Sakawand A Pilgrimage Centre
Various scholars have recorded the importance of Sakawand as a major centre of Pagan pilgrimage.
"It is related that, Amru Lais conferred the governorship of Zabulistan on Fardghan and sent him there at the head of four thousand horses. There was a large place of worship of the God Zhun in the country, which was called Sakawand, and people used to come on pilgrimage to the Idols of that place. When Fardaghan arrived in Zabulistan he led his army against it, took the temples broke the idols in pieces, and overthrew the idolators. Some of the plunder he distributed among the troops, the rest he sent to Amru Lais." "Fardaghan, the governor of Zabulistan region around Ghazni under Amr ibn Layth, plundered Sakawand, a place of pilgrimage to God Zhun, which was within the kingdom of the Shahis." "The activities of the Saffarid brothers on the Indian frontier attracted special attention in the Caliphate thanks to the care they took to send exotic presents from the plunder to the Abbasid court. Yaqub, for instance, at one time sent fifty gold and silver idols from Kabul to the caliph Al-Mutamid who dispatched them to Mecca. Another set of Idols lavishly decorated with jewels and silver, sent by himAmr in 896 from Sakawand (a place in the Logar valley between Ghazna and Kabul which the sources describe as a pilgrimage centre dedicated to God Zhun), caused a sensation in Baghdad on account of their strangeness."Read more about this topic: Zabulistan
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