Mazar-i-Sharif

The city is young by the standards of the plain it stands on. The ancient centre was Balkh, a short distance north-west, and the site of Mazar-i-Sharif was farmland until the 12th century, when local tradition held that the tomb of Ali, the caliph and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, had been rediscovered there. The Seljuk sultan Ahmad Sanjar ordered a shrine and a town built on the spot, and the Mongols destroyed them in 1220.

The city proper grew back in the 15th century, when the Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara ordered the ruined shrine rebuilt. Pilgrims, then traders, then craftsmen settled around it, and the settlement took the name Mazar-i-Sharif, the noble shrine. Its rise was gradual but decisive: Balkh, sacked by the Mongols and never recovering its former standing, slipped behind its neighbour. Uzbek dynasties governed the plain and acknowledged Kabul only nominally until the conquests of Dost Mohammad Khan in the 1850s, and in 1866, after a malaria outbreak in the flood season, Balkh lost its administrative status to Mazar-i-Sharif.

The 20th century brought cotton, roads and a bridge over the Amu Darya, and the city grew as the country's main northern trading centre. Soviet forces crossed into Afghanistan through this corridor in 1979 and left the same way in 1989. During the civil wars of the 1990s the city changed hands violently, and the Taliban took it in 1998 at great cost to its people. It was the first major city to fall to the anti-Taliban coalition in 2001, and passed back to the Taliban with the rest of the north in August 2021.

Mazar-i-Sharif is a meeting point of peoples rather than the city of any one of them. Uzbeks and Turkmen from the plains, Tajiks, Pashtuns settled in the north since the late 19th century and Hazaras from the southern hills all live here. Dari is the common language of the street and the bazaar, with Uzbek and Turkmen spoken at home in many districts, and the northern Dari accent differs noticeably from Kabul's.

The shrine shapes the city's year. Nowruz, the Persian New Year on 21 March, was traditionally marked here with the raising of the Janda Bala, a great banner hoisted at the shrine, followed by weeks of the red-tulip festival, when families came from across the north; the banner ceremony has been officially halted and Nowruz is no longer an official holiday, though private observance continues. Pilgrims visit the shrine throughout the year, and the white pigeons kept in its courtyard are part of the city's image of itself.

Craft and sport carry a strong regional identity. Turkmen and Uzbek families weave many of the carpets sold abroad as Afghan, and karakul sheep farming on the plain supplies the tightly curled lambskin of the karakul cap. Buzkashi, the mounted game fought over a goat or calf carcass and Afghanistan's national sport, is strongly associated with these northern plains and is often played on Fridays. Hospitality is formal and generous, and the rhythms of prayer, the bazaar and the extended family order the week.

About 570,000 people live in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province, which makes it one of the country's largest cities and the centre of the north. The plan is simple: the shrine and its park at the middle, avenues radiating outward, bazaars packed around the first ring, and low walled compounds spreading into the fields beyond.

The economy rests on trade, farming and transport. Goods cross from Uzbekistan at Hairatan and travel south by road and rail, making the city the distribution point for the whole north. Cotton, wheat, melons, almonds and karakul pelts come in from the irrigated plain; carpets are woven in the surrounding provinces and finished and sold here; and Jowzjan's gas fields lie a short way west. Government offices, the university and a hospital network employ many in the city itself.

The day begins early to beat the heat, with bread from the tandoor and green tea, and the bazaars do most of their business before midday. Afternoons empty out in summer and fill again towards evening, when families walk in the shrine park. Life is hard: drought, the collapse of development aid after 2021, unemployment and the return of large numbers of Afghans from Iran and Pakistan all press on household incomes, and the restrictions on girls' secondary education and on women's work apply here as everywhere in the country.

Northern Afghan cooking leans towards Central Asia, and rice is its centre. Palaw — above all Kabuli palaw, long-grain rice steamed with lamb, carrot julienne and raisins — is the dish of every gathering, while chalaw, plain white rice, is eaten with qorma, a stew of meat and onions. Shorwa, a soup of meat, potato and vegetables poured over torn bread, is the everyday meal, and lamb kebabs are grilled on skewers in the bazaar and eaten with flat naan straight from the tandoor.

Dumplings are the celebration food: mantu, steamed parcels of minced meat and onion served under yoghurt, a tomato and split-pea sauce and dried mint, and ashak, filled with leek or garlic chives. Qurut, hard balls of dried salted yoghurt, is soaked and beaten back into a tart white sauce for both, and for kichri qurut, a rice and mung bean dish. Bolani, a flatbread stuffed with potato or leek and fried, is common street food.

The plain around the city is famous for fruit. Balkh's melons and grapes are among the best regarded in the country, and pomegranates, apricots, almonds and pistachios are grown and dried across the north — the bowls of nuts and raisins set out for a guest come from these orchards. Tea is drunk constantly, mostly green and unsweetened, with sheer chai, a milk tea, kept for mornings and special occasions. Alcohol is prohibited.