Place · Timurid shrine city · Afghanistan
Mazār-i-Sharīf (Shrine of Ali)
Also known as Mazar-i-Sharif, Mazār-i-Sharīf, Shrine of Ali, Blue Mosque
The Timurid shrine of 1480 built over a site that fifteenth-century Afghan tradition identified as the second burial place of Ali ibn Abi Talib — the fourth Caliph, murdered at Kufa in 661, whose body local legend says was taken east by a white camel and buried here. The shrine's blue-tiled double dome and ornamented iwans are the clearest Timurid-period monumental architecture surviving in Afghanistan. Shi'a and Sunni pilgrims both venerate the shrine, and the Nawroz festival each March draws tens of thousands.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Tradition
- Standard reference and local gazetteers; ASI, state archaeology and INTACH records where applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 36.710, 67.112
Connections (1)
- Site adjacencyBalkh
Mazār-i-Sharīf grew in the fifteenth century from a small settlement to the shrine city it now is around the Timurid tomb attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib. The older city of Balkh — mother of cities, Zoroaster's capital, the Hellenistic Bactra, the Buddhist Nava Vihara — lies twenty kilometres west, and Mazar effectively inherits Balkh's regional centrality after Balkh declined in the Timurid and later periods. Modern Mazar is the capital of Balkh Province; Balkh itself is a ruin field.