Behold the Nine Last Secrets of Bamiyan’s Giants

Carved into the sheer sandstone cliff that looms above the ancient Silk Road near Bamiyan, two colossal niches cradle the void where history’s most prodigious Buddhas once stood. For fifteen centuries they reigned, silent sentinels of faith—until 2001, when the Taliban reduced them to dust. The act shocked the world and pierced the conscience of humanity.

Buddhism carved its stubborn imprint across Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, arriving in Bamiyan as early as the first century CE during the Kushan era. Along the Silk Road, the caves and grottoes along these windswept faces hold monasteries, chapels, and shrines hewn directly into the rock. Fragments of mural, traces of seated Buddhas, survive in galleries linking dim alcoves—testaments to a civilization that painted meaning upon stone.

The two monstrous statues were the heart of the site. The taller statue reached an awe-inspiring 53 meters, one of the planet’s greatest standing Buddhas. The adjacent figure, though smaller, stood at 38 meters—an even more staggering leviathan of stone and faith.

Both were hewn from the rock’s heart, their bases of sandstone, their splendor shaped in clay and straw, then clad in plaster. The plaster has long since eroded, yet in antiquity this coating lent the figures a startling realism and life.

Originally, both sentinels were awash in color: the great Buddha radiated crimson fire, the smaller a kaleidoscope of hues. The space around their heads and feet was carved to permit pilgrims to circumambulate, tracing an ancient rite of devotion.

Our knowledge of Bamiyan’s colossi comes largely from Xuanzang, the seventh-century Chinese monk who spoke of Bamiyan as a thriving hub of faith—home to more than a dozen monasteries and thousands of monks. He records that the Buddhas were encrusted with precious stones and gleamed with gold. Modern historians place their creation between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE. For centuries they stood as the region’s magnet, drawing pilgrims from every corner of the world.

With Islam’s rise in the 9th century, such a monumental Buddhist symbol uneasy the new rulers. In the 17th century, Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and, in the 18th, Persian Shah Nader Afshar, attempted to shatter the giants with cannon—but only bruised their faces. It was Afghan emir Abdur Rahman who finally marred the visage, leaving its features scarred in memory.

In March 2001, a Taliban decree commanded the total destruction of non-Islamic shrines and statues. Explosives were planted at the bases and shoulders of the giants, and the mountainside answered with ruin.

Yet sorrow yields its own secret: the rubble revealed wonder. While clearing the debris, archaeologists uncovered secluded caves and frescoes long hidden, and fragments of a nearly 20-meter-tall reclining Buddha—an unimaginable secret sleeping beneath the dust, waiting to be rediscovered.