John Stathatos: Firozkoh

FIROZKOH

Firozkoh, lost capital of the Ghorid dynasty, was born and died in blood. The Ghorid princes rise in the mountains of Central Afghanistan in the early 12th century, the 6th of the Hegira; under Ala al-din Husain, known as Jahansuz, “the world's incendiary”, the Ghors sweep down into the plains to become the scourge of the Ghaznavids. According to the Tabakat-i-Nasiri or Book of Princes, when Jahansuz came to build his capital he did so with a ferocity which was, even for that period, judged excessive; the Book of Gerchasp relates that after the fall of Ghazni, “The general returned merrily towards the Seistan. And having gathered together all his prisoners, he poured out their blood, and having mixed it with earth, he built of this mixture a rampart. From this mortar emerged a serpent; and whoever the serpent bit was sure to die”.
     The Ghorids adorned their capital with all the riches of Kabul, Herat, and Ghazni which they captured in turn, before successfully challenging their fearsome Kara-Khitay neighbours for possession of Balkh itself, “Mother of Cities”. The fame of Firozkoh is confirmed by innumerable mentions in the Arab and Sassanid annals; high in the mountains, the Ghorid fortress was said to be surrounded by walls, towers, balconies and escarpments, crowned by two golden griffins “the size of camels”, loot from the fall of Adjmer in 1192.
     At the death of Ghiyath al-din in 1202, the vast and astonishing Ghorid empire stretched from Khorasan to the gulf of Hormuz and from China to the eastern approaches of Hindustan; it was not to last. In 1222, the Mongol Khan Ogödai destroys Firozkoh, and the Ghorids vanish from history with the same rapidity as they had appeared. In fact, so complete was the destruction that despite the detailed descriptions of Arab geographers, the city of Firozkoh fades from human memory with equal rapidity - towers, griffins and all.
     In 1958, in a slim volume, part XVI of the Mémoires de la délégation archeologique francaise en Afghanistan, the late André Maricq claimed to have solved the “irritating historical problem” of the Ghorid capital by identifying it with Djam, the site of an impressive minaret on the banks of the Hari Rud; discovered through the happy coincidence of a long shadow falling across the ravine of a summer evening as a Royal Afghan Air Force plane flew overhead, the Minaret of Djam does indeed bear a number of splendid kufic inscriptions to the glory of “the magnified Sultan, King of Kings, Ghiyath al-dunya wal-din who exalteth Islam”, as well as the customary Koranic texts, and these seem to have been sufficient to convince the French archaeologist.
     As he writes with absolute confidence, “other sites have been proposed; but Ferrier's suggestion of Zarni lacks all verisimilitude, and earned him the sarcasm of Raverty. The more traditional identification (Maricq is here hinting at that proffered by the Encyclopaedia of Islam) was similarly established with a far from rigorous logic”. Unfortunately, it becomes clear that Maricq's report was based entirely on a visit of less than 24 hours; a later, more extensive study of the environs made it evident that even a modestly sized village could hardly be accommodated between the steep cliffs. The Soviet invasion and subsequent civil war have made all efforts at elucidating the mystery impossible.~