Balkh

Balkh was Bactra, one of the oldest cities anywhere, a Zoroastrian centre that Alexander took and married into, then a Buddhist one with a monastery the Arabs called the mother of cities, then a Muslim one that Genghis Khan levelled and that never recovered. What is left is a ring of mud walls around empty ground and one extraordinary building, the ninth-century No Gonbad mosque, the oldest Islamic monument in the country, its stucco columns still carrying carved vine patterns. The shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa stands under a fluted blue dome. Rumi was born in or near it before his family fled the Mongols westwards.