History
[edit]
Further information: History of Afghanistan and Timeline of Kabul
Map of Kabul and surroundings by the Survey of India, 1916
Antiquity[edit]
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The origin of Kabul, who built it and when, is largely unknown. The Rigveda, composed between 2000 and 1500 BC and one of the four canonical texts of Hinduism, and the Avesta, the primary canon of texts of Zoroastrianism, refer to the Kabul River and to a settlement called Kubha.
The Kabul valley was part of the Median Empire (c. 678–549). In 549 BC, the Median Empire was annexed by Cyrus the Great and Kabul became part the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330). During that period, Kabul became a center of learning for Zoroastrianism, followed by Buddhism and Hinduism. An inscription on Darius the Great's tombstone lists Kabul as one of the 29 countries of the Achaemenid Empire.
Kushan Empire
When Alexander the Great annexed the Achaemenid Empire, the Kabul region came under his control. After his death, his empire was seized by his general Seleucus, becoming part of the Seleucid Empire. In 305, the Seleucid Empire was extended to the Indus River, which led to friction with the neighbouring Maurya Empire.
During the Mauryan period, trade flourished due to the use of uniform weights and measures. Irrigation facilities for public use were developed, resulting in an increased crop harvest. People were also employed as artisans, jewelers, and carpenters.
The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom took control of Kabul from the Mauryans in the early 2nd century BC, then lost the city to their successors in the Indo-Greek Kingdom around the mid-2nd century BC. Buddhism was greatly patronized by these rulers, and the majority of the city's population was adherents of the religion. Indo-Scythians expelled the Indo-Greeks by the mid 1st century BC, but lost the city to the Kushan Empire about 100 years later.
The Buddha, statue at the National Museum of Afghanistan, early 1st millennium
It is mentioned as Kophes or Kophene in some classical Greek writings. The Chinese Buddhist monk Hsuan Tsang refers to the city as Kaofu in the 7th century AD, which is the appellation of one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi who had migrated from across the Hindu Kush into the Kabul valley around the beginning of the Common Era. It was conquered by Kushan Emperor Kujula Kadphises in about 45 AD, and remained Kushan territory until at least the 3rd century. The Kushans were Indo-European-speaking peoples related to the Yuezhi and based in Bactria.
Around 230, the Kushans were defeated by the Sasanian Empire and replaced by vassals known as the Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom. During this period, the city was referred to as "Kapul" in Pahlavi scripts. Kapol in New Persian means "Royal Bridge", which is due to the main bridge on the Kabul that connected the east and west of the city. In 420, the Kushano-Sasanians were driven out of Afghanistan by the Xionites known as the Kidarites, who were then replaced in the 460s by the Hephthalites. It became part of the surviving Kingdom of Kapisa, also known as Kabul-Shahan. According to Táríkhu-l Hind by al-Biruni, Kabul was governed by princes of Turkic lineage. It was briefly held by the Tibetan Empire between 801 and 815.
The Jewish community[edit]
Main article: History of the Jews in Afghanistan
Jews had a presence in Afghanistan from ancient times until 2021. There are records of religious correspondence establishing the presence of Jews in Kabul since the 8th century, though it is believed that they were present centuries or even millennia earlier. The 12th century Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi wrote down his observations of a Jewish quarter in Kabul. In the early 19th century, Kabul and other major Afghan cities became sites of refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in neighbouring Iran.
Jews were generally tolerated for most of their time in Afghanistan, up until the passage of anti-Jewish laws in the 1870s. Jews were given a reprieve under the rule of King Nadir Shah until his assassination in 1933. The influence of Nazi propaganda led to increased violence against Jews and the ghettoization of their communities in Kabul and Herat. Most of Afghanistan's Jews fled the country or congregated in these urban hubs.
After the establishment of the state of Israel, the Jewish community requested permission from King Zahir Shah to migrate there. Afghanistan was the only country that allowed its Jewish residents to migrate to Israel without relinquishing their citizenship. Most of those remaining, approximately 2,000 in number, left after the Soviet invasion in 1979.
As of 1992, there were believed to be two Jews remaining in Afghanistan, both living in a synagogue in Kabul. The congregation's Torah scroll was confiscated during the first Islamic Emirate. Zebulon Simontov was believed and widely reported to be Afghanistan's last Jew, until Tova Moradi fled months after him, with her grandchildren. Moradi, who harbored a rabbi in her home throughout the first Islamic Emirate, lived in Morad Khane, Kabul for decades. While she was married to a Muslim man as a child, she still covertly attended synagogue and tried to teach her children what Hebrew prayers she could remember from her childhood. As of her departure in November 2021, there are believed to be no Jews in Afghanistan.
Islamisation and Mongol invasion[edit]
Further information: Islamic conquest of Afghanistan
Map showing names of the regions during the 7th century.
The Islamic conquest reached modern-day Afghanistan in 642 AD, at a time when Kabul was independent. Until then, Kabul was considered politically and culturally part of the Indian world. A number of failed expeditions were made to Islamise the region. In one of them, Abdur Rahman bin Samara arrived in Kabul from Zaranj in the late 600s and converted 12,000 inhabitants to Islam before abandoning the city. Muslims were a minority until Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar of Zaranj conquered Kabul in 870 from the Hindu Shahis and established the first Islamic dynasty in the region. It was reported that the rulers of Kabul were Muslims with non-Muslims living close by. Iranian traveller and geographer Istakhri described it in 921:
Kábul has a castle celebrated for its strength, accessible only by one road. In it there are Musulmáns, and it has a town, in which are infidels from Hind.
Over the following centuries, the city was successively controlled by the Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Khwarazmshahs, Qarlughids, and Khaljis. In the 13th century, the invading Mongols caused major destruction in the region. Report of a massacre in the close by Bamiyan is recorded around this period, where the entire population of the valley was annihilated by the Mongol troops as revenge for the death of Genghis Khan's grandson. As a result, many natives of Afghanistan fled south toward the Indian subcontinent where some established dynasties in Delhi. The Chagatai Khanate and Kartids were vassals of Ilkhanate until the dissolution of the latter in 1335.
Following the era of the Khalji dynasty in 1333, the famous Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta was visiting Kabul and wrote:
We travelled on to Kabul, formerly a vast town, the site of which is now occupied by a village inhabited by a tribe of Persians called Afghans. They hold mountains and defiles and possess considerable strength, and are mostly highwaymen. Their principal mountain is called Kuh Sulayman.
Timurid and Mughal era[edit]
Further information: Timurid Empire and Mughal Empire
Humayun with his father Babur, emperors of the Mughal Empire
Old painting showing the Great Wall of KabulIn the 14th century, Kabul became a major trading centre under the kingdom of Timur (Tamerlane). In 1504, the city fell to Babur from the north and made into his headquarters, which became one of the principal cities of his later Mughal Empire. In 1525, Babur described Kabulistan in his memoirs by writing that:
There are many differing tribes in the Kābul country; in its dales and plains are Turks and clansmen and 'Arabs; and in its town and in many villages, Sārts; out in the districts and also in villages are the Pashāi, Parājī, Tājik, Bīrkī and Afghān tribes. In the western mountains are the Hazāra and Nikdīrī tribes, some of whom speak the Mughūlī tongue. In the north-eastern mountains are the places of the Kāfirs, such as Kitūr and Gibrik. To the south are the places of the Afghān tribes.
Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, a poet from Hindustan who visited at the time wrote: "Dine and drink in Kabul: it is mountain, desert, city, river and all else." It was from here that Babur began his 1526 conquest of Hindustan, which was ruled by the Afghan Lodi dynasty and began east of the Indus River in what is present-day Pakistan. Babur loved Kabul due to the fact that he lived in it for 20 years and the people were loyal to him, including the weather that he was used to. His wish to be buried in Kabul was finally granted. The inscription on his tomb contains the famous Persian couplet, which states:
اگرفردوس روی زمین است همین است و همین است و همین است
Transliteration:
Agar fardus rui zameen ast, hameen ast, o hameen ast, o hameen ast.
(If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, and it is this, and it is this!)
Kabul remained in Mughal control for the next 200 years. Though Mughal power became centred within the Indian subcontinent, Kabul retained importance as a frontier city for the empire; Abul Fazl, Emperor Akbar's chronicler, described it as one of the two gates to Hindustan (the other being Kandahar). As part of administrative reforms under Akbar, the city was made capital of the eponymous Mughal province, Kabul Subah. Under Mughal governance, Kabul became a prosperous urban centre, endowed with bazaars such as the non-extant Char Chatta. For the first time in its history, Kabul served as a mint centre, producing gold and silver Mughal coins up to the reign of Alamgir II. It acted as a military base for Shah Jahan's campaigns in Balkh and Badakhshan. Kabul was also a recreational retreat for the Mughals, who hunted here and constructed several gardens. Most of the Mughals' architectural contributions to the city (such as gardens, fortifications, and mosques) have not survived. During this time, the population was about 60,000.
Under later Mughal Emperors, Kabul became neglected. The empire lost the city when it was captured in 1738 by Nader Shah, who was en route to invade the Indian subcontinent.
Durrani and Barakzai dynasties[edit]
Further information: Durrani dynasty and Barakzai dynasty
Shah Shuja Durrani, the last Durrani King, sitting at his court inside the Bala Hissar
Chihil Sutun Palace (also known as "Hendaki"), one of numerous palaces built by the Emir in the 19th century
Nine years after Nader Shah and his forces invaded and occupied the city as part of the more easternmost parts of his Empire, he was assassinated by his own officers, causing its rapid disintegration. Ahmad Shah Durrani, commander of 4,000 Abdali Afghans, asserted Pashtun rule in 1747 and further expanded his new Afghan Empire. His ascension to power marked the beginning of Afghanistan. By this time, Kabul had lost its status as a metropolitan city, and its population had decreased to 10,000. Interest in the city was renewed when Ahmad Shah's son Timur Shah Durrani, after inheriting power, transferred the capital of the Durrani Empire from Kandahar to Kabul in 1776. Kabul experienced considerable urban development during the reigns of Timur Shah and his successor Zaman Shah; several religious and public buildings were constructed, and diverse groups of Sufis, jurists, and literary families were encouraged to settle the city through land grants and stipends. Kabul's first visitor from Europe was Englishman George Forster, who described 18th-century Kabul as "the best and cleanest city in Asia".
In 1826, the kingdom was claimed by Dost Mohammad Khan, but in 1839 Shah Shuja Durrani was re-installed with the help of the British Empire during the First Anglo-Afghan War. In 1841 a local uprising resulted in the killing of the British resident and loss of mission in Kabul and the 1842 retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad, in which 4,500 regular British troops and 14,000 civilians were killed by Afghan tribesmen. In 1842 the British returned to Kabul, demolishing the city's main bazaar in revenge during the Kabul Expedition (1842) before returning to British India (now Pakistan). Akbar Khan took to the throne from 1842 to 1845 and was followed by Dost Mohammad Khan.
Etching of Kabul by an Italian artist, 1885
The Second Anglo-Afghan War broke out in 1879 when Kabul was under Sher Ali Khan's rule, as the Afghan king initially refused to accept British diplomatic missions and later the British residents were again massacred. During the war, Bala Hissar was partially destroyed by a fire and an explosion.
20th century[edit]
In Kabul, an established bazaar city, leather and textile industries developed by 1916. The majority of the population was concentrated on the south side of the river.
The city was modernised throughout the regime of King Habibullah Khan, with the introduction of electricity, telephone, and a postal service. The first modern high school, Habibia, was established in 1903. In 1919, after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, King Amanullah Khan announced Afghanistan's independence in foreign affairs at Eidgah Mosque in Kabul. Amanullah was reform-minded and he had a plan to build a new capital city on land 6 km from Kabul. This area, named Darulaman, consisted of the famous Darul Aman Palace, where he later resided. Many educational institutions were founded in Kabul during the 1920s. In 1929 King Amanullah left Kabul after a local uprising orchestrated by Habibullah Kalakani, but he was imprisoned and executed after nine months in power by King Nader Khan. Three years later, in 1933, the new king was assassinated during an award ceremony in a school in Kabul. The throne was left to his 19-year-old son, Zahir Shah, who became the last King of Afghanistan. Unlike Amanullah Khan, Nader Khan and Zahir Shah had no plans to create a new capital city, and thus Kabul remained the country's seat of government.
Dilkusha Palace, built in European style in the 1900s
During the inter-war period, France and Germany helped to develop the country and maintained high schools and lycees in the capital, providing education for the children of the city's elite families. Kabul University opened in 1932, and by the 1960s the majority of teachers were western educated Afghans and the majority of instructors at the university had degrees from Western universities.
Kabul's only railway service, the Kabul–Darulaman Tramway, operated for six years from 1923 to 1929. When Zahir Shah took power in 1933, Kabul had the only 10 km (6 mi) of rail and the country had few internal telegraphs, phone lines or roads. Zahir turned to the Japanese, Germans and Italians for help in developing a modern transportation and communications network. A radio tower built in Kabul by the Germans in 1937 provided communication with outlying villages. A national bank and state cartels were organised to allow for economic modernisation. Textile mills, power plants, carpet and furniture factories were built in Kabul, providing much-needed manufacturing and infrastructure.
The river bank in the centre of Kabul in the 1960s
During the 1940s and 1950s, urbanisation accelerated and the built-up area was increased in size to 68 km2 by 1962, an almost fourteen-fold increase since 1925. The Serena Hotel opened in 1945 as the first Western-style luxury hotel. In the 1950s, under the premiership of Mohammad Daoud Khan, foreign investment and development increased. In 1955, the Soviet Union forwarded $100 million in credit to Afghanistan which financed public transportation, airports, a cement factory, a mechanised bakery, a five-lane highway from Kabul to the Soviet border and dams, including the Salang Pass to the north of Kabul. During the 1960s, Soviet-style microrayon housing estates were built, containing sixty blocks. The government also built many ministry buildings in the brutalist architecture style. In the 1960s the first Marks & Spencer store in Central Asia was built in the city. Kabul Zoo was inaugurated in 1967, which was maintained with the help of visiting German zoologists. During this time, Kabul experimented with liberalisation, notably the loosening of restrictions on speech and assembly, which led to student politics in the capital and demonstrations by Socialist, Maoist, liberal or Islamist factions.
People and traffic in a part of Kabul, 1976
Foreigners flocked to Kabul as the nation's tourism industry expanded. To accompany the city's new-found tourism, western-style accommodations were opened in the 1960s, notably the Spinzar Hotel. Western, American and Japanese tourists visited the city's attractions including Chicken Street and the National Museum that contained some of Asia's finest cultural artefact. Lonely Planet called it an upcoming "tourist trap" in 1973. Pakistanis visited to watch Indian films that were banned in their own country. Kabul was nicknamed the Paris of Central Asia. According to J. Bruce Amstutz, an American diplomat in Kabul:
[Before the 1978 Marxist coup d'etat] Kabul was a pleasant city [..] Though poor economically, it was spared the eyesore slums so visible in other Asian cities. The Afghans themselves were an imposing people, the men tall and self-assured and the women attractive.
Until the late 1970s, Kabul was a stop on the Hippie trail from Kandahar to the southwest towards Peshawar. The city was known for its street sales of hashish and became a major attraction for western hippies.
Occupations, wars and Taliban rule (1996–2001)[edit]
Further information: Soviet–Afghan War and Afghan Civil War (1989–92)
Centre of Kabul in 1979; the Pul-e Khishti bridge crosses the Kabul River to the old city in the south bank
On 28 April 1978, President Daoud and most of his family were assassinated in Kabul's Presidential Palace in what is called the Saur Revolution. Pro-Soviet PDPA under Nur Muhammad Taraki seized power and slowly began to institute reforms. Private businesses were nationalised in the Soviet manner. Education was modified into the Soviet model, with lessons focusing on teaching Russian, Marxism–Leninism and learning of other countries belonging to the Soviet bloc.
Amid growing internal chaos and heightened cold war tensions, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, was kidnapped on his way to work at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on 14 February 1979 and killed during a rescue attempt at the Serena Hotel. There were conflicting reports of who abducted Dubs and what demands were made for his release. Several senior Soviet officials were in the lobby of the hotel during a standoff with the kidnappers, who were holding Dubs in room 117. Afghan police, acting on the advice of Soviet advisors and over the objections of U.S. officials, launched a rescue attempt, during which Dubs was shot in the head from a distance of six inches and killed. Many questions about the killing remain unanswered.
On 24 December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and Kabul was heavily occupied by Soviet Armed Forces. In Pakistan, Director-General of the ISI Akhtar Abdur Rahman advocated for the idea of covert operation in Afghanistan by arming Islamic extremists who formed the mujahideen. General Rahman was heard loudly saying: "Kabul must burn! Kabul must burn!", and mastered the idea of proxy war in Afghanistan. Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq authorised this operation under General Rahman, which was later merged with Operation Cyclone, a programme funded by the United States and carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Taj Beg Palace in 1987, the Soviet Army headquarters during the Soviet–Afghan War
The Soviets turned the city of Kabul into their command centre during the Soviet–Afghan War, and while fighting was mostly taking place in the countryside, Kabul was widely disturbed. Political crime and guerrilla attacks on military and government targets were common, and the sound of gunfire became commonplace at night in the outskirts. Large numbers of PDPA party members and Soviet troops were kidnapped or assassinated, sometimes in broad daylight, with acts of terrorism committed by civilians, anti-regime militias and also Khalqists. By July 1980, as many as twelve party members were being assassinated on a daily basis, and the Soviet Army stopped patrolling the city in January 1981. A major uprising against the Soviet presence broke out in Kabul in February 1980 in what is called the 3 Hut uprising. It led to a night curfew in the city that would remain in place for seven years. The Soviet Embassy also, was attacked four times with arms fire in the first five years of the war. A Western correspondent revisiting Kabul in December 1983 after a year, said that the city was "converted into a fortress bristling with weapons". Contrastingly, that same year American diplomat Charles Dunbar commented that the Soviet troops' presence was "surprisingly modest", and an author in a 1983 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article thought that the Soviet soldiers had a "friendly" atmosphere.
The city's population increased from around 500,000 in 1978 to 1.5 million in 1988. The large influx were mostly internal refugees who fled other parts of the country for safety in Kabul. During this time, women made up 40% of the workforce. Soviet men and women were very common in the city's shopping roads, with the large availability of Western products. Most Soviet civilians (numbering between 8,000 and 10,000) lived in the northeastern Soviet-style Mikrorayon (microraion) housing complex that was surrounded by barbed-wire and armed tanks. They sometimes received abuse from anti-Soviet civilians on the streets. The mujahideen rebels managed to strike at the city a few times—on 9 October 1987, a car bomb planted by a mujahideen group killed 27 people, and on 27 April 1988, in celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Saur Revolution, a truck bomb killed six people.
Kabul's Jada-e Maiwand in 1993, showing the destruction caused by the civil war.
Main article: Afghan Civil War (1992–96)
After the fall of Mohammad Najibullah's government in April 1992, different mujahideen factions entered the city and formed a government under the Peshawar Accords, but Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party refused to sign the accords and started shelling the city for power, which soon escalated into a full-scale conflict. This marked the start of a dark period of the city: at least 30,000 civilians were killed in a period known locally as the "Kabul Wars." About 80 percent of the city was devastated and destroyed by 1996. The old city and western areas were among the worst-hit. A New York Times analyst said in 1996 that the city was more devastated than Sarajevo, which was similarly damaged during the Bosnian War at the time.
The city suffered heavily under a bombardment campaign between rival militias which intensified during the summer of 1992. Its geographic location in a narrow valley made it an easy target from rockets fired by militias who based themselves in the surrounding mountains. Within two years' time, the majority of infrastructure was destroyed, a massive exodus of the population left to the countryside or abroad, and electricity and water was completely out. In late 1994, bombardment of the capital came to a temporary halt. These forces took steps to restore law and order. Courts started to work again, convicting individuals inside government troops who had committed crimes. On 27 September 1996, the hardline Taliban militia seized Kabul and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They imposed a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law), restricting women from work and education, conducting amputations against common thieves, and hit-squads from the infamous "Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" watching public beatings of people.
21st century[edit]
Further information: Fall of Kabul (2021), Presidency of Hamid Karzai, and List of terrorist attacks in Kabul since 2008
In November 2001, the Northern Alliance captured Kabul after the Taliban had abandoned the city following an American invasion. A month later, a new government began to assemble under President Hamid Karzai. A NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was deployed in Afghanistan and many expatriate Afghans returned to the country. Kabul's population grew from about 500,000 in 2001 to over 3 million. Foreign embassies re-opened. In 2008, responsibility for security began to shift from NATO to Afghan forces. In 2001 rebuilding began and many of the city's damaged landmarks were rebuilt or restored, including the Gardens of Babur in 2005, the arch of Paghman, the Mahmoud Khan Bridge clock tower in 2013 and the Taj Beg Palace in 2021. Local community efforts repaired homes and dwellings.
A street scene
With an increasing population the city experienced rapid urbanisation, and many informal settlements were built. Numerous modern housing complexes were built after the late 2000s, many of them gated and secured, to serve a growing Afghan middle class. These included the Aria City (in District 10) and Golden City (District 8). Complexes were built out of town, such as the Omid-e-Sabz township (District 13), Qasaba/Khwaja Rawash township (District 15), and Sayed Jamaludin township (District 12).
A high-security "Green Zone" was formed in the centre of the city. In 2010, a series of guarded checkpoints called the Ring of Steel was put into operation. Concrete blast walls appeared throughout Kabul in the 2000s.
The city continued to develop despite frequent terrorist attacks, mainly by Taliban insurgents, and Kabul was the fifth fastest-growing city in the world in 2012. Until August 2021, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) were in charge of security in and around the city. Kabul was periodically the scene of deadly bombings, carried out mostly by the Taliban and its wing the Haqqani network. Government employees, soldiers and ordinary civilians were targets of attacks. The Afghan government called the actions of the terrorists war crimes. The deadliest attack was a truck bombing in May 2017. The 2021 Kabul school bombing targeted a girls' school in Dashte Barchi.
The city was seized during the 2021 Taliban offensive on 15 August 2021. Under Taliban rule the city and the country experienced relative calm, although terrorist attacks continued to be committed by the regional ISIL branch. On 9 October 2025 a drone strike occurred in the Taimani area of Kabul which killed and wounded a number of civilians. This ignited the 2025 Afghanistan–Pakistan conflict.
