The western Afghan city of Herat fell to the Taliban on 12th August. (Two days later the capital Kabul also succumbed.) Famously, Herat was once a city of poets, artists, philosophers and artistic patrons to rival Medici Florence; latterly it has been a city with a thriving civil society, and deep pride in its cultural heritage and traditions of literature and Sufism. Herat fared badly under the Taliban’s previous Emirate (1996-2001), not least because as a majority Persian-speaking city of Tajiks and Hazaras, its residents had difficulty understanding what their Pashtun overlords were saying. I lost count of the number of times Herati friends broke down in tears when discussing Taliban rule over their beloved city. The sight of two suspected thieves, faces blackened by tar (a punishment that stretches back to medieval times), being paraded through Herat by triumphant Taliban fighters last Friday is surely a sign of things to come under the resurgent Taliban.
Since the time of Herodotus, Herat has been fabled as “the breadbasket of Central Asia.” From 15th-century Chinese diplomats to 19th-century British soldiers, to travellers from the 1960s and 1970s taking photos and videos, generations of writers have marvelled at the splendour of the oasis city. Alexander the Great was said to have built the great citadel, a huge fortress, painstakingly restored between 2006 and 2011 with German development money.
During the century after the Mongol invasion, as the city recovered from almost total destruction, a local Herati dynasty, the Karts (1245-1381), oversaw a flowering of the arts. Yet it was during the Timurid dynasty (1381-1507) when Herat reached its apogee of cultural excellence becoming famous throughout the world as a city of extraordinary beauty and a byword for courtly sophistication and poetic wit. Jami, one of the world’s most celebrated poets and scholars of Sufi mysticism, served the Timurid court; his poems have long been on generations of Herati lips, and his teachings on Sufi mysticism mark him out as a truly great spiritual figure.
Kamal al-Din Behzad, a painter of subtle and tense miniatures to rival any Renaissance artist, was a native of Herat (although an accident of medieval geopolitics has his resting place in Tabriz, present-day Iran). He painted illustrations and miniatures for courtly histories and great epic poems, which not only showcase his great talent but also the architectural splendour of Timurid Herat; the city is the star, as much as the patrons whom he depicts, and sometimes ridicules. British imperial planners in the 19th century, fearing a Russian advance into Herat and beyond to India, saw fit to demolish much of what remained of these colleges, mausoleums and hospitals. There is little left for the Taliban to destroy; the British got there first.
Herat has long been famed for its Sufism. The same Sufi brotherhoods that mediated peace agreements with the advancing Mongol armies of the 13th century performed the same function in the 1980s conflict against the Soviet Union. Herat’s most famous shrine, Gazur Gah, to the Sufi saint Khwajah Abdullah Ansari, was built in the 15th century by one of the region’s most famed and precocious architects, Qavam al-Din of Shiraz. It remains to be seen how the Taliban will approach Sufi shrines. Sufism is, after all, apostasy in Taliban eyes.
One of the most remarkable stories about Afghanistan’s resistance to Taliban nihilism occurred in Herat. The Taliban not only banned education for young girls and women, but also circumscribed the curriculum for those men allowed to learn. Herat’s library was stripped of all its books aside from those relating to Islam; these books were carried away to be burned (although in reality many were sold by the Taliban to raise money). The Taliban’s restrictions effectively imprisoned thousands of young girls and women. By way of resisting, a group of girls under the guidance of Naser Rahiab, a generous and charming Herati intellectual, began to organise clandestine literature classes. Rahiab ran these under the guise of sewing circles, one of the few activities which the Taliban had not proscribed. A young boy would stand guard outside the house, ready to alert the students should the Taliban pay them a visit. The penalty for being caught reading Rumi or Nabokov, Saadi or Shakespeare could easily have been death. They risked their lives for a literary education, and some of these girls went on to become leading Herati poets, strong voices for a generation’s frustrated hopes.
The Taliban’s representative in the Ministry of Information and Culture in Herat, Latifullah Hakimi, however, did recognise the city’s literary heritage—up to a point. Herat’s Literary Association was permitted to run a cultural magazine called Aurang-e Hashtom. Representatives from the ministry granted permission for publication on the condition that Herat’s intellectuals and poets contented themselves with writing purely on literary matters; politics was off-limits. The Taliban asked those running the magazine why they bothered with literature when all they could wish for was to be found in the Quran. But that was as far as the interference went, and Herat retained a vital lifeline to its heritage as a city of poets, wits and aesthetes. And yet, for all the importance and significance of these modes of resistance, they were small consolation to a city burdened by oppression.
Herat’s most famous son, Jami, penned the following lines. They describe the city’s tortured history, its perpetual struggle between the forces of light and dark, war and peace. They also hint at the importance of poetry as a medium for making sense of the world, echoing the disdain men of letters have had for the hubris of rulers and the folly of empire. Dynasties may come and go, but literature remains:
Behold, the palaces in ruins,
The wrath of rulers disappeared in vain,
No trace of pomp and glory remains,
But poets live on in glory through the ages.
Herat’s future is unclear. One just hopes that this wonderful city of light and wit, warmth and friendship doesn’t suffer more than it already has.
