Jalalabad - History

History

In 630 AD Xuan Zang, the famous Chinese Buddhist monk, visited Jalalabad and a number of other locations nearby. The city was a major center of Gandhara's Greco-Buddhist culture in the past until it was conquered by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century. However, not everyone converted to Islam at that period as some still refused to accept it. In a book called Hudud-al-Alam, written in 982 CE, it mentions a village near Jalalabad where the local king used to have many Hindu, Muslim and Afghan wives.

The region became part of the Afghan Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century, during the Indian invasions by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Later, it was controlled by the successor Ghurids until the Mongols invaded the area. It then became part of the Timurids.

The modern city gained prominence during the reign of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. Babur had chosen the site for this city and was built by his grandson Jalal-uddin Mohammad Akbar in 1570. The original name of Jalalabad was Adinapur as mentioned here:

In the last decade of the sixteenth century Adinapur was renamed to Jalalabad after the son of Pir Roshan, Jalala who was fighting the Mughals in the Waziristan area. It remained part of the Mughal Empire until around 1738 when Nader Shah and his Afsharid forces from Khorasan came to take over control. Nader Shah was accompanied by the young Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of Afghanistan, who would re-conquer the area in 1747 after becoming the new ruler of the Afghans. He used the city while going back and forth during his nine military campaigns into India.

The city was invaded by Ranjit Singh and his Sikh army in the early 19th century but was quickly chased out a few days later by Afghan forces of Durrani Empire. The British forces invaded Jalalabad in 1838, during the First Anglo-Afghan War. In the 1842 Battle of Jellalabad, Akbar Khan besieged the British troops on their way to Jalalabad. In 1878, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the British again invaded and set up camps in Jalalabad but withdrew two years later.

Jalalabad is considered one of the most important cities of the Pashtun culture. Seraj-ul-Emarat, the residence of Amir Habibullah and King Amanullah was destroyed in 1929 when Habibullah Kalakani rose to power; the other sanctuaries however, retain vestiges of the past. The mausoleum of both rulers is enclosed by a garden facing Seraj-ul-Emart.

From 1978 to early 1990s, the city served as a strategic location for the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. It fell to the Mujahideen in 1992 when they were on their way to capture Kabul. It was conquered by the Taliban and became part of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in the mid 1990s. During Operation Enduring Freedom after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the city was invaded and fell to US-backed Afghan forces.

Since late 2001, the military of Afghanistan and the United States armed forces have established a number of bases, with the one at Jalalabad Airport being the largest. The Afghan National Police is in control of security while the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) also has a heavy presence in and around the city. In early 2011, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul announced that it plans to establish a consulate in Jalalabad. As is the case with other Afghan cities, occasional suicide attacks by militants have taken place in recent years.