Ancient period The
Achaemenids controlled the region from the sixth century BCE.
Alexander the Great conquered the area but it was then incorporated into the
Seleucid Empire after his death. The decline of the Seleucids consequently led to the emergence of the
Greco-Bactrian kingdom. Around 130 BCE, the
Sakas occupied the region and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom fell. The
Yuezhi took Mazar-i-Sharif and the surrounding area which led to the creation of the
Kushan Empire. The
Sasanians subsequently controlled the area after the fall of the Kushans. The Islamic conquests reached Mazar-i-Sharif in 651 CE.
9th century until 1919 The region around Mazar-i-Sharif has been historically part of
Greater Khorasan and was controlled by the
Tahirids followed by the
Saffarids,
Samanids,
Ghaznavids,
Ghurids,
Ilkhanids,
Timurids, and
Khanate of Bukhara. , 2016 The poet
Jalal al-Din Rumi was born somewhere in this area. His father Baha' Walad was descended from the first caliph
Abu Bakr. The
Seljuk sultan
Ahmed Sanjar ordered a city and shrine to be built on the location, which was later destroyed by
Genghis Khan and his Mongol army in the 13th century, and then rebuilt. During the nineteenth century, due to the absence of drainage systems and the weak economy of the region, the excess water of this area flooded many acres of the land in the vicinity of residential areas causing a malaria epidemic in the region. The ruler of North Central Afghanistan decided to move the capital to Mazar-i-Sharif. The city along with the region south of the
Amu Darya became part of the
Durrani Empire in around 1751. For the most part the region was controlled by autonomous Uzbek rulers. After the Bukharan-Durrani war of 1788–1790, Qilich Ali Beg of
Khulm formed a mini-empire stretching from Balkh to
Aybak,
Saighan,
Kahmard,
Darra-i Suf, and
Qunduz. When he died in 1817, the
Balkh and Mazar-i Sharif region became an independent city state with Aqcha as its dependency. In November 1837 the Bukharans conquered the city but Balkh was still able to retain autonomy. In 1849 the city was conquered and annexed into Afghanistan.
Late 20th century During the 1980s
Soviet–Afghan War, Mazar-i-Sharif was a strategic base for the
Soviet Army as they used its airport to launch air strikes on
mujahideen rebels. Mazar-i-Sharif was also the main city that linked to Soviet territory in the north, especially the roads leading to the
Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. As a garrison for the Soviet-backed
Afghan Army, the city was under the command of General
Abdul Rashid Dostum. Mujahideen militias
Hezbe Wahdat and
Jamiat-e Islami both attempted to contest the city but were repelled by the Army. Dostum mutinied against
Mohammad Najibullah's government on March 19, 1992, shortly before its collapse, and formed his new party and militia,
Junbish-e Milli. The party took over the city the next day. Afterwards Mazar-i-Sharif became the
de facto capital of a relatively stable and secular
proto-state in northern Afghanistan under the rule of Dostum. The city remained peaceful and prosperous, whilst rest of the nation disintegrated and was slowly taken over by fundamentalist
Taliban forces. The city was called at the time a "glittering jewel in Afghanistan's battered crown". Money rolled in from foreign donors
Russia,
Turkey, newly independent
Uzbekistan and others, with whom Dostum had established close relations. He printed his own currency for the region and established his own airline. The city remained relatively liberal as
Kabul previously was, where activities such as coeducational schools and betting was legal as opposed to the Taliban dominated regions in the south of the country. This peace was shattered in May 1997 when he was betrayed by one of his generals, warlord
Abdul Malik Pahlawan who allied himself with the Taliban, forcing him to flee from Mazar-i-Sharif as the Taliban were getting ready to take the city through Pahlawan. Afterwards Pahlawan himself mutinied the Taliban on the deal and it was reported that between May and July 1997 that Pahlawan executed thousands of Taliban members, that he personally did many of the killings by slaughtering the prisoners as a revenge for the 1995 death of
Abdul Ali Mazari. "He is widely believed to have been responsible for the brutal massacre of up to 3,000 Taliban prisoners after inviting them into Mazar-i-Sharif." Several of the Taliban escaped the slaughtering and reported what had happened. Meanwhile, Dostum came back and took the city again from Pahlawan. However the Taliban retaliated in 1998
attacking the city and killing an estimated 8,000
non-combatants. At 10 am on 8 August 1998, the Taliban entered the city and for the next two days drove their pickup trucks "up and down the narrow streets of Mazar-i-Sharif shooting to the left and right and killing everything that moved—shop owners, cart pullers, women and children shoppers and even goats and donkeys." More than 8000 noncombatants were reported killed in Mazar-i-Sharif and later in
Bamiyan. In addition, the Taliban were criticized for forbidding anyone from burying the corpses for the first six days (contrary to the injunctions of Islam, which demands immediate burial) while the remains rotted in the summer heat and were eaten by dogs. The Taliban also reportedly sought out and massacred members of the
Hazara, while in control of Mazar. Around 8,000 Taliban fighters were captured. They were taken to Mazar-i-Sharif and then to
Sheberghan prison in
Jowzjan Province. Between 400 and 3,000 prisoners were reportedly
massacred by the Northern Alliance during the journey and buried in mass graves in the Dasht-e Leili desert west of Sheberghan. , located south of the city next to
Mazar-i-Sharif Airport The city slowly came under the control of the
Karzai administration after 2002, which is led by
President Hamid Karzai. The
209th Corps (Shaheen) of the
Afghan National Army is based at Mazar-i-Sharif, which provides
military assistance to northern Afghanistan. The
Afghan Border Police headquarters for the Northern Zone is also located in the city. Despite the security put in place, there are reports of Taliban activities and
assassinations of tribal elders. Officials in Mazar-i-Sharif reported that between 20 and 30 Afghan tribal elders have been assassinated in
Balkh Province in the last several years. There is no conclusive evidence as to who is behind it but majority of the victims are said to have been associated with the
Hezb-i Islami political party. On April 1, 2011, ten foreign employees working for
United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (
UNAMA)
were killed by angry demonstrators in the city. The demonstration was organized in retaliation to
pastors
Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp's
March 21 Qur'an-burning in
Florida, United States. Among the dead were five
Nepalis, a
Norwegian,
Romanian and
Swedish nationals, two of them were said to be
decapitated. Terry Jones, the American pastor who was going to burn
Islam's
Holy Book, denied his responsibility for incitement. President
Barack Obama strongly condemned both the Quran burning, calling it an act of "extreme intolerance and bigotry", and the "outrageous" attacks by protesters, referring to them as "an affront to human decency and dignity." "No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act." U.S. legislators, including Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid, also condemned both the burning and the violence in reaction to it. By July 2011 violence grew to a record high in the
insurgency. In late July 2011, NATO troops also handed control of Mazar-i-Sharif to local forces amid rising security fears just days after it was hit by a deadly bombing. Mazar-i-Sharif is the sixth of seven areas to transition to Afghan control, but critics say the timing is political and there is skepticism over Afghan abilities to combat the
Taliban insurgency. On 10 November 2016, a
suicide attacker
rammed a truck bomb into the wall of the German consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif. Eight people were killed and more than a hundred others were injured. On 21 April 2017, a
coordinated Taliban attack killed more than 100 people at
Camp Shaheen, the Afghan Army base in Mazar-i-Sharif. In November 2018,
Voice of America reported that 40 houses in Qazil Abad, an immediate
suburb of Mazar-i-Sharif, used
unexploded Soviet Grad surface-to-surface rockets as construction materials. As a result, several people were killed and wounded from explosions over the years. These rockets, left behind by the
Soviet Army in 1989 at the end of the
Soviet–Afghan War, were used as cheap building materials by the poor residents of the village. It was estimated that over 400 rockets were incorporated into the village as wall and ceiling beams, door-stoppers, and even footbridges used by children. When the rest of the world discovered this fact, the
Danish demining group of the
Danish Refugee Council visited the village and, after asking the residents, began
demining and rebuilding the village, safely removing and disposing of the rockets through
controlled detonation at the
border with Uzbekistan. President
Ashraf Ghani visited the city on 11 August 2021 to rally local warlords to fight the Taliban. On 14 August, the Taliban captured Mazar-i-Sharif along with
Sharana and
Asadabad, the provincial capitals of
Paktika and
Kunar provinces respectively. Local government forces and regional leaders
Abdul Rashid Dostum and
Atta Mohammad Noor fled to neighboring
Uzbekistan. On 21 April 2022,
Islamic State – Khorasan Province killed 31 people by bombing a
Shia mosque. A week later, 11 people
were killed in a double bombing. On March 9, 2023, the Taliban-appointed Governor of Balkh,
Daud Muzamil, was killed in a bomb blast. Mazar-i-Sharif is also known for the Afghan song
Bia ke berem ba Mazar (''Come let's go to Mazar'') by
Sarban. ==Geography==