Afghanistan as the “Graveyard of Empires” has reared its head again in the wake of the US withdrawal, leading pundits to once again pontificate that even Alexander the Great couldn’t capture this country—even though it is unclear who coined the term.

A couple points of clarification on this question. Alexander decisively defeated Achaemenid forces at three pitched battles, Granicus River, Issus, and Gaugamela. In the first battle, he faced the combined forces of the Anatolian satraps largely composed of Persian cavalry and a sizable number of Greek mercenary hoplites. Alexander actually likely outnumbered the Persians at the Granicus.

At the other two battles, the Persian king Darius mustered large armies from throughout his empire that would have included experienced cavalry from a variety of places, Greek mercenaries, and infantry called the Kardakes that Michael B. Charles has recently argued were general purpose infantry of various backgrounds rather than Persian hoplites that Arrian (2.8) suggests or light infantry as is sometimes assumed. We are also told that the cavalry contingents included horsemen from Bactria (modern Afghanistan), as well as Cappadocia, Armenia and elsewhere (e.g. Arr. 3.11).

After Gaugamela, Alexander entered Babylon and then fought his way to the Persian capitals of Persepolis, Susa, and Pasargadae and claimed for himself the mantle King of Asia. Many of the western provinces of the Persian empire did submit to Alexander, but the key is that Alexander didn’t upset the apple cart. He worked with the existing administrations to ensure a smooth transition while appointing Greeks and Macedonians to oversee financial and military operations. Where the captured provinces didn’t surrender immediately, he took them by force. Just ask the Tyrians.

So what was different about Bactria? Is it just their historic propensity for giving empires trouble?To start with, Bessus, the man who had Darius killed and declared himself Great King, had previously been the satrap of Bactria and Sogdiana (Arr. 3.8.3, 21.1; Curt. 4.6.2). After killing Darius, he withdrew to his base of support and began to wage guerilla war against the invaders. Refusing to fight a pitched battle prevented a defeat, but the leading Bactrian noblemen Dataphernes and Spitamenes, formerly his supporters, turned him over to Alexander (Arr. 3.29–30; Curt. 7.5.21–6), perhaps thinking that this would get the Macedonians to leave Bactria. When it didn’t, they continued to fight.

Did Bactria (Afghanistan) give Alexander problems and lead to defeats? Absolutely.

Alexander was forced to adapt his command structure, sending smaller detachments to hunt down his enemies who would launch raids that melted away back into Scythian territory even beyond Bactria. Sometimes they were successful, like when Coenus defeated 3,000 cavalry (Arr. 4.17.4–6); other times the pursuing Macedonians found themselves surrounded by Bactrian cavalry or ambushed and wiped out (e.g. Arr. 4.5.3–9, 4.6.1–2; Curt. 7.7.30–9, 9.21). A defeat of this sort was also the proximate cause of Cleitus’ argument with Alexander that ended in his death. Eventually Spitamenes was himself executed by the Scythians (probably not by his wife for failing to surrender to Alexander, as Curtius reports (8.3).

However, it was through two non-military actions that Alexander actually “conquered” Bactria.

First, Alexander took a page out of his father’s playbook and married Rhoxane, the daughter of the Bactrian lord Oxyarthes (4.19.5–6, 6.15.3; Curt. 8.4.23). Oxyarthes then surrendered to Alexander (Arr. 4.20.4; Curt. 8.4.21).(The identity of Oxyarthes is a little bit mysterious. Diodorus Siculus also claims that Oxyarthes was the brother of Darius, though this is likely not likely. We also hear that he had fought for Darius at Issus (Curt. 3.11.8; Diodorus 17.34.2–3), which is certainly plausible.)

Curtius Rufus describes this marriage as yoking the Persians and the Macedonians together (8.4.25), but more than any high-minded cultural exchange, the marriage gave Bactrians a stake in Alexander’s regime, in much the same way that Alexander’s decision to enlist large numbers of Iranian infantry to be trained in the Macedonian style and Bactrian cavalry (Arr. 4.17.3).The value of the first action was that it would, at least in theory, give time for the second to take root.

The surest way to govern an ancient empire is to do so through cities. Cities work as bureaucratic hubs that project imperial power, control trade, and become show-pieces of imperial propaganda (as Alexandria became, for instance). They also are easier to control because the people who live there aren’t going anywhere. Bactria before Alexander had some settlements, but appears to have been governed more by the personal and family relationships between the Persian and Bactrian nobility. It should be of no surprise, then, that Alexander established a series of “cities” in Bactria, including by settling Greek mercenaries in new fortified locations (Arr.. 3.29.1,4.3.6,4.16.4-5, 4.16.6; Strabo 11.11.4).

Whether this strategy, as with so many of Alexander bureaucratic maneuvers, would have been successful in the long run requires a counterfactual argument, but it is telling that the Seleucids largely followed the same pattern. Apame, Seleucus I’s first wife and the mother of the king Antiochus I, for instance, was the daughter of Spitamenes (Arr. 7.4.6) and the Seleucids continued Alexander’s pattern of founding cities in Bactria. Well before Parthian independence and the development of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, the eastern part of the empire might have been aptly described as a string of pearls running along the network of roads. That said, the strategy worked, at least until instability closer to the center of the empire prompted a withdrawal of Seleucid power from the region.

tl;dr: Bactria gave Alexander and his forces trouble in a way that the western, more urban parts of the empire didn’t, but not because it was the graveyard of empires and he adapted his strategies to the conditions. We should be very careful, though, of drawing too many lessons about modern policy from Alexander’s campaign.

edited for spacing.