Twelve hundred and fifty years later the great idols were measured by theodolite and tape, and duly catalogued as curiosities of the world's museum. We know very little of the later history of Bamian. The city was swept off the face of the valley by Chengiz Khan; and Nadir Shah, in later times, left the marks of his artillery on the face of cliffs and images. Moslem destroyers and iconoclasts have worked their wicked will on these ancient monuments, but they witness to the strength and tenacity of a faith that still survives to sway a third of the human race. Chahilburj and Shahr-i-Babar (31 miles above Chahilburj at the junction of the Sarikoh stream with the Band-i-Amir) with the ruined fortresses of Gawargar and Zohak, wonderful for the multiplicity of its lines of defence, all attest to the former position of Bamian in Afghan history and explain its prominence in mediæval annals. And yet there is not much said about the road thither from Balkh, or onward to the "Indian city" of Kabul. Idrisi just mentions the road connecting Balkh with Bamian, which he describes as follows: "From Balkh to Meder (a small town in a plain not far from mountains) three days' journey. From Meder to Kah (well-populated town with bazaar and mosque) one day's journey. From Kah to Bamian three days." Bamian he describes as of about the same extent as Balkh, built on the summit of a mountain called Bamian, from which issue several rivers which join the Andarab, possessing a palace, a grand mosque, and a vast "faubourg"; and he enumerates Kabul, Ghazni, and Karwan (which we find elsewhere to be near Charikar) amongst others as dependencies of Bamian. It is not easy to identify Meder and Kah. The total distance from Balkh to Bamian is at least 200 miles by the most direct route _via_ the Darra Yusuf. Forty miles a day through such a country must be regarded as a fine performance, even for Arab travellers who would think little of 50 or 60 miles over the flats of Turkistan. However, we must take the record as we find it, and assume that the camels of those days (for the Arabs never rode horses on their journeys) were better adapted for work in the hills than they are at present. The inference, however, is strong that not very much was really known about this mountain region south of the Balkh plain. To the pilgrim it offered no terrors; but to the merchant, with his heavily laden caravan, it is difficult to conceive that 800 or 900 years ago it could have been much easier to negotiate than it is to the Bokhara merchants of to-day, who take a much longer route between the Oxus and Kabul than that which carries them past Bamian.