Place · stratified city of Swat · Pakistan
Barikot / Bazira
The town Alexander besieged in 327 BCE as Bazira, and the reason the chronology of the whole north-west is better fixed than it would otherwise be. The Italian Archaeological Mission has dug here since 1978 and produced the longest continuous stratified urban sequence in the region: Indo-Greek defensive walls, Saka-Parthian and Kushan levels, a Buddhist sacred area, and an eighth- to ninth-century Hindu Shahi temple, all in section on one site above the Swat river.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.678, 72.212
Worth knowing
One trench at Barikot runs from the second millennium BCE to the Hindu Shahis, which is why dates elsewhere in Swat and Gandhara are now argued against this site rather than the other way round.
Connections (3)
- Site adjacencyButkara & Swat valley
Barikot and Butkara are four kilometres apart on the Swat river and together they give the valley its double sequence — the town and the sacred area of the same society, excavated by the same Italian mission. Barikot has the defensive walls, the houses and the Indo-Greek through Shahi stratigraphy; Butkara has the stupa rebuilt across seven centuries. Reading the two in parallel is what allows Swat's Buddhist establishments to be dated against secular occupation rather than against each other.
- CampaignAlexander of Macedon
Arrian and Curtius name Bazira among the Swat towns Alexander took in 327 BCE, before the siege of Aornos and the crossing of the Indus, and the Italian mission's excavations at Barikot have found the Indo-Greek fortification that followed. The campaign in Swat was the hardest fighting of the Indian expedition and is described at length precisely because it was difficult, so a modern trench section at Barikot can be set against a classical narrative of the same walls — which is rare anywhere in the subcontinent.
- Route adjacencyAornos / Pīr Sar
Alexander's Swat campaign runs between these two. Barikot is the Bazira that Arrian says he took, and the Italian mission's excavations there have found the Indo-Greek fortification that followed; Aornos is the rock the survivors withdrew onto, further east above the Indus. The Swat fighting was the hardest of the Indian expedition and is described at length for that reason, which means a modern stratigraphic section at one site and a classical narrative of the other describe the same few months.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Barikot”. Luca Maria Olivieri and the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan (ISMEO) excavation reports; Arrian, Anabasis, on Bazira.
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