Bost

Bost stood near the meeting of the Helmand and Arghandab rivers, where irrigated fields and gardens flourished amid the dry lands of southern Afghanistan. It was one of the great towns of medieval Sistan. Just north of the city, the Ghaznavid rulers established the palace and military complex of Lashkari Bazar along the Helmand. Its halls and painted decorations recall the splendour of a royal winter residence later used by the Ghurids.

Mongol invasions and subsequent wars weakened the region. Fighting between the powers of Persia and India in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries added to the destruction, and Nader Shah devastated Bost in 1738. The cultivated country around the former city gradually returned to steppe. In the middle of the eighteenth century the Sadozai rulers consolidated their authority over the Helmand basin.