Ancient monuments for which so tourists are eager, at first sight in Kabul it is a little. However at more close acquaintance with a city here will be both ancient monuments, and sights, not considering 583 mosques, 38 Shiite prayful houses, Hindu temples and Christian churches, and simply beautiful corners of this ancient city.
Trading heart of Kabul - prospectus Maivand named so in honour of battle at the place with the same name near Kandahar where in 1880 defeat utterly the English forwarding case has been broken. In memory of this victory on the prospectus the cone-shaped tower directed upwards which openwork wings are finished glaze by tiles rises.
Near to prospectus Maivand markets about which it would be desirable to tell especially long since settled down. For example, the name of one of them - Charms-chats (?Four arches?), and actually is the whole labyrinth of very narrow small streets and lanes. Thousand people filling him at once speak, argue, bargain, upraising hands to the sky and pressing them to heart. Only sellers of fabrics - Sikhs - silently sit, having drawn in feet, near to mountains of colour silk, rolls of a heavy velvet and easy brocade in which it is possible to dress all Kabul.
On other market mountains of water-melons and bags with rice rise, and nearby is damp radish and carrots bunches sparkle.
But the king of the Kabul markets is Mindai numbers dukans, benches, shops and little shops, masterful, tea and shashlik houses last how much the sight suffices. Here trade in all: meat and a flour, leather products and hand-made articles from a stone; in show-windows and on counters - lighters and cologne, edges and transistors, cigarettes and buttons, there and then hang sheepskin coat, and nearby on the earth teapots, frying pans, basins have settled down...
Knowingly Kabul joke. ?If you have found on Mindai any thing, means, it does not exist at all in the world?.
Against a noisy trading city silent fortifications with the big rough teeth and blind apertures of loopholes are especially allocated. That clambering upwards abruptly run downwards, the wall lasts over Kabul on a crest of ridge Sher-Darvaz. Have published it can seem even toy, however the wall height reaches seven metres, and its thickness at the basis - not less than four metres. Thanks to so impressive sizes this fortification also has remained, though has been erected in V century.
It is a little below it, at east spur of a ridge, other fortification - the Ball-gissar citadel Under the legend, here during ancient times incarcerate the national leaders rising against the power of emirs rises. This terrible construction ????????? to Afghans good service and during their struggle against Englishmen.
The British armies have grasped Kabul in September, 1879. The history has kept many certificates of their cruelty and vandalism, yes they and not especially hid it. For example, officer Grinvud wrote, that it with the ????? has blown up market warehouses and has set fire to a city in several places at once. When for other day Kabul included other groups of English armies, they have completed begun, have destroyed and have burnt all city. In a citadel of Ball-gissar Englishmen have built the gallows in the form of a circle which named ?a death roundabout?: on it simultaneously executed on some tens persons.
Now Kabul is Syn a city. Along with the narrow small streets intricately winding on slopes of mountains, here it is possible to see and samples of architectural skill of the Afghani architects Argue with blueness of the sky turquoise domes of "the Shahsky mosque?, under the legend, named in honour of the Arabian commander who battled against enemies at once two swords.
Old part of Kabul - the most noisy. Together shouts Here merge invited, messengers of coal, water noses, a deafening ringing mallet chasers, lingering howls of vagrant dealers. Shrill shouts of the donkeys who are furiously urged on by drovers continually rush into this many-voiced noise.
There are in Kabul streets where the whole quarter it is possible to go on carpets which cover the earth before dukans. Set of feet months ruthlessly trample down a crimson fabric which from it becomes even brighter. The wool yarn for the Afghani carpets becomes covered by the paints received from roots of a madder, and these paints do not fade even through hundreds years.
The new city which has settled down on a left-hand side of the river Kabul, has absolutely other appearance in which the European influence is clearly traced. Here it is a lot of gardens, street - direct and wide: in this part of Kabul there are palaces, foreign embassies, the ministries and other government agencies of Afghanistan. Among themselves both parts of Kabul - old and new - are connected by bridges.
