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Khyber Pass
Khyber also spelled KHYBER, or KHAIBAR, most northerly and important
of the passes between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The pass connects
Kabul with Peshawar. The pass has historically been the gateway for
invasions of the Indian subcontinent from the northwest. The name
Khyber is also applied to the range of arid, broken hills through
which the pass runs and which form the last spurs of the Spin Ghar
(Safid Kuh) Range. On either side of the connecting ridge are the
sources of two small streams, the beds of which form the Khyber gorge.
This narrow gorge forms the Khyber Pass; it winds between cliffs of
shale and limestone, 600-1,000 feet (180-300 m) high, and enters the
Khyber Hills from the Shadi Bagiar opening, a few miles beyond Jamrud,
Pak., and continues northwestward for about 33 miles (53 km). Just
beyond the old Afghan fort of Haft Chah, it opens onto the barren
Lowyah Dakkah plain, which stretches to the Kabul River.
After a steep ascent at its southern entrance, the pass rises gradually
to Fort Ali Masjid (3,174 feet), where the Khyber River (Khyber
Khwar) leaves the pass to the south. For 5 miles from Ali Masjid
the pass becomes a defile not more than 600 feet wide, flanked by
imposing and precipitous walls. From Zintara village on northward,
the pass becomes a valley a mile or more wide, with forts, villages,
and scattered cultivation plots. About 10 miles west of Ali Masjid
lies Landi Kotal fort and cantonment (3,518 feet); this is the highest
point in the pass and is also an important market centre with an
alternate route back to Peshawar. There the summit widens out northward
for 2 miles. The main pass, however, descends from Landi Kotal through
Shinwari territory to Landi Khana, where it runs through another
gorge and enters Afghanistan territory at Towr Kham (Torkham; 2,300
feet), winding another 10 miles down the valley to Lowyah Dakkah.
The Khyber Pass is threaded by a caravan track and by a good hard-surface
road. The railway (opened 1925) through the pass connects Jamrud
with Landi Khana, near the Afghan frontier; the line, with its 34
tunnels and 94 bridges and culverts, revolutionized transportation
in the area. The pass may be skirted by a road fork that enters
the hills about 9 miles north of Jamrud and emerges at Lowyah Dakkah.
Few passes have had such continuing strategic importance or so
many historic associations as the Khyber Pass. Through it have passed
Persians, Greeks, Mughals, Afghans, and the British, for whom it
was the key point in control of the Afghan border. In the 5th century
BC Darius I the Great of Persia conquered the country around Kabul
and marched through the Khyber Pass to the Indus River. Two centuries
later Hephaestion and Perdiccas, generals of Alexander the Great,
probably used the pass. Buddhism flourished in and around the Khyber
when it was part of Ashoka's kingdom (3rd century BC); Buddhist
remains include Kafir Kot (Citadel of the Kafirs), Shopla stupa
(also called the Khyber Top), and the stupa near Ali
Masjid. The pass was used by Mahmud of Ghazna, Babur, Nader Shah,
and Ahmad Shah Durrani and his grandson Shah Zaman in their invasions
of India. Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab, extended his
kingdom as far as Jamrud in the early 19th century.
The Pashtun Afridi people of the Khyber area always resisted foreign
control, and numerous punitive expeditions were undertaken against
them by the Mughals and the British. The first British advance northward
into the Khyber took place in 1839, and during the First Anglo-Afghan
War the pass was the scene of many skirmishes with the Afridis.
The Treaty of Gandamak, which was signed during the Second Anglo-Afghan
War in 1879, left the Khyber clans under British control. In 1897
the Afridis seized the pass and held it for several months but were
defeated in the Tirah expedition of 1897. The British became responsible
for the safety of the pass, which is now controlled by the Pakistani
Khyber Agency. |
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