Fayzâbâd

Fayzabad stands in a basin of the Kokcha River in Badakhshan, where caravan routes from the Hindu Kush converge with roads from Darvaz and Qataghan. An earlier settlement at Khamchan lay a short distance downstream; a stone bridge across the Kokcha was built there in 1479. The valley linked the mountains and their celebrated mineral resources with the lands along the upper Oxus.

In 1680 Mir Yari Beg moved his capital upstream from Khamchan to a new town known as Jawzun, the place of walnuts. A shrine built there in 1697–98 housed a cloak believed to have belonged to the Prophet Muhammad, and the town took the name Fayzabad. After Ahmad Shah conquered Badakhshan in 1768, the relic was moved to Kandahar. In 1829 Murad Beg of Qataghan captured and destroyed Fayzabad and deported its inhabitants.