{"book":"adl0957","page":185,"text":"142\n\nPART FIVE\n\nAn Historical Sketch\n\nAfghanistan has figured prominently at various times in the\nhistory of Central Asia. Few other countries compare with it\nas regards past history, rich archæological remains and the\npart played by it in the development of human thought and\nculture. The history of its civilization goes back at least five\nthousand years. It was a seat of culture at a time when Egypt\nand Babylonia were serving the cause of human thought and\nart. Balkh (Bactria of old) can boast of having been one of the\ngreat centres of ancient civilizations. It was from here that the\nAryan culture found its way into India and the adjacent\ncountries. And again it was here that Zoroaster preached his\nreligion, which later on became the state religion of Persia for\nmany centuries.\n\nSituated in the heart of Asia, Afghanistan naturally became\neven in those ancient times the meeting ground of at least three\ngreat civilizations of the world—Aryan or Bactrian, Græco-Bac-\ntrian, and Græco-Budhist. Similarly, it was a great centre of trade\nand served as an entrepot of thought and merchandise between\nIndia, China and the countries of the West.\n\nLater on in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., Islam infused\nnew life into the country, bringing about a fundamental revolu-\ntion. The ancient culture was either replaced or came comple-\ntely under the influence of the new, which has remained the\ndecisive force in Afghan life to this very day.\n\nIn the early part of the eleventh century A.D., during the\nGhaznavide period, Afghanistan once more became a flourishing","chars":1566,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00185.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/185","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/185","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}