page_title: Afghanistan
section_title: Medieval history
hierarchical_section_title: Afghanistan / History / Medieval history
caption_attribution_description: English: King Ahmad Shah Durrani Abdali - The emir Ahmad Shah (1724-1773), belonged to the Abdali Afghan clan. He was enlisted in the Afsharid army and became one of their commanding officers. When Nadir Shah of Persia died in 1747, the Afghans selected Ahmad Shah as their king and he took the title of Ahmad Shah Durrani, "pearl of the pearls", giving the name to the dynasty of kings of Afghanistan whom he founded. Moghul school, c. 1757 Français&#160;: Le roi Ahmad Shah Durrani Abdali - L’émir Ahmad Shah (1724-1773), appartenait au clan afghan Abdali. Fait prisonnier par les Perses, il fut enrôlé dans l’armée et devint l’un de leurs officiers. Lorsque le Shah de Perse Nadir Shah fut assassiné à Kandahar en 1747, les soldats Afghans l’élirent comme roi et il prit le titre de Ahmad Shah Durrani, «&#160;perle des perles&#160;», donnant son nom à la dynastie des rois d’Afghanistan qu’il fonda. Il fit plusieurs incursions en Inde, mettant à sac Delhi et Agra en 1757 et battant les Marathes à Panipat le 13 janvier 1761. École moghole, vers 1757. BnF, Est., Réserve Od 43 pet. fol., f. 4. Don du colonel Gentil, 1785. Cat. RH n° 127
context_page_description: Afghanistan is a country located in Central Asia and South Asia. It has borders with Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.
  In early times people passed through it with animals and other goods as it connected China and India with Central Asia and the Middle East. More recently, Afghanistan has been damaged by many years of war. This has resulted in there not being enough jobs.
  The country is around 251,826 square miles in size or area. There are 30 million people in Afghanistan. There are about 3 million Afghan refugees who are in Pakistan and Iran for some time. In 2011, its capital, Kabul, had about 3,691,400 people living in it.
context_section_description: Arabs introduced Islam in the 7th century and slowly began spreading the new religion. In the 9th and 10th centuries, many local Islamic dynasties rose to power inside Afghanistan. One of the earliest was the Tahirids, whose kingdom included Balkh and Herat; they established independence from the Abbasids in 820. The Tahirids were succeeded in about 867 by the Saffarids of Zaranj in western Afghanistan. Local princes in the north soon became feudatories of the powerful Samanids, who ruled from Bukhara. From 872 to 999, north of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan enjoyed a golden age under Samanid rule.
  In the 10th century, the local Ghaznavids turned Ghazni into their capital and firmly established Islam throughout all areas of Afghanistan, except the Kafiristan region in the northeast. Mahmud of Ghazni, a great Ghaznavid sultan, conquered the Multan and Punjab region, and carried raids into the heart of India. Mohammed bin Abdul Jabbar Utbi (Al-Utbi), a historian from the 10th century, wrote that thousands of "Afghans" were in the Ghaznavid army. The Ghaznavid dynasty was replaced by the Ghorids of Ghor in the late 12th century, who reconquered Ghaznavid territory in the name of Islam and ruled it until 1206. The Ghorid army also included ethnic Afghans.
  Afghanistan was recognized as Khorasan, meaning "land of the rising sun," which was a prosperous and independent geographic region reaching as far as the Indus River.
  All the major cities of modern Afghanistan were centers of science and culture in the past. The New Persian literature arose and flourished in the area. The early Persian poets such as Rudaki were from what is now Afghanistan. Moreover, Ferdowsi, the author of Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, and Rumi, the famous Sufi poet, were also from modern-day Afghanistan. It has produced scientists such as Avicenna, Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni, Omar Khayyám, Al-Khwarizmi, and many others who are widely known for their important contributions in areas such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, geography, and geology. It remained the cultural capital of Persia until the devastating Mongol invasion in the 13th century.  
  Timur, the Turkic conqueror, took over in the end of the 14th century and began to rebuild cities in this region. Timur's successors, the Timurids (1405–1507), were great patrons of learning and the arts who enriched their capital city of Herat with fine buildings. Under their rule Afghanistan enjoyed peace and prosperity.
  Between south of the Hindu Kush and the Indus River (today's Pakistan) was the native land of the Afghan tribes. They called this land "Afghanistan" (meaning "land of the Afghans"). The Afghans ruled the rich northern Indian subcontinent with their capital at Delhi. From the 16th to the early 18th century, Afghanistan was disputed between the Safavids of Isfahan and the Mughals of Agra who had replaced the Lodi and Suri Afghan rulers in India. The Safavids and Mughals occasionally oppressed the native Afghans but at the same time the Afghans used each empire to punish the other. In 1709, the Hotaki Afghans rose to power and completely defeated the Persian Empire. Then they marched towards the Mughals of India and nominally defeated them with the help of the Afsharid forces under Nader Shah Afshar.
  In 1747, after Nader Shah of Persia was killed, a great leader named Ahmad Shah Durrani united all the different Muslim tribes and established the Afghan Empire (Durrani Empire). He is considered the founding father of the modern state of Afghanistan while Mirwais Hotak is the grandfather of the nation.
caption: Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of Afghanistan in 1747.
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