SO what? mudslimes have blown up heaps of archeological relics....
The
Buddhas of Bamyan (
Persian:بتهای باميان –
bott-hâye Bāmyān;
Pashto: د باميانو بتان) were two 6th-century
[1] monumental statues of
Gautam Buddha carved into the side of a cliff in the
Bamyan valley in the
Hazarajat region of central
Afghanistan, 230 kilometres (140 mi) northwest of
Kabul at an elevation of 2,500 metres (8,200 ft). Built in 507 CE (smaller) and 554 CE (larger),
[1] the statues represented the classic blended style of
Gandhara art.
[2]They were respectively 35 and 53 m (115 and 174 ft) tall.
[3]
The main bodies were hewn directly from the
sandstone cliffs, but details were modeled in m&d mixed with straw, coated with
stucco. This coating, practically all of which wore away long ago, was painted to enhance the expressions of the faces, hands, and folds of the robes; the larger one was painted
carmine red and the smaller one was painted multiple colors.
[4] The lower parts of the statues' arms were constructed from the same m&d-straw mix supported on wooden armatures. It is believed that the upper parts of their faces were made from great wooden masks or casts. The rows of holes that can be seen in photographs held wooden pegs that stabilized the outer stucco.
They were
dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 by the
Taliban, on orders from leader
Mullah Mohammed Omar,
[5] after the
Taliban government declared that they were
idols.
[6]An envoy visiting the United States in the following weeks said that they were destroyed to protest international aid exclusively reserved for statue maintenance while Afghanistan was experiencing
famine,
[7] while the Afghan Foreign Minister claimed that the destruction was merely about carrying out
Islamic religious iconoclasm. International opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas, which in the following years was primarily viewed as an example of the extreme religious intolerance of the Taliban.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan
