BalkhBalkh is a town in the Balkh Province of Afghanistan, about northwest of the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif, and some south of the Amu Darya river and the Uzbekistan border. Its population was recently estimated to be 138,594. Balkh was historically an ancient place of religions, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, and one of the wealthiest and largest cities of Greater Khorasan, since the latter's earliest history. The city was known to Persians as Zariaspa and to the Ancient Greeks as Bactra, giving its name to Bactria (Greeks called the city also Zariaspa).
KandaharKandahar (ˈkændəhɑ:r; ; ) is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118. It is the capital of Kandahar Province and the centre of the larger cultural region called Loy Kandahar. Kandahar is the founding city and spiritual center of the Taliban. Despite the capital of Afghanistan being Kabul, where the government administration is based, Kandahar is the seat of power in Afghanistan as the supreme leader and his spiritual advisers are based there.
HazarasThe Hazaras (Həzārə; Āzrə) are an ethnic group and a principal component of the population of Afghanistan, native to, and primarily residing in, the Hazaristan region in central Afghanistan and the northern regions of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan. They are one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and a significant minority group in Pakistan, mostly in Quetta, as well as in Iran. They speak the Dari and Hazaragi dialects of Persian. Dari is one of the two official languages in Afghanistan.
Silk RoadThe Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the East and West. The name "Silk Road", first coined in the late 19th century, has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting Central, East, South, and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and Southern Europe.
Seljuk EmpireThe Seljuk Empire, or the Great Seljuk Empire, was a high medieval, culturally Turco-Persian empire, founded and ruled by the Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks. It spanned a total area of from Anatolia and the Levant in the west to the Hindu Kush in the east, and from Central Asia in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south. The Seljuk Empire was founded in 1037 by Tughril (990–1063) and his brother Chaghri (989–1060), both of whom co-ruled over its territories; there are indications that the Seljuk leadership otherwise functioned as a triumvirate and thus included Musa Yabghu, the uncle of the aforementioned two.
Greater IranGreater Iran (ایران بزرگ Irān-e Bozorg), also known as Persosphere, refers to a sociocultural region in which Iranian traditions and Iranian languages have had a significant impact. It spans parts of West Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and Xinjiang. The region is defined by having been long-ruled by the dynasties of various Iranian empires, under whom the local populaces gradually incorporated some degree of Iranian influence into their cultural and/or linguistic traditions; or alternatively as where a considerable number of Iranian peoples settled to still maintain communities who patronize their respective cultures, geographically corresponding to the areas surrounding the Iranian plateau.
Turkic peoplesThe Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages. According to historians and linguists, the Proto-Turkic language originated in Central-East Asia, potentially in Altai-Sayan region, Mongolia or Tuva. Initially, Proto-Turkic speakers were potentially both hunter-gatherers and farmers, but later became nomadic pastoralists.
Persianate societyA Persianate society is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art and/or identity. The term "Persianate" is a neologism credited to Marshall Hodgson. In his 1974 book, The Venture of Islam: The expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods, he defined it thus: "The rise of Persian had more than purely literary consequences: it served to carry a new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom.... Most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims.
ShahnamehThe Shahnameh (Šāhnāme, ʃɒːhnɒːˈme), also transliterated Shahnama, is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 "distichs" or couplets (two-line verses), the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century.
TalibanThe Taliban ('taelᵻbaen,_'ta:lᵻba:n; ṭālibān or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist and Pashtun nationalist militant political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996 to 2001, before being overthrown following the American invasion. It recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 following the departure of most coalition forces, after nearly 20 years of insurgency, and currently controls all of the country.
