introductionfloors. Badghis, the plateau region between the Murghab and Hari Rud
watersheds, is Afghanistan’s most important pistachio-growing region,
but also grows lalmi wheat and breeds hardy horses and ponies. It is also
one of the country’s most remote and inaccessible regions. Badghis trad-
itionally was the homeland of the Chahar Aimaq tribes, but at the end of
the nineteenth century thousands of Pushtuns and Hazaras were settled
in this region. In the foothills of the Tir Band-i Turkistan and northern
Afghanistan, many rural communities practise transhumance: between
May and September they live in beehive-shaped felt tents, known as
yurts or ui, in the upper valleys where there is pasture and water for their
animals. The elderly, young children and pregnant women remain behind
in the settlements to keep an eye on the houses and crops.
Herat, the major city of western Afghanistan, is situated in an exten-
sive plain irrigated by the Hari Rud. This is an important wheat -producing
region and local people proudly claim Herat has seventy varieties of grapes.
Pushtun nomads winter in the lower reaches of the Hari Rud and in the
spring they migrate upstream with their extensive flocks of sheep and
goats and herds of camels to summer pastures around Chaghcharan. A
major source of revenue for Herat is customs duties gathered at the Iran–
Afghanistan frontier post of Islam Qal‘a. Traditional crafts include silk
weaving, a tile-making factory that has revived ancient glazing techniques,
and translucent blue glassware. The region also exports fine white marble,
Buzkashi is the traditional game of the Turkic peoples of northern Afghanistan but was
adopted as a national sport under King Zahir Shah. Here two teams from Parwan and
Panjshir compete for the carcass of a goat.