Takht-i Rustam is a mound to the south of the city of Balkh, located some seven hundred meters outside the medieval city walls, close to the road from Mazar-i Sharif that bypasses Balkh on the way to Andkhoy. Scholars have tentatively identified the ruins with a Buddhist monastery known as Naw Bahar (from Nava Vihara in Sanskrit, meaning "New Monastery"). The monastery was an important center in the pre and early Islamic period, and was the home of the ancestors of the Barmakids, a family of viziers who obtained significant power under the early Abbasid caliphs. The monastery may have been related in antiquity to the nearby
Tepe Rustam, which contains the ruins of a stupa.
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