Herat

• 1. The Pearl Of Khorasan

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  Herat sits south of the Paropamisus Mountains, in the fertile valley of the Hari River in western Afghanistan. A 14th-century geographer named Hamdallah Mustawfi gave it a riddle. If anyone asks which is the pleasantest of cities, he wrote, you may answer that it is Herat. The world is like the sea, the province of Khurasan like a pearl-oyster, and Herat the pearl in the middle. That praise was not idle flattery. For centuries this place carried the title Pearl of Khorasan, and for a moment its glory was thought to match Florence of the Italian Renaissance. How did a town built around a river called Harayu, meaning with velocity, rise to that height? Why did Mongol armies leave it in ruins, and how did it become a gateway collecting billions of dollars in customs revenue for a modern nation? The answers run from Avestan times to a Taliban offensive in 2021, and they begin with a name.

• 2. A River And Its Names

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  Haraiva is how the surrounding district appears in Old Persian under the Achaemenid Empire, between 550 and 330 BC, while classical sources called the region Areia, or Aria. The Zoroastrian Avesta names it Haroiva. All of these come from the local river, the Herey, from Old Iranian Harayu, which ends about 5 km south of the city. Naming a region after its main river is common in this part of the world, as with the neighboring Arachosia and Bactria.

  Darius I listed Aria among his provinces in the Behistun inscription, around 520 BC. Representatives from the district appear in reliefs at the royal Achaemenid tombs of Naqsh-e Rustam and Persepolis. They wear Scythian-style dress, a tunic and trousers tucked into high boots, with a twisted Bashlyk covering head, chin, and neck.

  Herodotus described Herat as the breadbasket of Central Asia. When Alexander the Great reached Aria in 330 BC, it was an important district administered by a satrap named Satibarzanes. Alexander captured the Arian capital, called Artacoana, rebuilt the town, and constructed the citadel. Mustawfi tells a different origin story, crediting a chief named Herat, a follower of the hero Nariman, as the first founder, with Alexander rebuilding the ruins along walls 9000 paces around.

• 3. Empires Of The East

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  Harev appears in the Sasanian period, between 226 and 652, carved into the Ka'ba-i Zartosht at Naqsh-e Rustam, and Hariy is listed among the provincial capitals in a Pahlavi catalogue. Around the year 430 the town held a Christian community with a bishop from the Church of the East, though most sources suggest Herat was predominantly Zoroastrian. It had joined the Parthian Empire in 167 BC.

  In the last two centuries of Sasanian rule, Aria became strategically vital in the wars between the Sasanians, the Chionites, and the Hephthalites, who had settled in northern Afghanistan since the late 4th century. By the Arab invasion in the mid-7th century, Sasanian power in the province was largely nominal, while Hephthalite tribal lords held real authority in Herat and neighboring districts like Badghis and Qohestan.

  For a brief moment the city touched a different empire entirely. The Tang dynasty of China, after its Conquest of the Western Turks, claimed a tenuous suzerainty over Herat by 659 to 661. This was the westernmost point of Chinese power in its long history. The hold proved fleeting, broken when local Turkish tribes rose in rebellion in 665 and drove the Tang out.

• 4. The Banner Of Islam

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  Hephthalites from Herat and some unidentified Turks tried to block the Arab advance on Nishapur at a battle in Qohestan in 651 to 652, and were defeated. When Arab armies appeared in Khorasan in the 650s, Herat was counted among the twelve capital towns of the Sasanian Empire and remained one of three eastern mint centers, alongside Balkh and Marv. The army under Ahnaf ibn Qais seems to have avoided the city in 652, but Herat soon submitted, and an Arab governor was installed under a treaty that included Badghis and Bushanj. Like many places in Khorasan, it rebelled and had to be reconquered several times.

  Yazid ibn al-Muhallab forced rebel followers of Ibn al-Ash'ath out of Herat in 702. The city saw conflicts among Muslim and Arab factions during the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate, and became a center for the followers of Ustadh Sis.

  In 870 a coppersmith's apprentice changed the map. Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar, founder of the Saffarid dynasty, marched from his capital at Zaranj through Bost, Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, Bamiyan, Balkh, and Herat, conquering in the name of Islam. Arab rule had been harsh and avaricious, breeding such unrest that native rulers reestablished independence once the Caliphate weakened. Herat had been part of the Taherid dominion until Ya'qub besieged and captured it on the 16th of August 867, with the Saffarids expelling the Taherids from Khorasan in 873.

• 5. Colleges, Bazaars, And Bronze

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  Three brothers, Nuh, Yahya, and Ahmad, established the Samanid dynasty in Transoxiana, and Ahmad Samani opened the way to the conquest of Khorasan, including Herat, which the Samanids ruled for a century. Their centralized administration became a model for later dynasties. Estakhri and Ibn Hawqal described the 10th-century city as a prosperous town with strong walls, plenty of water, extensive suburbs, an inner citadel, a congregational mosque, and four gates, each opening onto a thriving marketplace. The government building stood about a mile outside the city at Khorasanabad. A fire temple called Sereshk flourished on a nearby hilltop.

  Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni took control of Khorasan in 998, and Herat became one of six Ghaznavid mints in the region. The Seljuk Empire captured it in 1040, the Ghurids of Ghor in 1175, and the Khwarazm Empire in 1214. Under the Ghurids the city reached a peak of density and craft. Mustawfi reported 359 colleges, 12,000 fully occupied shops, 6,000 bath-houses, caravanserais, mills, a darwish convent, and a fire temple, with roughly 444,000 houses of settled population described as warlike and armed, and Sunni.

  Ghiyasuddin Ghori built the great mosque of Herat in 1201. In this period the city became a noted center for metal goods, especially bronze, decorated with elaborate inlays in precious metals.

• 6. Slaughter And Renaissance

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  The Mongol Empire laid siege to Herat twice. The first siege ended in surrender, the slaughter of the local sultan's army of 12,000, and the appointment of two governors, one Mongol and one Muslim. The second, prompted by rebellion, lasted seven months and ended in June 1222. By one account the entire population of 1,600,000 was beheaded, so that no head was left on a body, nor body with a head. The city lay in ruins from 1222 to about 1236.

  A local prince named Shams al-Din Kart was made ruler in 1244 by the Mongol governor of Khorasan, and confirmed in 1255 by Hulagu, founder of the Il-Khan dynasty. The Kart dynasty's successors, especially Fakhruddin and Ghiyasuddin Kart, built mosques and other buildings and patronized literature and the arts.

  Timur took Herat in 1380 and ended the Kartid dynasty a few years later. The city reached its greatest glory under the Timurids. Timur's youngest son Shahrokh was made governor in 1397, and his reign brought royal patronage, building, and the enlargement of the bazaar. The Musallah Complex dates from this time, along with the madrasa of Gawhar Shad and the Ali Shir mahal. Shahrokh rebuilt the tomb of the poet and mystic Khwajah Abdullah Ansari, who died in 1088, around 1425. The greatest splendor came under Sultan Husayn Bayqara, who ruled until the 4th of May 1506, and whose chief minister, the poet Mir Ali-Shir Nava'i, was a great builder and patron writing in Persian and Turkish.

• 7. City State And Battleground

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  Shah Isma'il, founder of the Safavid dynasty, took Herat in 1510 after the Uzbeks occupied it in 1507, and the Shamlu Qizilbash assumed the governorship. Under the Safavids the city was a provincial capital of particular importance, called a'zam-i bilad-i iran, the greatest of the cities of Iran. Shah Abbas the Great was born in Herat, and every Safavid ruler from Tahmasp I to Abbas I served as its governor in youth.

  By the early 18th century the Abdali Afghans governed the city. After Nader Shah's death in 1747, Ahmad Shah Durrani took possession and made it part of the Durrani Empire. Herat became independent during a civil war among the sons of Timur Shah in 1793. The Iranians fought it repeatedly between 1801 and 1837, besieging it in 1837 until the British helped repel them. They briefly took the city on the 25th of October 1856, triggering the Anglo-Persian War, and withdrew after the Treaty of Paris in September 1857. Dost Muhammad Khan conquered Herat on the 26th of May 1863, two weeks before his death.

  The famous Musalla of Gawhar Shad, a complex of five minarets with mausoleums, mosques, and madrasas, was dynamited during the Panjdeh incident to keep it from advancing Russian forces. In the aftermath of the Afghan Civil War of 1928 to 1929, Herat was the last stronghold of Saqqawist resistance, holding out until 1931 when forces loyal to Mohammad Nadir Shah retook it.

• 8. War, Recovery, And Return

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  Between the 10th and the 20th of March 1979, the Afghan Army in Herat under commander Ismail Khan mutinied against the Khalq communist regime led by Nur Mohammad Taraki. Rebels held the city for three days. Some protesters murdered Soviet advisers and targeted women without headscarves, dubbed sarluchi. The government blamed the new Iran after the Iranian Revolution, and reprisals killed between 3,000 and 24,000 people in what is called the 1979 Herat uprising, or Qiam-e Herat. It was the bloodiest event before the Soviet-Afghan War, and the first rebellion of its kind since the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919.

  Herat suffered badly in the Soviet-Afghan War, especially its western side. In April 1983 a series of Soviet bombings damaged half the city and killed an estimated 3,000 civilians. After President Mohammad Najibullah resigned in 1992, Ismail Khan became governor of Herat Province, and the city began rebuilding. On the 5th of September 1995 the Taliban captured it without much resistance, making Herat the first Persian-speaking city they took. Their confinement of women and closing of girls' schools alienated the traditionally liberal and educated Heratis.

  Forces loyal to the Northern Alliance retook the city on the 12th of November 2001, and Ismail Khan returned to power. One reporter called it an oasis city. In 2004 Mirwais Sadiq, Aviation Minister and son of Ismail Khan, was killed there by a rival group. On the 12th of August 2021 the city fell to the Taliban again. That same year it was announced that Herat would be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, even as everyday traffic on a road encircling the ancient city shakes the foundations of its remaining minarets, which UNESCO personnel are working to stabilize.