Erroneously known as the graveyard of empires, Afghanistan in fact served as the battlefield of the world.

Long before the name Afghanistan appeared in written record, the region formed one of the great cultural corridors of the ancient world. Its earliest known inhabitants were Irano-Aryan tribes settled across a vast tract stretching from Herat and Balkh in the west to Kabul, Bamiyan and Ghazni in the centre, and down the river valleys leading toward present-day Pakistan. Classical sources referred to these lands as Ariana, Bactria, Gandhara and Arachosia - cosmopolitan zones of exchange rather than isolated frontier societies. Situated at the intersection of Persia, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the region was destined to become both a prize and a passage for successive empires.

The first major imperial power to establish structured rule here was the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the 6th century BCE. Under Cyrus the Great and Darius I, the region was organised into satrapies such as Bactria, Arachosia and Gandhara. Persian administration introduced roads, taxation systems and imperial oversight that endured for nearly two centuries, integrating these eastern lands into a wider imperial order and anchoring long-distance trade.

This Persian order was swept aside by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. His campaigns through Bactria and Arachosia introduced Hellenistic influences, visible in city foundations such as Alexandria-Arachosia (modern Kandahar). After Alexander's death, the Seleucids inherited much of the region, followed by the Greco-Bactrian kings who forged a........

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