Herat

Herat is one of the oldest cities of the Iranian world: the Aria of the Achaemenid Persians, refounded by Alexander the Great as Alexandria in Aria, whose fortress tradition places under the present citadel. Water from the Hari river made the valley rich, and the city passed through Parthian, Kushan, Sasanian and early Islamic hands, growing as a staging point on the roads between Persia, India and Central Asia. In the 12th century the Ghurids, a dynasty from the mountains of Ghor to the east, founded the Friday Mosque here. Genghis Khan's armies sacked the city in the 1220s.

Its golden age followed under the Timurids. Shah Rukh, son of Timur, made Herat his capital early in the 15th century, and his wife Gawhar Shad built the Musalla complex of mosque and madrasa north of the walls. Under Sultan Husayn Bayqara, late in the century, the court drew the poet Jami, the Turkic poet Ali-Shir Nava'i and the painter Behzad, whose work defined the Herat school of miniature painting; tilework, calligraphy and bookmaking flourished alongside them.

Safavid Persia and then the Durrani kingdom fought over the city, and Persia besieged it repeatedly in the 19th century before the border with Afghanistan was settled. In 1885, fearing a Russian advance, British and Afghan engineers demolished most of the Musalla to clear a field of fire, leaving the minarets standing alone. The March 1979 uprising against the communist government was crushed with heavy loss of life, the deadliest episode before the Soviet invasion that December. The Taliban took Herat in 1995, lost it in 2001, and took it again in 2021. The citadel was restored between 2006 and 2011.

Herat thinks of itself as the cultural capital of Afghanistan, and the claim rests on a long line of poets, calligraphers, miniature painters and tile-makers running back to the Timurid court. Dari is spoken in a Herati accent close to the Persian of eastern Iran, classical poetry is quoted in ordinary speech, and family, trade and religious ties across the border are close enough that the city has always looked as much west as east.

Sufism is part of the city's identity. The shrine of Khwaja Abdullah Ansari at Gazar Gah, an 11th-century poet and mystic, remains a place of pilgrimage and of weekend family visits, and the Chishti order, later hugely influential in India, takes its name from Chisht-e Sharif in the east of the province. Most Heratis are Tajiks, with Pashtun, Hazara and other communities, and the Aimaq peoples of the eastern hills bring another Persian-speaking tradition into the city's markets.

Craft is the visible side of that culture: glass blown in the old city, metalwork, embroidery and carpets, and the blue and turquoise tile that has been remade for the Friday Mosque in workshops attached to it. Hospitality is formal — tea, dried fruit and nuts appear before any conversation of substance — and manners are more reserved than in Kabul. The city was also known for women's education and professional work before 2021, a history residents mention often.

About 670,000 people live in Herat, making it the country's third city and the commercial capital of the west. The shape is clear: the walled old city with its bazaars and courtyard houses, the citadel above it, the minarets standing in open ground to the north, and wide modern avenues spreading west and south across the valley floor, where most newer housing and offices are.

Trade drives the economy. Goods cross from Iran at Islam Qala and from Turkmenistan at Torghundi, and Herat distributes them across the west; the bazaars handle everything from cloth and machinery to dried fruit. The valley grows wheat, grapes, pomegranates and saffron, the last a signature crop picked in autumn, and marble and cement works, food processing and carpet weaving employ many. Large numbers of Afghans deported or returning from Iran pass through the city, which has long absorbed displaced families.

The day runs on bread from the neighbourhood oven and green tea, with bazaars busiest in the morning and again after the afternoon heat, when families walk in the parks and around Gazar Gah. Electricity has often depended on imports from Iran and Turkmenistan, and supply is uneven. Drought has pressed hard on the valley's farming, the suspension of development aid after 2021 removed many jobs, and restrictions on girls' secondary education and on women's work weigh on a city once known for its schools.

Western Afghan cooking shares much with eastern Iran, and rice leads it. Kabuli palaw — long-grain rice steamed with lamb, carrot julienne and raisins — is the dish of weddings and guests, while chalaw, plain white rice, is eaten with qorma, a slow stew of meat and onions often sweetened with fruit. Aush, a noodle soup with herbs, beans and yoghurt, and shorwa, a meat and vegetable broth poured over torn bread, are everyday food.

The grill is the city's street food. Lamb kebab and minced kofta are cooked over charcoal and wrapped in naan from the tandoor, and bolani, flatbread stuffed with potato or leek and fried, is sold through the bazaar. Dumplings appear at celebrations: mantu, steamed and filled with minced meat and onion, served under yoghurt and a tomato sauce, and ashak, filled with leek.

Herat is orchard and garden country. Its grapes are famous and many are dried into raisins; pomegranates, figs, melons and apricots come from the valley, and pistachios from the uplands of Badghis to the north. Saffron grown in the province's fields colours rice and sweets and is sold in the bazaar by the gram. Sweets run to firni, a milk pudding scented with cardamom and rosewater, and sugared almonds. Drinks are green tea above all, doogh — salted yoghurt thinned with water and mint — and fruit sharbat in summer. Alcohol is prohibited.