KANDAHAR, a town in Afghanistan, situated in lat. 31° 37' N., and long. 65° 30' E., between the Arghandab and Tarnak river, 89 miles south west of Khilat-i-Ghilzai, 233 miles south-west of Ghazni, 318 south-west of Kabul, and 380 south east of Herat. It is said to have been founded by Lohrasp, a Persian king who flourished in times of very remote antiquity, and to whom also the founding of Herat is attributed. It is asserted by others to have been built by Secunder Zn ul-Kurnin, Alexander the Great; and the traditions of the Persians here agree with the conjectures of European geographers, who fix on this site for one of the cities called Alexandria. The people of Kandahar are supposed to be the ancient war like Gandhara, a cognate race with the Kshatriya, who fought in the army of Xerxes, B.C. 480, armed with bows of bamboo and short spears.
Kandahar is said to have been called so from the Gandhara (Greek, Gandaridm) who migrated to the westward from the Gandhara of the Indus in the fourth century. The early campaigns of the Arabs against Kandahar are given at length in the work of Biladeri, in M. Fragments of Arab History, published at Paris about 1843. It was taken by Yakfib-bin-Leis A.D. 865, founder of the Sofarides dynasty, who were driven out by the Sassanides, thereafter fell to Mahmud, then to le Ghori, the Seljuk, the Turkotnan A.D. 1153, ad in succession to the Ghori again, to the :harasmians, to Jahangir Khan (A.D. 1222), to inter (1389), and to Briber, the Persians, and tc Uzbak.
From the remotest times Kandahar must have cen a town of much importance in Asia, as its eographical position sufficiently indicates, it eing the central point on which the roads from ferat, Seistan, Gour, India, and Kabul unite, nd is the commercial mart of these localities. :andahar was retaken from the 3foghuls by•the "ersians in 1642, during the reign of Shah Abbas he Second.
Tho ancient city stood till the reign of the /hilji, when Shah Husain founded a new one nder the name of Husainabad. Nadir Shah ttempted again to alter the site of the town, and wilt Nadirabad ; at last Ahmad Shah, Saddozai, ounded the present city, to which he gave the lame of Ahmad Shah and the title of Ashraf-ul Salad, or the noble of cities ; by that name and itle it is yet mentioned in public papers, and in he language of the court ; but the old name of Candahar still prevails among the people, though t has lost its rhyming addition of Dar-ul-Karar, T the abode of quiet, or the city of stabilities. Otmad Shah himself marked out the limits of he present city, and laid down the regular plan vhich is still so remarkable in its execution. He nrrounded it with a wall, and proposed to have dried a ditch ; but the Daurani are said to have )bjected to his fortifications, and to have declared hat their ditch was the Chaman of Bistan, neadow near Bistan, in the most western part d Persian Khorasan. Kandahar was the capital if the Daurani empire in Ahmad Shah's time, mt his son Timur changed the seat of government o Kabul. The new town is surrounded by a litch, flanked with a citadel, but the place is :ommanded on several points by rocky hills, the ast slopes of which come up to the ditch of the 'ortification to be buried amongst gardens, )rchards, and plantations of beautiful shrubs, hrough which flow streams of the clearest water.
Ile citadel is situated on the north of the town, tnd contains a very good residence.
It has been thrice occupied by the British,— n 1839-42, and again in 1878-79, and again in L880, and on the first occasion the fortifications were put into a good state by them. They also built large barracks on a great space, situated outside the Herat gate. The town is divided into many tnahalla or divisions, which belong to the numer ous tribes and nations that form the inhabitants of the city.
Some Persian authors considered Kandahar as an Indian, others as a Persian town ; the Afghans themselves include it in Khorasan, to which province they assign the Indus (called also the Attock and the Sind) as the limit. According to them, India commences only on the eastern side, and to the south of this river, from the point in which it receives the Sutlej. The Panjab, comprehending Kashmir and the country of the Sikh, and Zablestan, comprehending Ghazni and Kabul, form another country. The inhabitants of India they call Hindi, and those of Hindustan, Hindustani.
The population of Kandahar is one-fourth of the tribe of Barakzai, one-eighth of the tribe of Ghilji, one - eighth of various other tribes, Afghan, Daurani, half Parsivan, and Hindu. One large quarter of the town, however, the N.E., is entirely inhabited by the Berdurani tribe.
The province of Kandahar is everywhere subject to intense heat. In the fortress of Girishk, on the banks of the Ifelmdiul, in the month of August, the centigrade thermometer stood at 48° or 49° in the shade. This principality is bounded on the south by the deserts of moving sand of the Seistan, and is on this side open to violent winds, surcharged with exceedingly fine sand, which is very injurious to animal life.
At the foot of the old town of Kandahar is one of the most celebrated relics of antiquity belonging to the eastern world, the water-pot of Fo or Buddha. It was carried to Kandahar by the tribes who fled in the 4th century from Gandhara on the Indus to escape an invasion of the Yu-chi, who made the irruption from Chinese Tartary with the express purpose of ob taining the pot. It is the holiest relic of the Buddhist world, and still retains among the 31u hammadans of Kandahar a sacred and miraculous character. It is called the Kashgul-i-Ali, or Ali's pot. It is formed of stone, and may contain about twenty gallons. A celebrated grotto, known by the name of Ghar-i-Jamshid, is situated 16 miles S.W. of the city, in the range of the Panj Bai Hills, which overlook the left bank of the Arghandab river. The whole of its roof is beauti fully marked as if it were artificially carved.— Elphinstotte's Caubut ; Ferrier's Journ. ; Hist. of Afghanistan ; Masson's Journey; Mohun Lars Tr.; MacGregor.