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Balkh 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). It was mostly known as the center and capital of Bactria or Tokharistan. Marco Polo described Balkh as a "noble and great city". Balkh is now for the most part a mass of ruins, situated some from the right bank of the seasonally flowing Balkh River, at an elevation of about . French Buddhist Alexandra David-Néel associated Shambhala with Balkh, also offering the Persian Sham-i-Bala ("elevated candle") as an etymology of its name. In a similar vein, the Gurdjieffian J. G. Bennett published speculation that Shambalha was Shams-i-Balkh, a Bactrian sun temple. The old name of Balkh was Bami which was named after the Indo-Scythian Naga queen, Bami. The Bactrian language name of the city was βαχλο. In Middle Persian texts, it was named Baxl (𐭡𐭠𐭧𐭫). The name of the province or country also appears in the Old Persian inscriptions (B.h.i 16; Dar Pers e.16; Nr. a.23) as Bāxtri, i.e. Bakhtri (𐎲𐎠𐎧𐎫𐎼𐎡𐏁). It is written in the Avesta as Bāxδi (𐬠𐬁𐬑𐬜𐬌) . From this came the intermediate form Bāxli, Sanskrit Bahlīka (also Balhika) for "Bactrian", and by transposition the modern Persian Balx, i.e. Balkh, and Armenian Bahl. An earlier name for Balkh or a term for part of the city was Ζαρίασπα, which may derive from the important Zoroastrian fire temple Azar-i-Asp or from a Median name *Ζaryāspa- meaning "having gold-coloured horses". The nickname of Balkh is "the Mother of All Cities". Balkh was earlier considered to be the first city to which the Iranian tribes moved from north of the Amu Darya, between 2000 and 1500 BC.

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