Thread by @AfghanHistorian

A thread on C20th #Afghanistan this evening, the theme “modernisation”, periodically the goal of Afghan govts. I start from a building, the British Legation in Kabul, which I first heard about from an archaeologist on Cyprus who’d helped catalogue its library in the 70s. (LlM)

Here is film of life at the Legation in the 1930s, from the Centre of South Asian Studies at Cambridge: s-asian.cam.ac.uk/archive/films/… I saw it in 2009, when it was a shell: it has now been restored & houses the Embassy of Pakistan. (LlM)

It was built in the 20s, & was designed to communicate a message to Afghanistan from its neighbour, British India. Curzon, Foreign Sec, wished His Majesty’s representative in Afghanistan to be “the best-housed man in Asia,” better housed, by implication than the Afghan King (LlM)

For that king, Amanullah, was busy building, too. Having waged a war against the Brits, & secured independence, he set out to fulfil his vision of Afghanistan as a modern nation state. One aspect of his plan was a new admin district named Darulaman, S of central Kabul. (LlM)

Darulaman was another shell until recently, film here of its restoration: da.azadiradio.com/a/30045703.html (The famous National Museum is next door.) Amanullah was thinking of Atatürk in Ankara, or New Delhi, a modern capital for an outward-looking nation. Darulaman was designed... (LlM)

by André Godard, Director of the French archaeological mission in Afghanistan, the same man who painted the Mithra in the soffit of the smaller Buddha. Curzon’s building obviously warned Amanullah not to discount Big Brother over the border. (LlM)

This looks good: palgrave.com/gp/book/978303…

Amanullah’s reforms were about more than buildings, of course, & measures to educate women, & enforce European dress, provoked resistance & rebellion. Here is Syed Mujtaba Ali in Deshe Bideshe, his memoir of Afghanistan in the 20s, on the latter.

“The question was, what was the point of embarrassing those hundred and fifty elders in full public view in order to establish a false sense of modernity?” Mujtaba Ali

Others were supportive of Amanullah, including Badshah Khan, the “Frontier Gandhi”, & Fayz Muhammad Kateb, the Hazara court historian (Hazaras had benefited from some of Amanulkah’s liberalising agenda), who wrote an account of what followed, an uprising. (LlM)

RD McChesney’s intro to his translation of Fayz Muhammad’s narrative, Kabul under Siege (1999), has a good account of developments. & here’s some remarkable contemporary news footage: The central figure is Habibullah Kalakani, who overthrew Amanullah (LlM)

A glimpse also at the end of that clip of the first humanitarian airlift, which rescued the residents of the Legation, other foreigners, & certain members of the Afghan royal family. Mujtaba Ali, a Bengali not fond of the British, spars with Humphrys, head of the Legation (LlM)

Some reading alongside what I’ve already mentioned:
M Nazif Shahrani, “King Aman-Allah of Afghanistan’s Failed Nation-Building Project and its Aftermath”, Iranian Studies 38 (2005), 661-75;
F. Olivier-Utard, Politique et Archéologie (on the French archaeological mission) (LlM)

A Baker, Wings over Kabul (1975), on the airlift;
& a special mention for JL Lee, Afghanistan, a History (2018), a fine book (with an excellent chapter on Amanullah) by a great friend of Afghanistan who among other things rescued what remained of the Legation library... (LIM)

...and transferred to the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, areu.org.af It’s late in UK, & I need my beauty sleep, so for now, shab bekheir.

Some snippets to illustrate my sleep-deprived meanderings last night. Afgh the focus of global attention.
First, Pathé footage of Amanullah’s European tour in 1928, further inspiration for his reform prog, but Queen Soraya’s appearance unveiled was provocative back home: (LlM)

“King Amanullah of Afghanistan ... gets first first contact with Western civilisation on arrival in Italy”

“Afghan’s King sees Britain’s Might”

There are lots more to explore on the Pathé site. (LlM)

Andrew Grantham’s (@andrew_grantham) blog (with excellent photos) on Amanullah’s railway line, the great symbol of progress, from Kabul to Darulaman.
andrewgrantham.co.uk/afghanistan/ra… (LlM)

There were suspicions at the time that Britain was behind Amanullah’s overthrow. Ghaffar Khan blames it on the Oriental Secretary at the Legation, Sheikh Mahbub Ali, with whom he had a later run-in in Malakand with Nehru in 1946 (Life & Struggle 175-81) (LlM)

But a complication was the presence of Aircraftman Shaw at Miranshah on the Frontier at the time of the uprising. Better known as Lawrence of Arabia, he was in fact lying low, translating Homer, & dreaming of Alexander. A letter he wrote at the time: telstudies.org/writings/lette… (LlM)

“The work has been very difficult: though I'm in a Homeric sort of air; a mud-brick fort beset by the tribes of Waziristan, on a plain encircled by the hills of the Afghan border. It reeks of Alexander the Great, our European fore-runner: who also loved Homer.” (LlM)

But with rumours swirling that TEL was disguised as a holy man & on a secret mission to the rebels in Afghanistan, he had to leave Miranshah & return to Britain. This article’s a bit silly, but the excerpts from contemporary newspapers are excellent. (LlM) jstor.org/stable/4413802…

“Colonel TE Lawrence was burnt in effigy on Tower-Hill today by a crowd of British Communists after speakers had denounced the ‘activities of British imperialism in Afghanistan’.” New York Times 22 Jan 1929. (LlM)

Finally for now (as I have lost control of the thread again), Thomas Ruttig with Ali Yawar Adili on the rehabilitation of the rebel leader Habibullah/Bacha-ye Saqaw, & the resonances of these events still 100 years later. (LlM)
afghanistan-analysts.org/who-was-king-h…

A ton of essays to mark this evening, so a short conclusion to this thread on modernisation. A decade after the fall of Amanullah Afghanistan was again seeking to secure an international profile, & the rich archaeological discoveries led by the French mission (DAFA)... LlM

...started to play a role in this national self-assertion. A key figure was Ahmad Ali Kohzad, an archaeologist responsible for a number of developments in Afghan intellectual life. N Green’s article on him (& on archaeology/nationalism) is open access: cambridge.org/core/journals/… LlM

Here’s a favourite book of mine, Kohzad’s publication of folktales collected by himself & Ria Hackin, a French archaeologist I have mentioned. By this time Ria & Joseph Hackin were dead, drowned when their ship was torpedoed in WWII. Jean Carl then killed himself in despair. LlM

Sorry, more information required: Jean Carl was a friend and colleague of Joseph and Ria Hackin, French archaeologists mentioned in this blog, including a fine photo of Carl abseiling down the larger Buddha at Bamiyan: llewelynmorgan.com/2019/10/12/dea…

Finally tonight, drawing on Nile Green & also Robert Crews’ “Afghan Modern”, I tried in a blog to trace this use of archaeology to promote the status and prosperity of Afghanistan in the 1930s to modern Afghan bank notes, which incorporate a Greek coin LlM llewelynmorgan.com/2017/02/21/not…

My blog on the Afghani bank note was translated into Dari by Hamid Mahdavi and published in Kabul by @Etilaatroz
etilaatroz.com/45990/