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The State, the Clergy, and British Imperial Policy in Afghanistan during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Senzil Nawid
Senzil Nawid
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz. 85721, USA.
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Extract

The political and dynastic history of Afghanistan during the 19th and the early 20th centuries is well known. So is British imperial policy toward Afghanistan. However, very little attention has been paid to the role of the clergy, the guardians of the Islamic order and the representatives of the civil society in Afghanistan. They played a major role in domestic politics and in Afghanistan's challenges with foreign powers. This paper attempts to fill the gap in information about the ulama by detailing their role in defending Afghanistan's territorial integrity and by examining the conflict over jihad between the ulama and Afghanistan's rulers, a conflict that adversely affected the legitimacy of successive regimes.

Type
Articles:Creating National Identities
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , November 1997 , pp. 581 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

NOTES

Author's note: This study is based on primary and relevant secondary sources in English and Persian. In addition to materials gathered from the India Office Records in London and the National Archives of India, I have used eyewitness reports by 19th-century Western writers such as Mountstuart Elphinstone, who visited Kabul in 1808 during the reign of Shah Shujāʿ Joseph Ferrier, a French general who visited Afghanistan in the mid-1800s; Howard Hensman, special correspondence of the Pioneer (Allahabad) and the Daily News (London), who accompanied British troops in Afghanistan during the second Anglo- Afghan war. I have also consulted the work of Mohan Lai, an Indian secretary who served under General MacNaughten and Major Burns in Kabul in the mid-19th century; and the autobiography of Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman, translated into English by his secretary, Sultan Mahomed (Muhammad) Mir Munshi. The most important sources in Persian are 19th-century and early 20th-century government publications; Naqshbandi texts written by Mujaddidi shaykhs, ʿUmdat al-Muqāmāt (written in the early 1800s by Muḥammad Fazl-Allah) and Hidayāt al-ʿUrfān (written in the mid-19th century by Muḥammad ʿUmar Jān); Tāj al-Tawārīkh, Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman's autobiography; Ṭuhfat al-Amīr fī Bayān-i-Sulūk wa al-Tadbīr written by Muḥammad Tāj al-Dīn Afghāni at Amir Habib-Allah's order; and Sirāj al-Tawārīkh written by FaiṼ Muhammad Kātib, court historian in the time of King Habib-Allah.

I am grateful to Ludwig Adamec for sharing materials from the National Archives of India. The NAI files used in this work are from his library.

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4 This theme is explored by David Gibbs to explain the tenacious resistance in the countryside to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and to the domestic Marxist regime in Afghanistan during the 1980s; Gibbs, David, “The Peasant as Counter Revolutionary: The Rural Origins of the Afghan Insurgency,” in Studies in Comparative International Development 21 (Spring 1986): 36–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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23 Ibid., 332.

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44 Qureshi, , 162Google Scholar. The Akhundzada of Swāt claimed spiritual leadership through a chain of predecessors (silsila), mainly shaykh Junaid of Peshawar and Shaykh Ahmad of Delhi, to Sayyid Abdal-Qadir Gailani; interview with al-Qayyūm, Padshah Sāhib Sayyid ʿAbd, the last shaykh in the line of the successors of Akhundzada of Swāt through the Mulla of Hadda, Peshawar, 23 09 1994Google Scholar.

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47 Kāfiristān, land of the infidels (kāfirs), is currently known as Nuristan.

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70 On 3 03 1915Google Scholar, the viceroy wrote to Habib-Allah: “I am delighted to have proof that in spite of such influences as may be at work in your territories Your Majesty is steadily pursuing the policy of neutrality which throughout you have declared to the King Emperor's Government. I have had evidence of your Majesty's wise influence in the temperate preaching of mollahs on the frontier and in the improved tone of the ‘Siraj-ul-Akhbar [sic] newspaper.” India Office Library, L/P&S/14/6, Kharita no. 6, POA, 3 03 1915Google Scholar, from HE Viceroy and Gov. G. to HM A of Afghanistan.

71 India Office Records, London, L/P&S/14/6, Kharita no. 10, PO-A, Simla, 10 05 1915, from Viceroy to Amir Habib-Allah.Google Scholar

72 India Office Records, L/P&S/10/544, P 3352, 15 09 1915Google Scholar.

73 Ibid., P3845, 1915; P3258, 1915.

74 Ibid., P3553, 29 August 1915.

75 Ibid., L/P&S/14/6, tel. no. S.994, 28 09 1915Google Scholar.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.; Sirāj al-Akhbār, Kabul, vi, no. 15, 14 04 1916.Google Scholar

79 Adamec, , Afghanistan, 1900–1923, 92.Google Scholar

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81 Ibid.; letter from George Roos-Keppel to the secretary of state for India, n. 4BN, 17 06 1916Google Scholar.

82 Sirāj al-Akhbār, vi., no. 22, 16 07 1916.Google Scholar

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