Sheberghān or Shaburghān (Uzbek, Pashto, ), also spelled Shebirghan and Shibarghan, is the capital city of the Jowzjan Province in northern Afghanistan. The city of Sheberghan has a population of 175,599. It has four districts and a total land area of 7,335 hectares. The total number of dwellings in Sheberghān is 19,511. In 2021, the Taliban gained control of the city during the 2021 Taliban offensive. Location Sheberghān is located along the Sari Pul River banks, about west of Mazar-i-Sharif on the national primary ring road that connects Kabul, Puli Khumri, Mazar-i-Sharif, Sheberghān, Maymana, Herat, Kandahar, Ghazni, and Maidan Shar. Sheberghān airport is situated between Sheberghān and Aqcha. Etymology The city's name is a corruption of its classical Persian name, Shaporgân, meaning "[King] Shapur's town". Shapur was the name of two Sasanian kings, both of whom built a great number of cities. However, Shapur I was the governor of the eastern provinces of the empire, and it is more likely that he is the builder of a roadway between a few important cities. These include Nishapur and Bishapur in Iran, and Peshawar in Pakistan. Ethnography After Maymana, Sheberghan is the second most important Uzbek and Turkmen-dominated city in all of Afghanistan. Turkmen is the first language of a majority of its inhabitants. Large numbers of Tajiks, Hazaras, Pashtuns, and Arabs live in the city. In 1856, J. P. Ferrier wrote: "Sheberghān is a town containing 12,000 souls. Uzbeks being in the great majority." According to regional consensus of the afghan government as of 2020 Turkmens made up majority of the inhabitants. The Sheberghan "Arabs" are all Persian-speaking, even though they claim an Arab identity. There are other such Persian and Pashto-speaking "Arabs" to the east, with pockets residing in Mazar-i Sharif, Kholm, Kunduz, and Jalalabad. Their self-identification as Arabs is largely based on their tribal identity, and may in fact point to the Arab migration of the 7th and 8th centuries migration to this and other Central Asian locales in the wake of the Islamic conquests of the region. History Sheberghān was once a flourishing settlement along the Silk Road. In 1978, Soviet archaeologists discovered the famed Bactrian Gold in the village of Tillia Tepe outside Sheberghān. In the 13th century Marco Polo visited the city and later wrote about its honey-sweet melons. Sheberghān became the capital of an independent Uzbek khanate that was allotted to Afghanistan by the 1873