What city was the central seat of the Zoroastrian religion?
Balkh Balkh, also known as Bactra, was once a major world city but was destroyed entirely by the Mongols. Today it is a small town in the province of Balkh, northern Afghanistan, about 20 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif, and some 74 km (46 miles) south of the Amu Darya, the Oxus River of antiquity, of which a tributary formerly flowed past Balkh. For a long time the city was the central seat of the Zoroastrian religion, the founder of which, Zoroaster, died within the walls, according to the Persian poet Firdousi.
