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

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bord ...

. It is the capital of

Laghman Province Laghman ( Dari: ) 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 number of historical landmarks, ...

and center of

Mihtarlam District Mihtarlam District is located in the center of Laghman Province and consists of the urban centre and provincial capital Mihtarlam and 24 major villages and 269 sub-villages. Etymology Mihtarlam derives its name from Mihtarlam Baba ( Lamech), w ...

. It is the only large urban settlement in the province. The town is situated in the valley formed by the

Alishang Alishang is a village, river and a fertile valley of Laghman Province, and also the district headquarters of Mihtarlam District, in eastern Afghanistan. It lies about 40 km northwest of Jalalabad. The fertile Alishang valley drained by th ...

and Alingar rivers, 47 km northwest of the city of

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلال‌آباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jal ...

. 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 The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pas ...

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

2021 Taliban offensive A military offensive by the Taliban insurgent group and other allied militants led to the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan based in Kabul and marked the end of the nearly 20-year-old War in Afghanistan, that had begun following the ...

Etymology

Mihtarlam is, according to local legend, named after Lamech, the father of

Noah Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5� ...

. In the

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

, 'mihtar' means headman, lord or chief. Lam is Noah's father's name.

History

Amir

Habibullah Khan Habibullah Khan (Pashto/Dari: ; 3 June 1872 – 20 February 1919) was the Emir of Afghanistan from 1901 until his death in 1919. He was the eldest son of the Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, whom he succeeded by right of primogeniture in October 1901. ...

built Qala-e-Seraj c. 1912–13 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 ''Jyllands-Posten'' Muhammad cartoons controversy (or Muhammad cartoons crisis, da, Muhammedkrisen) began after the Danish newspaper '' Jyllands-Posten'' published 12 editorial cartoons on 30 September 2005, most of which depicted Muhamm ...

. 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 detonated in Basram on the outskirts of Mihtarlam. Local officials spent 22 million

Afs AFS is an initialism that may refer to: Computing * Andrew File System, a distributed networked file system ** OpenAFS, an open source implementation of the Andrew File System * Apple File Service, implementing the Apple Filing Protocol * Apple Fi ...

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 A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-a ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, nota ...

'' BSk'').

Places of interest

* Qala-e-Seraj *

Hajji Dunya Gul Niazi Jamia Masjid Hajji Dunya Gul Niazi Jamia Masjid ( ps, حاجی دنیا ګل نیازی جامعه مسجد) is a mosque in the city of Mihtarlam in Laghman Province, Afghanistan. Construction work on two mosques was launched in 2017. The second mosque opened ...

* Laghman University *The Tomb of Lamech is located in the area. Ghaznavid Sultan

Mahmud of Ghazni Yamīn-ud-Dawla Abul-Qāṣim Maḥmūd ibn Sebüktegīn ( fa, ; 2 November 971 – 30 April 1030), usually known as Mahmud of Ghazni or Mahmud Ghaznavi ( fa, ), was the founder of the Turkic Ghaznavid dynasty, ruling from 998 to 1030. At th ...

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