TuranTuran (Tūiriiānəm, Tūrān; Turân, thuːˈɾɒːn, "The Land of Tur") is a historical region in Central Asia. The term is of Iranian origin and may refer to a particular prehistoric human settlement, a historic geographical region, or a culture. The original Turanians were an Iranian tribe of the Avestan age. In ancient Iranian mythology, Tūr or Turaj (Tuzh in Middle Persian) is the son of the emperor Fereydun. According to the account in the Shahnameh, the nomadic tribes who inhabited these lands were ruled by Tūr.
HeratHerāt (hɛˈrɑːt; Pashto ; هرات) is an oasis city and the third-largest city in Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (Selseleh-ye Safēd Kōh) in the fertile valley of the Hari River in the western part of the country. An ancient civilization on the Silk Road between West, Central and South Asia, it serves as a regional hub in the country's west. Herat dates back to Avestan times and was traditionally known for its wine.
Bactrian languageBactrian (Bactrian: Αριαο, , [arjaː], meaning "Iranian") is an extinct Eastern Iranian language formerly spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria (in present-day Afghanistan) and used as the official language of the Kushan and the Hephthalite empires. It was long thought that Avestan represented "Old Bactrian", but this notion had "rightly fallen into discredit by the end of the 19th century". Bactrian, which was written predominantly in an alphabet based on the Greek script, was known natively as αριαο [arjaː] ("Arya"; an endonym common amongst Indo-Iranian peoples).
TajiksTajiks (تاجيک، تاجک, Tājīk, Tājek; Тоҷик, Romanized: Tojik) are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Tajikistan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They speak varieties of Persian, a Western Iranian language. In Tajikistan, since the 1939 Soviet census, its small Pamiri and Yaghnobi ethnic groups are included as Tajiks.
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.
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.
