afghanistanmined near Chisht-i Sharif on the upper Hari Rud. The Herat region is
strongly influenced by its historic cultural and political ties with Iran.
The Iranian dialect of Persian predominates here and there is a large Shi‘a
minority in the region. Herat is also renowned as a centre of Sufism, while
Herati musicians, including female ensembles, are much in demand for
wedding parties and other celebrations.
Herat lies on the crossroads of ancient trans-Asian trade routes that
link it with Persia, India, Balkh and Central Asia. Like Bactra, Herat is
mentioned in the Avesta and was the capital of the Achaemenid satrapy
of Aeria; in the sixth century ce it was the seat of an Eastern Christian, or
Nestorian, bishopric and later became a Metropolitan diocese. Over the
centuries Herat has suffered from frequent invasions and on numerous
occasions it has been pillaged and its population slaughtered. Herat was
conquered by Alexander the Great, though no monumental remains of the
Hellenistic town have been found in the region. In 484 ce, the Sasanian army
was virtually wiped out on the plains outside Herat by the Hephthalites, a
Turco-Mongolian tribe from Inner Asia (see Table 1). In 1221 the Mongols
slaughtered its population almost to the last man, woman and child, and
in 1389 it was sacked by another Turco-Mongolian warrior, Timur Lang,
or Tamurlaine. However, in 1405, one of Timur’s descendants, Shah Rukh
Mirza, made Herat the capital of the Timurid Empire (see Table 3). Together
with his wife Gauhar Shad, he refined the city with mosques, madrasas,
royal tombs, shrines and secular buildings. The Timurids were also patrons
of Sufism as well as artists, calligraphers, poets and historians. Little of
Herat’s pre-Islamic past remains, though the imposing citadel of Qal‘a-yi
Ikhtiyar al-Din, named after a local ruler of the Kart Dynasty (1245–1389), is
probably built on ancient foundations. Many of Herat’s Timurid structures,
including min arets, the Friday Mosque and the tomb of Gauhar Shad, are
still standing, though some have suffered war damage.5
The Helmand-Arghandab river basin of south and southwest Afghani-
stan is the largest watershed in Afghanistan. Kandahar, the principal city
of this region and the former capital of the Durrani kingdom, lies between
the Arghandab and its tributary, the Tarnak, and on ancient trade routes
linking Sind and the Indus with Herat, Persia and Central Asia. Kandahar
also benefits from being the nearest city in Afghanistan to Karachi, the
port through which most of Afghanistan’s imports and exports flow, and
the Pakistan railhead at Chaman.
Ahmad Shah Durrani founded the present city of Kandahar in the
1750s after Old Kandahar was levelled by the Persian conqueror Nadir
Shah Afshar in 1737. The ruins of the old city lie 4 kilometres (2.5 mi.)