Jalalabad is the largest city in eastern Afghanistan as well as its social and business center of activity. Major industries include papermaking, as well agricultural products including oranges, rice, and sugarcane. Jalalabad is one of the leading trading centers with India and Pakistan.

Jalalabad was founded in 1570 by the Mughal Emperor Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar. The city was used by the Afghan kings as a winter capital. It has a very pleasant and temperate climate during the winter and has quite a hot summer.

The places of interests are the Bagh-I Shahi (royal garden) built by Amir Abdul Rahman Khan near the Kabul river and the royal mausoleum where the king Habibullah Khan and his son Amanullah Khan were buried.

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country that is located approximately in the center of Asia. It is bordered by Iran in the south and west, Pakistan in the south and east,  Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.

Afghanistan is a crossroads between the East and the West, and was an ancient focal point of the Silk Road and migration. It has an important geostrategic location, connecting South and CentralAsia and Middle East. Therefore, the land has been a target of various invaders and conquerors, as well as a source from which local powers invaded surrounding regions to form their own empires. Ahmad Shah Durrani created the Durrani Empire in 1747, which is considered the beginning of modern Afghanistan.

Subsequently, the capital was shifted to Kabul and most of its territories ceded to former neighboring countries. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state in "The Great Game" played between the British Indian Empire and Russian Empire. On August 19, 1919, following the third Anglo-Afghan war, the country regained full independence from the United Kingdom over its foreign affairs.

Since the late 1970s Afghanistan has suffered continuous and brutal civil wars in addition to foreign invasions.

Greater Khurasan (also written Khorasaan, Khorasan and Khurasaan) is a modern term for a historical geographic region spanning (in clockwise order) north-eastern and east of Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and north-western Pakistan. The name "Khurasan" is said to derive from Middle Persian khor "sun" + ayan "out of", hence meaning "land where the sun rises".

First established as a political entity by the Sassanids in the 3rd century, the borders of the region have varied considerably during its 1600-year history. By 1800, the name Khurasan applied only to a fraction of Greater Khurasan, with the northeastern section having become part of Afghanistan and parts of the Russian Empire respectively, and the western section having been vertically subdivided into Khurasan (in the north) and Kohistan (in the south).

The principal cities of Greater Khurasan are Mashhad, Nishapur, Tus (now in Iran), Herat, Ghazni, Kabul and Balkh, (now in Afghanistan), Merv (now in Turkmenistan), Samarqand, Bukhara and Khiva (all now in Uzbekistan), Khujand and Panjakent (now in Tajikistan).

These days, the adjective greater is partly used to distinguish it from Khurasan province, in modern-day Iran, that forms western parts of these territories, roughly half in area. It is also used to indicate that Greater Khurasan encompassesterritories that were perhaps called by some other popular name when they were individually referred to. For example Transoxiana (covered Uzbekistan and Tajikistan), Bactria, Khwarezm (containing Samarkand and Bukhara). Until the devastating Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century, Khorasan was considered the cultural capital of Persia. It has produced scientists and philosophers such as the Avicenna, al-Farabi, al-Biruni, Omar Khayyám, al-Khwarizmi Shi'a theologians, namely Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Shaykh Tusi, as well as Sunni theologians, namely Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Al-Ghazali. Ferdowsi, the author of Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, was also from Khurasan.

Source: Wikipedia