The Florence of Central Asia — the ancient Silk Road city where Timurid sultans built the finest mosaic-tiled minarets in Asia, the blue-domed Friday Mosque rivals Isfahan's Royal Mosque for sheer magnificence, and the Citadel of Alexander the Great has watched 2,500 years of history from its hilltop
Herat is the third-largest city in Afghanistan and one of the great historic cities of the Islamic world — a Silk Road hub that reached its cultural zenith under the Timurid dynasty (15th century), when the court of Sultan Husayn Bayqara attracted poets (including Jami), painters (including Behzad, considered the greatest Persian miniaturist), and architects who built some of the finest Islamic monuments in Asia. The Friday Mosque of Herat (Masjid-i Jami) — founded in 1200 CE, repeatedly restored, its interior covered in hand-painted blue-and-gold mosaic tiles — is considered by many architec…
Alexander the Great founded Alexandria Ariana near present-day Herat in 330 BCE on his march into Bactria — the citadel hill has been fortified continuously since. Herat was subsequently held by the Seleucid Empire, Maurya Empire (briefly), Parthians, Kushans, Sassanids, and Arab Caliphate (Muslim conquest, 652 CE). The city's cultural golden age came under the Timurids (1370–1507): Sultan Shah Rukh moved the Timurid capital from Samarkand to Herat in 1405, and under his son Baysunghur and later Husayn Bayqara (1469–1506), Herat became the intellectual capital of the Persian-speaking world. T…