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Concept
Kingdom of Kapisa
Summary
The Kingdom of Kapisa (known in contemporary Chinese sources as and ) was a state located in what is now Afghanistan during the late 1st millennium CE. Its capital was the city of Kapisa. The kingdom stretched from the Hindu Kush in the north to Bamiyan and Kandahar in the south and west, out as far as the modern Jalalabad District in the east.
The name Kapisa appears to be a Sanskritized form of an older name for the area, from prehistory. Following its conquest in 329 BCE by Alexander the Great, the area was known in the Hellenic world as Alexandria on the Caucasus, although the older name appears to have survived.
In around 600 CE, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang made a pilgrimage to Kapisa, and described there the cultivation of rice and wheat, and a king of the Suli tribe. In his chronicle, he relates that in Kapisa were over 6,000 monks of the Mahayana school of Buddhism. In a 7th-century Chinese chronicle, the Book of Sui, Kapisa appears to be known as the kingdom of Cao (). In other Chinese works, it is called Jibin ( Jibin).
Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the kingdom was ruled by the Turk Shahi dynasty. At one point, Bagram was the capital of the kingdom, though in the 7th century, the center of power of Kapisa shifted to Kabul.
Kapisi (Kapiśi, ) or Kapisa was the capital city of the Kingdom of Kapisa. While the name of the kingdom has been used for the modern Kapisa Province in Afghanistan, the ancient city of Kapisa was located in Parwan Province, in or near present-day Bagram.
The first references to Kapisa appear in the writings of 5th-century BCE Indian scholar Achariya Pāṇini. Pāṇini refers to the city of Kapiśi, a city of the Kapisa kingdom. Pāṇini also refers to Kapiśayana, a famous wine from Kapisa. The city of Kapiśi also appeared as Kaviśiye on Indo-Greek coins of Apollodotus/Eucratides, as well as the Nezak Huns.
Archeology discoveries in 1939 confirmed that the city of Kapisa was an emporium for Kapiśayana wine, discovering numerous glass flasks, fish-shaped wine jars, and drinking cups typical of the wine trade of the era.
Official source
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