Afghanistan: a brick minaret in a deep river valley, painted caves in the Bamiyan Valley and a terraced garden in Kabul

At roughly 1,900 m elevation, the Minaret of Jam stands about 215 km east of Herat, where the Hari-rud and Jam rivers meet. UNESCO gives the brick tower’s height as 65 m and its octagonal footing as 9 m across; an inscription dates construction to 1194. ICOMOS identifies the calligraphy around the first shaft as Sura Maryam, chapter 19: 976 words in Kufic lettering made from small carved terracotta bricks. ICOMOS says stones carved with Hebrew inscriptions, thought to be from the 11th or 12th century, were found on nearby Kushkak hill in 1962 and most likely originated in a Jewish burial ground close by; eight further inscriptions have since come to light.[1][2]

Bamiyan’s UNESCO property comprises eight separate sites in the central highlands. The valley’s north cliff has two niches that once held standing Buddhas, 55 m and 38 m tall; caves across the area served as monasteries, chapels and sanctuaries. In Kakrak, about 3 km south-east, more than a hundred caves date from the 6th–13th centuries, including remains of a 10 m Buddha. A 2022 materials study by Yoko Taniguchi and colleagues describes about 700 caves in Bamiyan, roughly 50 with wall paintings. The authors report vegetable drying oils as binding media in wall paintings from several caves, naming walnut, perilla and poppyseed oils as the likeliest candidates. For Cave N(a), whose wall painting they date to the mid-7th century, they describe horse glue in the sizing layer and drying oil in the paint. The authors call the identification of the particular drying oils speculative.[3][4][5]

South-west of Kabul’s old city, Bagh-e Babur occupies the rise of Kuh-e Sher Darwaza. The German Archaeological Institute’s chapter dates the garden’s foundation to between 1504 and 1525, during Babur’s rule in Kabul; Afghanistan’s 2009 Tentative List entry describes 15 terraces arranged on an east–west line. Franke-Vogt, Bartl and Urban date at least three tombs to before construction of a stone platform measuring 17 m on each side. One has a 1.2 m brick vault set in mud mortar, which the authors compare with Timurid construction. The Tentative List says 13 excavation seasons from 2002 to 2005 revealed that the garden overlies a monumental building from the 3rd century BC. It also describes an Aga Khan Trust for Culture rehabilitation project that began in 2003, gives its completion as 2006 and notes a 2008 memorandum of understanding on the garden’s management.[6][7]