Mihtarlam (, ), also spelled Mehtar Lam, is the sixteenth-largest city of

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

. It is the capital of

Laghman Province Laghman (Persian language, Persian/Pashto: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. It has a population of about 502,148, which is multi-ethnic and mostly a rural society. Laghman hosts a large numbe ...

and center of Mihtarlam District. It is the only large urban settlement in the province. The town is situated in the valley formed by the Alishang and Alingar rivers, 47 km northwest of the city of

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Help:IPA/Persian, ͡ʒä.lɑː.lɑː.bɑːd̪ is the list of cities in Afghanistan, fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 200,331, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part ...

. There is a paved road between the cities that takes approximately one hour to travel by car. On 13 August 2021, Mihtarlam was seized by

Taliban , leader1_title = Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, Supreme leaders , leader1_name = {{indented plainlist, * Mullah Omar{{Natural Causes{{nbsp(1994–2013) * Akhtar Mansour{{Assassinated (2015–2016) * Hibatullah Akhundzada (2016–present) ...

fighters, becoming the twenty-third provincial capital to be captured by the Taliban as part of the wider 2021 Taliban offensive.

Etymology

According to local legend, the surrounding

(also known as Lamghan) is said to have been named after Lamech, father of Noah. In the

Persian language Persian ( ), also known by its endonym and exonym, endonym Farsi (, Fārsī ), is a Western Iranian languages, Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian subdivision ...

, ''mihtar'' means "headman", "lord" or "chief", and "Lam" is an abbreviation for Lamech.

History

Amir

Habibullah Khan Habibullah Khan (Pashto/Dari: ; 3 June 1872 – 20 February 1919) was the Emir of Afghanistan from 1901 until his assassination in 1919 by Shuja-ud-Daula Ghourbandi. He was the eldest son of the Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, whom he succeeded by rig ...

built Qala-e-Seraj –13 in Mihtarlam. On 6 February 2006, two people were killed by police in riots in Mihtarlam in events of the

Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy The Muhammad cartoons controversy (or Muhammad cartoons crisis, ) began after the Danish newspaper published twelve editorial cartoons on 30 September 2005 depicting Muhammad, the founder of Islam, in what it said was a response to the deb ...

. On 26 February 2017, two students were killed and seven others wounded when a rocket landed in Shaheed Mawlawi Abdul Rahman School in Basram. On 14 April 2019, at least seven children were killed when

unexploded ordnance Unexploded ordnance (UXO, sometimes abbreviated as UO) and unexploded bombs (UXBs) are explosive weapons (bombs, shell (projectile), shells, grenades, land mines, naval mines, cluster munition, and other Ammunition, munitions) that did not e ...

detonated in Basram on the outskirts of Mihtarlam. Local officials spent 22 million Afs to rebuild Qala-e-Seraj in 2020. On 2 May 2020, a motorbike bomb exploded outside the provincial prison in Mihtarlam, killing three civilians and injuring four members of the Afghan security forces. Noor Mohammad, director of Laghman's provincial prison directorate, was among the injured. On 5 October 2020, Provincial Governor of Laghman, Rahmatullah Yarmal, was slightly wounded after his convoy was targeted by a suicide car bomber. On 24 May 2021, Afghan government forces clashed with Taliban militants in Mihtarlam.

Climate

Mihtarlam has a

cold semi-arid climate Cold is the presence of low temperature, especially in the atmosphere. In common usage, cold is often a subjective perception. A lower bound to temperature is absolute zero, defined as 0.00K on the Kelvin scale, an absolute thermodynamic ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

'' BSk'').

Places of interest

* Qala-e-Seraj * Hajji Dunya Gul Niazi Jamia Masjid * Laghman University *The Tomb of Lamech is located in the area.

Ghaznavid The Ghaznavid dynasty ( ''Ġaznaviyān'') was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Turkic ''mamluk'' origin. It ruled the Ghaznavid Empire or the Empire of Ghazni from 977 to 1186, which at its greatest extent, extended from the Oxus to the Indus Va ...

Sultan

Mahmud of Ghazni Abu al-Qasim Mahmud ibn Sabuktigin (; 2 November 971 – 30 April 1030), usually known as Mahmud of Ghazni or Mahmud Ghaznavi (), was Sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire, ruling from 998 to 1030. During his reign and in medieval sources, he is usuall ...

built the shrine, amid gardens, over the site of his presumed grave, 50 kilometres from Mihtarlam.

Sports

In 2021, the first stadium in Laghman opened in Mihtarlam.

References