Kundûz

Kunduz stands beside the river of the same name in the fertile country north of the Hindu Kush. The river descends from the mountains toward the Oxus, watering a plain that formed part of historic Tokharistan. The town's name has been explained as the Persian for an old fortress. Its position in the region known as Kataghan placed it among the settlements and river valleys between the high passes and the great river to the north.

References to Kunduz occur in the Timurid period in the later fourteenth century. In the eighteenth century the region came under the Durrani Empire, but local Uzbek rulers subsequently established a khanate centred on the town. Under Muhammad Murad Beg, who ruled from 1815, Kunduz became the seat of a power reaching across much of northern Afghanistan, from the neighbourhood of Balkh toward the Pamirs. Its fertile valley and access to the routes of the Oxus country helped make it an important political and commercial centre.