culture & heritage final report

7/30/2019 Culture & Heritage Final Report

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CULTURE & HERITAGE INFORMATICS

REPORT ON

Buddha of Bamiyan

KHALID ZAHEER

K1034778


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ContentsExecutive summary ................................................................................................................................. 3

Brief Synopsis .......................................................................................................................................... 3

The Theoretical or intellectual issues: .................................................................................................... 4

Analysis: .................................................................................................................................................. 4

Technical walkthrough: ........................................................................................................................... 5

................................................................................................................................................................ 8

................................................................................................................................................................ 9

................................................................................................................................................................ 9

.............................................................................................................................................................. 10

.............................................................................................................................................................. 11

Theoretical/ intellectual Issues: ............................................................................................................ 11

Web and tools ................................................................................................................................... 11

Copyright ........................................................................................................................................... 11

Background of Buddha of bamiyan ................................................................................................... 12

Destruction of the Buddha ................................................................................................................ 12

The history Books of Buddha of Bamiyan ......................................................................................... 13

Project Review ...................................................................................................................................... 13

Resources .............................................................................................................................................. 14

Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 14

Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 14

Interview with Eye witness ............................................................................................................... 14


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Executive summary

Description of client/ organization

The Project that I am doing for this module is based on the Buddha of Bamiyan, they were

two 6th

century monumental statues of standing Buddha carved into the side of a cliff in the

bamiyan valley in Afghanistan 230 Km northwest Kabul . Bamyan lies on the Silk Road which

lies in the Hindu Kush Mountain area in the Bamiyan valley.

In 11th

Century Bamyan was part of the Kingdom of Gandhara and it was the place of

Buddhist monasteries. Buddha of bamyan is world largest Buddha carving in world. Buddha

of bamyan was possibly the famous cultural landmarks of the region, and the place was

listed by UNESCO as a world heritage along with the surroundings Cultural landscape and

archaeological leftovers of the bamyan valley.

I will be doing this project due to the cultural relevance it has to the module and it has a

very deep and interesting heritage that I want to explore and let other people who are

interested in it to see what had happened in the past. It will give an insigt to the culture of

the Afghan people.

Brief Synopsis

In 1999 Mullah Omar give out a declaration in favour of the defence of the bamyan

buddhas statue. Afghanistans Buddhist population was no longer exists, which removed

the possibility of the statues being worshiped. Taliban banned all forms of imagery, sport,

TVs, Music in accordance with what considered a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

In time of Taliban Culture Minister Qadratullah Jamal told Press of a decision by 400

Religious clerics from across Afghanistan declaring the Buddhist statues against the views of

Islam. Monumental statues of standing buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley

in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan (Hazrat.J.Ali, 2010). These were seen as idols by

the Taliban which needed to be removed from the country.

However In March 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Omar waged a war against Buddha

Worshipping. Taliban destroyed the 1.700 year old sandstone statues Buddhas of bamiyan

with anti-aircraft and tank fire the world tallest stone sculptures. The operation to crash the

statues carved into a cliff in the bamiyan valley in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan

was supervised by Mullah Obaidullah.

In 6 March 2001 Mullah Omer said Muslims should be proud of smashing idols, Afghan

Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel stated that the damage was anything but

retaliation against the International Community for economic consents we are destroying

the statues in accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious problem.


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. In 2002 after the fall Taliban more than 200 Afghan refugees were living in caves beside

the rubble.

The main areas I will be exploring:

What is the bamyan buddhas

What importance they had and why the Taliban destroyed them

Online Gallery of the bamyan buddhas that are being re-built now

Record Interviews on peoples views about the bamyan buddhas

The Theoretical or intellectual issues:

I will have an online gallery to show the current situation as they are rebuilding the statues

in Afghanistan. I will show previous and current images. Omeka will be used for this purpose

as it gives me the right tools for this.

I am also going to hold interviews on people who have a deeper understanding of this topic

and they will show their views on what happened with the Buddhas of bamiyan

Analysis:

Afghanistan has also been in the mist of war dating back to the civil war that began after

May 15 1988 which is still an issue today. An Islamic armed group overtook the Mujahideen

government and took control of the country. When Taliban come in power they destroyed

the world largest Buddha statues. There are a few challenges that are apparent to me whichI will need to solve. The challenge was to find pictures of the statues that were destroyed by

the Taliban. Second challenge was to find reconstruction pictures of bamiyan statues, also

due to the security reasons in Afghanistan it was difficult to get the pictures because they

refused access to people who wanted to take pictures.

The main challenge was to find former Taliban commander or eye witness of the scene who

was there at the time of destruction of Buddha statues and interview him for this project. I

found few other people for the interview but the problem was they were not ready to give

video interview due to them coming under threat from intelligence officers so I agree to doaudio recording of their interview as they did not want to show themselves on screen.


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Technical walkthrough:

This is a prototype of my website that I create for Culture and heritage Module. This is home

page of my website.

This is a prototype of my images page on this page as you can see there will be pictures withDescriptions.


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This is a wireframe of my website that I create for Culture and heritage Module. This is aDestruction page. There is all information about why. How Taliban destroyed world largest

statues.

This is a history page where you can read history of Buddha statues.


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This is prototype of my website and on this page you can read about reconstruction about Buddha of

bamiyan.

This is a prototype of my interview page I will interview my client on here.


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Theoretical/ intellectual Issues:

Web and tools

Internet is the tool that I used to create this website and finish my project, I used internet to

research and find information about Buddha of bamiyan. I have created my website on

omeka which is an online platform that enables me to create the website the way I need it

to look like.

Omeka can be accessed from anywhere in the world and it can be used to display items and

design the website thats why I choose to use Omeka for my project to build the site for

Buddha of bamiyan. The items can hold the images and publish them for people to see as

well as videos and audio recordings can also be uploaded as informative resource for users.

Copyright

In my project I had to make sure that I didnt break any Laws especially the copyright law,

the reason is because my material was going to be published online and the rightful owner

will see it and I can be done for copyright infringement. To tackle this issue I took images

and I am the rightful owner of the images which I took from Afghanistan to have them

uploaded on my website.


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Background of Buddha of bamiyan

Buddha statues were 6th Century Monumental Statues of standing Buddha carved into the

side of a cliff in the bamiyan valley in Afghanistan, Northwest Kabul. The larger Buddha was

built between 591 and 644 and the smaller statue was built between 544 and 595. The statues

were built by the kushans with the guidance of local Buddhist monks.

In 11th Century Bamyan was part of the Kingdom of Gandhara, the place was mostly home to

the Buddhist religion though the religion was born in the approximate area and flourished in

Gandharan region, which also includes Bamiyan Valley. This area increased its power during

the ruling of Ashoka, he himself was a follower of Buddhism.

These Buddhist monks lived in mainly caves or grottes, the Bamiyan valley has many of

these caves and within them you are able to find the works and left pieces of the art inside.

Ther were regular creation of the paintings and statues on walls, these bamiyan buddahs

sculptures showing you the level of extraordinary artistry in the history of Buddhist artwork.

The main influences that were initiated into the creation of the Bamyan Buddahs were mainly

classical Greek and Roman Sculpture. The influences came from Silk Road which has been

historically a caravan route linking the market of china with those of the western world.

The invasions of Alexander the great during the 4th century BCE had also influenced the

creation as well. In the political periods the style became more advanced over a set period of

time.

Destruction of the Buddha

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar gives out a speech in favor of the defiance of thebamiyan Buddhas statue. Afghanistans Buddhist population no longer existed, which

removed the possibility of the statues being worshiped. Taliban banned all forms of imagery,

TV, and Music in accordance with what was considered a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Taliban Culture Minister Qadratullah Jamal told the press of a decision by 400 Religious

clerics from across Afghanistan declaring the Buddhist statues against the views of Islam, he

called for them to be removed.

Koichro Matuuura chief of the UN Education and Cultural Organisation had said that he had

Organized an emergency conference of members for the Organisation of the Islamic

Conference in order to try to stop the Destruction of Buddha of Bamiyan however they are

removing statues and this is being done down to the Muslim faith and its teachings.

MUTAWAKEL asked Taliban or religious students to follow the sharia law which enhanced

their views to remove the statues. They wanted a Muslim state, the regime was only

considered by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

However In March 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Omar waged a war against Buddha

Worshipping. Taliban destroyed the 1.700 year old sandstone statues Buddhas of bamiyan

with anti-aircraft and tank fire the world tallest stone sculptures.


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The operation to crash the statues carved into a cliff in the bamiyan valley in the Hindu Kush

Mountains of Afghanistan was supervised by Mullah Obaidullah.

Mullah Omer said Muslims should be proud of smashing idols, Afghan Foreign Minister

Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel stated that the damage was anything but retaliation against the

International Community for economic consents we are destroying the statues in accordance

with Islamic law and it is purely a religious problem.

The international community and Afghan people was outraged and upset because a famous

statue within the Buddhist community was destroyed by such evil acts.

The political reason for destroying world famous statues was down to Pakistan who wanted

to destroy Buddha and play a political game with India and other Buddhist countries.

Pakistan was supporting the Taliban to use them against other non-Muslim countries and the

Pakistan ISI was behind destruction of Buddha of bamiyan. The ISI was controlling the

Taliban they were ruling by the name of Mullah omar, they influenced them to destroyed thestatues.

The History Books of Buddha of Bamiyan

The Bamiyan of Buddha was a good topic I got all my information from the text book which was

written by LIewelyn Morgan who gives an insight into why these statues had been removed and how

Islam played a part in the destruction of these Buddha statues. The Buddha of Bamiyan (Morgan,

2012) helped me understand and get relevant information on this topic.

The second book that I have read I learn a lot about Buddha statues and Bamiyan valley. The book

was written by (Sim-Williams, 01/12/2007) and the topic I choose for this project is Buddha ofbamiyan so it got history information about Buddhist in Afghanistan. The influences it had at the

time and what role politically it had on Afghanistan and neighboring countries.

Project Review

In conclusion the creation of this website and online exhibition for Buddha of bamiyan has

been a success so far and the information has been collected and has been implemented

onto the technology as previously stated the platform used was Omeka. The main issue was

to find pictures for the online gallery and interviewing former Taliban commander who is a

witness of the destruction of the Buddha of bamiyan.

There were some issues that I went through in the implementation of this website. One of

which was that the pages that I created were not publishing on the website, so the user was

unable to see the pages that I created. In the end I managed to resolve it, omeka was quiet

complex to understand at the start but after playing around with it I managed to get it

working.


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I have managed to create a working exhibition style website that displays images of the

Buddha of Bamiyan along with descriptions and metadata for the user to see the

background of this topic. I added audio recording of people from Afghanistan who hold

valuable knowledge about the Buddha of bamiyan.

Resources

Bibliography

Hazrat.J.Ali. (2010, 11 18). http://www.hazarapeople.com/buddhas-of-bamyan/. Retrieved march

20, 2013, from http://www.hazarapeople.com/buddhas-of-bamyan/:

http://www.hazarapeople.com/buddhas-of-bamyan/

Morgan, L. (2012). The Buddhas of Bamiyan. Great Britain : Liewelyn Morgan .

Sim-Williams, N. (01/12/2007). Bactrian Documents: From Northern Afghanistan; Ii: Letters and

Buddhist Texts Ni. United Kingdom: Khalili Collections.

Appendix

Interview with Eye witness

Hi my name is Khalid Zaheer and I am interviewing you today

What is your name?

Nazeem jan

1: What do you remember about the bamiyan Buddahs what happened?

Nazeem: They tied our hands arrested me tied a rope around our waist they would take us to thehead of the giant buddah

They tied a rope and suspended us from their we took drills in our hands and installed explosives

There was a terrible sound when u look it was all smoke and dust and fire Whenever I see these

empty places I feel like it was the day of my death I was thinking when will they come and kill me

what a horrible time it was

They are looking for the sleeping Buddha they are still digging his name was juan sing he trekked

from china to India to search for sacred Buddhist sects he later found bamiyan

2: Why did the Taliban destroy them?


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Nazeem:Well. It because TalibanTaliban is sharia law organisation they have. The life is for

Allah we do not follow Buddha or idol worshiping they say it is haram so they want to destroy the

bamiyan buddah because people will follow Buddha or pray like buddah it is wrong we pray to Allah

and Taliban they were in the rule they decide to remove bamiyan buddah

They stop TV, Music, they wanted to go and do pray they stop all these things

3: Who was behind this?

Nazeem: It was from start Pakistan they give idea to destroy, Pakistan wanted to hurt India because

politics they dont like each other so they wanted to remove and Taliban they say it is right because

Afghanistan is Islamic country so they do not need statues.

Pakistan had war with India so they want to make India angry of this reason