History of Mazar i Sharif

The region around Mazar-e-Sharif has been historically part of Greater Khorasan and was controlled by the Tahirids followed by the Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Ilkhanates, Timurids, and Khanate of Bukhara. According to tradition, the city of Mazari Sharif owes its existence to a dream. At the beginning of the 12th century, a local mullah had a dream in which the 7th century Ali bin Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of Islam's prophet Muhammad, appeared to reveal that he had been secretly buried near the city of Balkh. After conducting researches in the 12th century, the Seljuk sultan Ahmed Sanjar ordered a city and shrine to be built on the location, where it stood until its destruction by Genghis Khan and his Mongol army in the 13th century. Although later rebuilt, Mazar stood in the shadow of its neighbor Balkh, until that city was abandoned in 1866 for health reasons.^{[citation needed]}
The city and region became part of the Afghan Durrani Empire in around 1750 when after an agreement was signed between Mir Muhammad Murad Beg and Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founding father of Afghanistan. In the late 1870s, Afghan Emir Sher Ali Khan escaped from Kabul to take refuge in Mazar-e Sharif, which was un-affected by the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century between Afghanistan and then British India.
Mazar-e Sharif remained peaceful for the next one hundred years until 1979, when then neighboring Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. During the 1980s Soviet war, Mazari Sharif was a strategic base for the Soviet Army, as they used its airport to launch air strikes on Afghan mujahideen. In the early 1990s, after the Soviet withdraw from Afghanistan, control of Mazar was contested by the Tajik militia Jamiat-e Islami, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud and Burhanuddin Rabbani, and the Uzbek militia Jumbesh-e Melli led by Abdul Rashid Dostum. As a garrison for the Soviet-backed Afghan army, the city was under the command of Dostum, who mutinied against Najibullah's government in 1992.
Under Dostum's 5 year rule from the early 1990s to early 1997, Mazar was an oasis of peace. As the rest of the nation disintegrated and was slowly taken over by the Taliban, Dostum strengthened political ties with the newly independent Uzbekistan as well as Turkey. He printed his own currency and established his own airline. This peace was shattered in May 1997, when he was betrayed by one of his generals, Abdul Malik Pahlawan, forcing him to flee from Mazar as the Taliban were getting ready to take the city.

Shrine of Hazrat Ali

The Shrine of Hazrat Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam, is an iconic sight in Mazar-i-Sharif in the province of Balkh in Afghanistan.

The Blue Mosque, as it is also known, is famous for its blue colour and doves which attract thousands of pilgrims, especially at the time of the Afghan New Year at the end of March.

Some people believe that harming the doves at the mosque will bring bad luck; others believe feeding them will bring good fortune.