonian, was appointed satrap of the country west of the Indus.

Alexander then crossed that river at Ohind or, according to some writers, lower down near Attock. Nicanor was succeeded as satrap by Philippus, who was, however, assassinated by his Greek mercenaries soon after Alexander left India, and Eudamos and Taxiles were then entrusted with the country west of the Indus. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C. Porus obtained possession of the Lower Indus valley, but was treacherously murdered by Eudamos in 317. Eudamos then left India; and with his departure the Macedonian power collapsed, and Sandrocottus (Chandragupta), the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, made himself master of the province. His grandson Asoka made Buddhism the dominant religion in Gandhara and in Pakhli, the modern Hazara, as the rock-inscriptions at Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra show.

After Asoka's death the Mauryan empire fell to pieces, just as in the west the Seleucid power was waning. The Greek princes of Bactria seized the opportunity for declaring their independence, and Demetrius conquered part of Northern India (c. 190 B. C.). His absence led to a revolt by Eucratides, who seized on Bactria proper and finally defeated Demetrius in his eastern possessions. Eucratides was, however, murdered (c. 156 B.C.), and the country became subject to a number of petty rulers, of whom little is known but the names laboriously gathered from their coins. The Bactrian dynasty was attacked from the west by the Parthians and from the north (about 139 B.C.) by the Sakas, a Central Asian tribe. Local Greek rulers still exercised a feeble and precarious power along the borderland, but the last vestige of Greek dominion was extinguished by the Yueh-chi.

This race of nomads had driven the Sakas before them from the highlands of Central Asia, and were themselves forced southwards by the Hiung-nu. One section, known as the Kushan, took the lead, and its chief Kadphises I seized vast territories extending south to the Kabul valley. His son Kadphises II conquered North-Western India, which he governed through his generals. His immediate successors were the kings Kanishka, Huvishka, and Vasushka or Vasudeva, of whom the first reigned over a territory which extended as far east as Benares and as far south as Malwa, comprising also Bactria and the Kabul valley.

Their dates are still a matter of dispute, but it is beyond question that they reigned early in the Christian era. To this period may be ascribed the fine statues and bas-reliefs found in Gandhara (Peshawar) and Udyana (Buner). Under Huvishka's successor, Vasushka, the dominions of the Kushan kings shrank to the Indus valley and the modern Afghanistan; and their dynasty was supplanted by Ki-to-lo, the chief of a Yueh-chi tribe which had remained in Bactria, but was forced to move to the south of the Hindu Kush by the invasion of the Yuan Yuan. The subjects of Ki-to-lo's successors who ruled in the valley of Peshawar are known to the Chinese annalists as the Little Yueh-chi. Their rule, however, did not endure, for they were subdued by the Ephthalites (Ye-ta-i-li-to or Ye-tha), who established a vast empire from Chinese Turkistan to Persia, including the Kabul valley. Known to the Byzantines as the White Huns, they waged war against the Sassanid dynasty of Persia.