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Mazar i sharif, 
Afghanistan
651,287 people lived in Mazar i sharif in 2025. It is the 834th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 4th largest in Afghanistan.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Mazar i sharif grew
Count 10 people in Mazar i sharif in 1975 and the same count gives 26.9 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 848,758 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1975 and 1980.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: one column every five years, 1975 to 2050; its height is the number of people. Hatched columns are the UN's projection. The thin strip beneath says how sure the UN is of each figure: the stronger the colour, the surer. A blank means the place was not on the UN's list of cities that year.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Mazar i sharif through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Mazar i sharif in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Afghanistan · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Afghanistan and its 85 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Kabul). Mazar i sharif is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Mazar i sharif covered 47 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 17 km² of it. That is 25 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.8 times its size, and its people are 2.7 times as many.
How to read this: the outer pale square stands for all the land the city covers, and the solid square inside it for the part with buildings, roads and the like on it. All three squares share a scale, so you can compare them by eye. A hatched one is a year the UN has projected.
Of every 100 people in Afghanistan
Its share of Afghanistan
Of every 100 people in Afghanistan in 2025, 1 lived in Mazar i sharif, which is 651,287 people.
How to read this: shrink Afghanistan to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Mazar i sharif; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 830 Tamale Ghana654,868
- 831 Zucheng China654,599
- 832 Antwerp Belgium652,506
- 833 Changde China651,562
- 834 Mazar i sharif651,287
- 835 Nottingham United Kingdom649,610
- 836 Amarah Iraq645,612
- 837 Nuremberg Germany644,169
- 838 Dhule India643,777
In Afghanistan, 2025
- 68 Kabul5,635,737
- 405 Herat1,259,425
- 662 Kandahar799,015
- 834 Mazar i sharif651,287
- 927 Jalalabad587,508
- 2003 Taloqan290,028
- 2028 Kunduz287,295
- 2560 Maymana229,355
- 2574 Puli Khumri228,271
How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Mazar i sharif are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Mazar i sharif publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries