Mardan: the monastery on the hill at Takht-i-Bahi

A short history

The monastery was founded in the first century CE and remained in use until the seventh. Archaeologists have identified four distinct construction phases beginning as early as the first century BCE.

An inscription at the site names Gondophares, the Indo-Parthian king who ruled between about 20 and 46 CE. Control later passed to Kujula Kadphises, the first Kushan king, and the complex went on through Kanishka and the Kidara Kushans of the fourth and fifth centuries.

The name is uncertain. Takht is throne or top in Persian and bahi is spring or water — so, roughly, the throne of the water spring, probably for the springs on the hill.

It was inscribed by UNESCO in 1980, which describes it as exceptionally well preserved. The reason it survived is the hill: it was too high and too awkward to be worth quarrying for building stone.

Places worth your time

The Stupa Court

The central court with the bases of clustered votive stupas still standing around it.

The monastic cells

Individual chambers around a courtyard, walls to head height, and the clearest picture anywhere of how these communities actually lived.

The assembly hall and temple complex

Later additions, up the slope.

The Tantric complex

Small, dark meditation cells — a rarity, and the part most visitors walk past.

The climb itself

About twenty minutes up from the car park, and the view back over the Mardan plain from the top is part of the point.

Before you go

October to March; the climb is unpleasant in summer heat. About an hour and a half from Peshawar, and it combines well with the Peshawar Museum for the sculpture that came out of sites like this.