Paropamisades

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The Alexander Empire and its administrative structure. The Paropamisaden province, which is not specifically identified here, is bordered by Arachosia in the south and Bactria in the north.

Paropamisaden was a historical landscape in the Old Persian Empire of the Achaemenids and a province in the Alexander Empire . Geographically, it comprised the area of ​​the Central Asian high mountains of the Hindu Kush around what is now Kabul in Afghanistan . The Hindu Kush was known to the ancient Greeks under the name “Paropamisos” ( Greek  Παροπαμισσός ), which was derived from the Persian word uparisena , which means “the peak that the eagle cannot fly over”. The province was bordered by the regions of Arachosia in the south and Bactria in the north.

The Hindu Kush was founded by Cyrus II in the middle of the 6th century BC. Incorporated into the Persian Empire. It had a high strategic value for the control of Central Asia, as the provinces of Bactria and Sogdia can be reached via its passes to the north and the Indus Valley to the east via the Chaiber Pass . In the administrative order of the Persian Empire, the Hindu Kush evidently did not form a satrapy of its own , since it is not listed in the provincial lists. He was probably subordinate to the Satrap of Gandhara . Only after his first crossing of the Hindu Kush in spring 329 BC, Alexander the Great judged. The province of Paropamisaden, well aware of the strategic importance of this region. 327 BC He marched on over the Chaiber Pass to India.

The urban center of the Hindu Kush region in Persian times was Kabura, today's Kabul . However, Alexander founded his own city as the provincial capital for Paropamisads, Alexandria Kaukasis ("on the Caucasus") , which he settled with Greek-Macedonian war invalids of his army , Greek mercenaries and protection troops. A second city foundation was called Nikaia on the Kophen river (Kabul) , the exact identification of which has not yet been established.

Following the general ignorance of the ancient Greeks about the geographical nature of the Eurasian land mass, the Hindu Kush / Paropamisos represented the eastern extension of the Caucasus Mountains for Alexander's contemporaries , to which, according to their mythology, the Titan Prometheus was chained after he had brought fire to the people . According to the reports of ancient historians, Alexander and his companions had actually believed that they had discovered the place of Prometheus' punishment in the mountains of Paropamisus, in keeping with the general historical lack of distance of their time, in which the gods and titans were real actors of their past . They would also have found the eagle's eyrie, Aithon , who hacked Prometheus's liver every day, and the titan's cave with its chains, from which Heracles had finally freed him. These claims were heavily criticized by Eratosthenes , who accused Alexander's writing companions of deliberately misinterpreting the geography of Asia (Hindu Kush = Caucasus) in order to flatter Alexander's lust for glory, who liked to see himself in competition with the gods and heroes. Arrian was far less critical of this.

After Alexander's death, Paropamisaden fell in the Diadoch Wars in 316 BC. Under the supremacy of Antigonos Monophthalmos , then 309 BC. BC under those of Seleucus , the founder of the Seleucid Empire . This occurred paropamisaden in the year 303 BC. BC, including the provinces of Gedrosia , Arachosia and Gandhara , to the Indian king Chandragupta (Greek: Sandrokottos) and his Mauryan empire in exchange for 500 war elephants . In the Far East, the Seleucids only left the provinces of Bactria and Sogdia, which became independent a little later as the Greek-Bactrian Kingdom . Antiochus III. subjugated the Central Asian provinces again, after his death they were finally lost to the Seleucid Empire, including the Hindu Kush.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ See Lane Fox, p. 387.
  2. ↑ Strabo 15, 2, 8-10.
  3. ↑ Arrian , Anabasis 5, 1, 5; Diodorus 17, 83, 1; Pliny , Naturalis historia 6, 62; Metz epitome 2.
  4. ↑ Arrian, Anabasis 4, 22, 6. Johann Gustav Droysen ( History of Hellenism ) identified Nikaia am Kophen with the city of Kabul itself, Vincent Arthur Smith, however , favors Jalalabad , see The early history of India from 600 b. C. to the Muhammadan Conquest incl. The invasion of Alexander the Great (1904), p. 43.
  5. ↑ Arrian, Anabasis 5, 3, 1–3 and Indike 5, 9; Diodorus 17, 83, 1; Strabon 15, 1, 8.
  6. ↑ See Demandt, p. 249.
  7. ^ Strabo 15, 2, 9.