Ġaznī

Ghazni commands the road from Kabul to Kandahar on the southern edge of Afghanistan's central highlands. Its hilltop citadel overlooks the Ghazni River, which flows south toward the basin of Ab-e Istada. Once a great trading city, it was the capital of the Ghaznavid dynasty and a centre of learning as well as the starting point for campaigns into India. Dams supplied water to its inhabitants and cultivated lands.

Ghazni's splendour was shattered by the Ghurids in 1151 and by the Mongols in 1221. When Ibn Battuta visited in the 1330s, much of the old city lay in ruins, and the inhabitants spent the cold winter at Kandahar. A smaller town survived beside the river below the citadel. Babur found it greatly diminished in 1504–05, sustained by a handful of mills and farming villages, and wondered that rulers of India and Khorasan had once made it their capital.