"...I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press. But so far, the whole country is like a concentration camp. The barbed wire on the fence around the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark. This openness that you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders. These leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or appease it. He will say: "Yes, we can do business!" This while his military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a population of 17 million. Can you imagine that? -- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days. -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive." -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
My experience of camp life in Afghanistan had at least had the effect of making me a prompt and ready traveller. My wants were few and simple, so that in less than the time stated I was in a cab with my valise, rattling away to Paddington Station. Sherlock Holmes was pacing up and down the platform, his tall, gaunt figure made even gaunter and taller by his long grey travelling-cloak and close-fitting cloth cap.
Lord Minto, governor-general from 1807 to 1813, consolidated the conquests which Wellesley had acquired. His only military exploits were the occupation of the island of Mauritius, and the conquest of Java by an expedition which he accompanied in person. The condition of central India continued to be disturbed, but Lord Minto succeeded in preventing any violent outbreaks without himself having recourse to the sword. The company had ordered him to follow a policy of non-intervention, and he managed to obey his orders without injuring the prestige of the British name. In his time the Indian government first opened relations with a new set of foreign powers by sending embassies to the Punjab, to Afghanistan and to Persia. The ambassadors were all trained in the school of Wellesley, and formed perhaps the most illustrious trio of "politicals" that the Indian service has produced. Sir Charles Metcalfe was the envoy to the court of Ranjit Singh at Lahore; Mountstuart Elphinstone met the shah of Afghanistan at Peshawar; and Sir John Malcolm was despatched to Persia. If it cannot be said that any of these missions were fruitful in permanent results, at least they introduced the English to a new set of diplomatic relations, and widened the sphere of their influence. Entry: HISTORY
The higher mountains rise abruptly from the plains; on their slopes, clothed below almost exclusively with the more tropical forms, a vegetation of a warm temperate character, chiefly evergreen, soon begins to prevail, comprising Magnoliaceae, Ternstroemiaccae, subtropical Rosaceae, rhododendron, oak, _Ilex, Symplocos_, Lauraceae, _Pinus longifolia_, with mountain forms of truly tropical orders, palms, _Pandanus, Musa, Vitis, Vernonia_, and many others. On the east the vegetation of the Himalaya is most abundant and varied. The forest extends, with great luxuriance, to an elevation of 12,000 ft., above which the sub-alpine region may be said to begin, in which rhododendron scrub often covers the ground up to 13,000 or 14,000 ft. Only one pine is found below 8000 ft., above which several other Coniferae occur. Plantains, tree-ferns, bamboos, several _Calami_, and other palms, and _Pandanus_, are abundant at the lower levels. Between 4000 and 8000 ft. epiphytal orchids are very frequent, and reach even to 10,000 ft. Vegetation ascends on the drier and less snowy mountain slopes of Tibet to above 18,000 ft. On the west, with the drier climate, the forest is less luxuriant and dense, and the hill-sides and the valleys better cultivated. The warm mountain slopes are covered with _Pinus longifolia_, or with oaks and rhododendron, and the forest is not commonly dense below 8000 ft., excepting in some of the more secluded valleys at a low elevation. From 8000 to 12,000 ft., a thick forest of deciduous trees is almost universal, above which a sub-alpine region is reached, and vegetation as on the east continues up to 18,000 ft. or more. The more tropical forms of the east, such as the tree-ferns, do not reach west of Nepal. The cedar or deodar is hardly indigenous east of the sources of the Ganges, and at about the same point the forms of the west begin to be more abundant, increasing in number as we advance towards Afghanistan. Entry: FLORA
In connexion with the Indian triangulation minor extensions carried out on systems involving more or less irregularity have been pushed outwards on all sides. They reach through Afghanistan and Baluchistan to the eastern districts of Persia, and along the coast of Makran to that of Arabia. They have long ago included the farther mountain peaks of Nepal, and they now branch outwards towards western China and into Siam. These far extensions furnish the basis for a vast amount of exploratory survey of a strictly geographical character, and they have contributed largely towards raising the standard of accuracy in Asiatic geographical surveys to a level which was deemed unattainable fifty years ago. There is yet a vast field open in Asia for this class of surveys. While at the close of the 19th century western Asia (exclusive of Arabia) may be said to have been freed from all geographical perplexity, China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia still include enormous areas of which geographical knowledge is in a primitive stage of nebulous uncertainty. Entry: I
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, a town of Afghanistan, the capital of the province of Afghan Turkestan. Owing to the importance of the military cantonment of Takhtapul, and its religious sanctity, it has long ago supplanted the more ancient capital of Balkh. It is situated in a malarious, almost desert plain, 9 m. E. of Balkh, and 30 m. S. of the Pata Kesar ferry on the Oxus river. In this neighbourhood is concentrated most of the Afghan army north of the Hindu Kush mountains, the fortified cantonment of Dehdadi having been completed by Sirdar Ghulam Ali Khan and incorporated with Mazar. Mazar-i-Sharif also contains a celebrated mosque, from which the town takes its name. It is a huge ornate building with minarets and a lofty cupola faced with shining blue tiles. It was built by Sultan Ali Mirza about A.D. 1420, and is held in great veneration by all Mussulmans, and especially by Shiites, because it is supposed to be the tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of Mahomet. Entry: MAZAR
When Gladstone's ministry came into office in the spring of 1880, Lord Kimberley had no intention of recalling Frere. In June, however, a section of the Liberal party memorialized Gladstone to remove him, and the prime minister weakly complied (1st August 1880). Upon his return Frere replied to the charges relating to his conduct respecting Afghanistan as well as South Africa, previously preferred in Gladstone's Midlothian speeches, and was preparing a fuller vindication when he died at Wimbledon from the effect of a severe chill on the 29th of May 1884. He was buried in St Paul's, and in 1888 a statue of Frere upon the Thames embankment was unveiled by the prince of Wales. Frere edited the works of his uncle, Hookham Frere, and the popular story-book, _Old Deccan Days_, written by his daughter, Mary Frere. He was three times president of the Royal Asiatic Society. Entry: FRERE
The supreme orographic importance of this great Central Asian mountain system was recognized in a fashion even by the geographers of ancient Greece. They used to suppose that an immense range of mountains crossed Asia from west to east on the parallel of the island of Rhodes, extending through Asia Minor, the Kurdish highlands, the N. of Persia, the N. of Bactria (Afghanistan), the Hindu-kush, and so on into China. This long range they supposed to separate the waters which flow N. to the Arctic from those which flow S. to the Indian Ocean. K. Ritter (_Asien_, ii.) was the first of modern geographers to recognize the true character of the Kuen-lun as a border range of the Tibetan plateau; and Baron von Richthofen (_China_, i. 1876) still further defined and accentuated the conception of the system by representing it as a complex arrangement of several parallel ranges, running in wavy lines from the Pamirs (76° E.) eastwards to 118° E. But though von Richthofen's general conception of the Kuen-lun system was broadly sound and in accordance with facts, the details both of his description and of that of his pupil Wegener[1] require now very considerable revision, and need even to be in part recast, as a consequence of explorations and investigations made since they wrote by, amongst others, the Russian explorers N. M. Przhevalsky, M. V. Pyevtsov, V. I. Roboroysky, P. K. Kozlov, K. Bogdanovich, V. A. Obruchev, and (?) Skassi; by the Englishmen A. D. Carey, A. Dalgleish, St G. R. Littledale, H. Bower, H. H. P. Deasy and M. S. Wellby; by the American W. W. Rockhill; the Frenchmen J. L. Dutreuil de Rhins, F. Grenard, P. G. Bonvalot and Prince Henri d'Orléans; by the Hungarians L. von Loczy and Count Szechényi; and above all by the Swede Sven Hedin. Entry: KUEN
Oman (q.v.) includes all the south-eastern corner of the peninsula. Its chief feature is the lofty range of J. Akhdar, 10,000 ft. above sea-level. Like the great range of western Arabia, it runs parallel to the coast; it differs, however, from the western range in that its fall on the landward side is as abrupt and nearly as great as on its seaward side. Its northern extremity, Ras Musandan, rises precipitously from the straits of Hormuz; farther south the range curves inland somewhat, leaving a narrow but fertile strip, known as the Batina coast, between it and the sea, and containing several populous towns and villages of which Sohar, Barka and Sib are the chief. Muscat, the capital of the province and the principal port on the coast, is surrounded on three sides by bare, rocky hills, and has the reputation of being the hottest place in Arabia. Zwemer says the fertility of the highland region of J. Akhdar is wonderful and is in striking contrast to the barrenness of so much of the coast; water issues in perennial springs from many rocky clefts, and is carefully husbanded by the ingenuity of the people; underground channels, known here as _faluj_, precisely similar to the _kanat_ or _karez_ of Persia and Afghanistan, are also largely used. The principal villages on the eastern slopes are Rustak, Nakhl and Semail in the well-watered valley of the same name; on the western slopes are Tanuf and Nizwa, lying immediately below the highest summit of the range; Semed, Ibra and Bidiya in the W. Betha are all well-built villages with palm-groves and irrigated fields. In the north-west the Dhahira district sloping towards the Jewasimi coast is more steppe-like in character; but there two oases of great fertility are found, of which Birema, visited by both Miles and Zwemer, supports a population of 15,000. West of Abu Dhabi a low flat steppe with no settled inhabitants extends up to the Katr peninsula, merging on the north into the saline marshes which border the Persian Gulf, and on the south into the desert. Entry: A
The weakness of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms was shown by their sudden and complete overthrow. In the west the Arsacid empire had risen, and Mithradates I. and Phraates II. began to conquer some of their western districts, especially Areia (Herat). But in the north a new race appeared, Mongolian tribes, called [v.03 p.0181] Scythians by the Greeks, amongst which the Tochari, identical with the Yue-chi (_q.v._) of the Chinese, were the most important. In 159 B.C., according to Chinese sources, they entered Sogdiana, in 139 they conquered Bactria, and during the next generation they had made an end to the Greek rule in eastern Iran. Only in India the Greek conquerors (Menander, Apollodotus) maintained themselves some time longer. But in the middle of the 1st century B.C. the whole of eastern Iran and western India belonged to the great "Indo-Scythian" empire. The ruling dynasty had the name Kushan (Kushana), by which they are called on their coins and in the Persian sources. The most famous of these kings is Kanishka (ca. 123-153), the great protector of Buddhism. The principal seat of the Tochari and the Kushan dynasty seems to have been Bactria; but they always maintained the eastern parts of modern Afghanistan and Baluchistan, while the western regions (Areia, _i.e._ Herat, Seistan and part of the Helmund valley) were conquered by the Arsacids. In the 3rd century the Kushan dynasty began to decay; about A.D. 320 the Gupta empire was founded in India. Thus the Kushanas were reduced to eastern Iran, where they had to fight against the Sassanids. In the 5th century a new people came from the east, the Ephthalites (_q.v._) or "white Huns," who subjected Bactria (about 450); and they were followed by the Turks, who first appear in history about A.D. 560 and subjugated the country north of the Oxus. Most of the small principalities of the Tochari or Kushan became subject to them. But when the Sassanian empire was overthrown by the Arabs, the conquerors immediately advanced eastwards, and in a few years Bactria and the whole Iran to the banks of the Jaxartes had submitted to the rule of the caliph and of Islam. Entry: BACTRIA
DOST MAHOMMED KHAN (1793-1863), founder of the dynasty of the Barakzai in Afghanistan, was born in 1793. His elder brother, the chief of the Barakzai, Fatteh Khan, took an important part in raising Mahmud to the sovereignty of Afghanistan in 1800 and in restoring him to the throne in 1809. That ruler repaid his services by causing him to be assassinated in 1818, and thus incurred the enmity of his tribe. After a bloody conflict Mahmud was deprived of all his possessions but Herat, the rest of his dominions being divided among Fatteh Khan's brothers. Of these Dost Mahommed received for his share Ghazni, to which in 1826 he added Kabul, the richest of the Afghan provinces. From the commencement of his reign he found himself involved in disputes with Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab, who used the dethroned Saduzai prince, Shuja-ul-Mulk, as his instrument. In 1834 Shuja made a last attempt to recover his kingdom. He was defeated by Dost Mahommed under the walls of Kandahar, but Ranjit Singh seized the opportunity to annex Peshawar. The recovery of this fortress became the Afghan amir's great concern. Rejecting overtures from Russia, he endeavoured to form an alliance with England, and welcomed Alexander Burnes to Kabul in 1837. Burnes, however, was unable to prevail on the governor-general, Lord Auckland, to respond to the amir's advances. Dost Mahommed was enjoined to abandon the attempt to recover Peshawar, and to place his foreign policy under British guidance. In return he was only promised protection from Ranjit Singh, of whom he had no fear. He replied by renewing his relations with Russia, and in 1838 Lord Auckland set the British troops in motion against him. In March 1839 the British force under Sir Willoughby Cotton advanced through the Bolan Pass, and on the 26th of April it reached Kandahar. Shah Shuja was proclaimed amir, and entered Kabul on the 7th of August, while Dost Mahommed sought refuge in the wilds of the Hindu Kush. Closely followed by the British, Dost was driven to extremities, and on the 4th of November 1840 surrendered as a prisoner. He remained in captivity during the British occupation, during the disastrous retreat of the army of occupation in January 1842, and until the recapture of Kabul in the autumn of 1842. He was then set at liberty, in consequence of the resolve of the British government to abandon the attempt to intervene in the internal politics of Afghanistan. On his return from Hindustan Dost Mahommed was received in triumph at Kabul, and set himself to re-establish his authority on a firm basis. From 1846 he renewed his policy of hostility to the British and allied himself with the Sikhs; but after the defeat of his allies at Gujrat on the 21st of February 1849 he abandoned his designs and led his troops back into Afghanistan. In 1850 he conquered Balkh, and in 1854 he acquired control over the southern Afghan tribes by the capture of Kandahar. On the 30th of March 1855 Dost Mahommed reversed his former policy by concluding an offensive and defensive alliance with the British government. In 1857 he declared war on Persia in conjunction with the British, and in July a treaty was concluded by which the province of Herat was placed under a Barakzai prince. During the Indian Mutiny Dost Mahommed punctiliously refrained from assisting the insurgents. His later years were disturbed by troubles at Herat and in Bokhara. These he composed for a time, but in 1862 a Persian army, acting in concert with Ahmad Khan, advanced against Kandahar. The old amir called the British to his aid, and, putting himself at the head of his warriors, drove the enemy from his frontiers. On the 26th of May 1863 he captured Herat, but on the 9th of June he died suddenly in the midst of victory, after playing a great rôle in the history of Central Asia for forty years. He named as his successor his son, Shere Ali Khan. (E. I. C.) Entry: DOST
The only representatives of the Malayo-Polynesian group in India are the Selungs of the Mergui Archipelago and the Nicobarese. The Mon-Khmer family, which is most numerous in Indo-China, is here represented by the Talaings of southern Burma and the Khasis of Assam. Of the Tibeto-Chinese family, the Tibeto-Burman subfamily, as its name implies, is spoken from Tibet to Burma; while the Siamese-Chinese subfamily is represented by the Karens and Shans of Burma. The Munda or Kolarian family, which is now distinguished from the Dravidian, is almost confined to Chota Nagpur, its best-known tribe being the Santals. The Dravidian family includes the four literary languages of the south, as well as many dialects spoken by hill tribes in central India, and also the isolated Brahui in Baluchistan. Of the Indo-European family, the Iranian branch inhabits Persia, Afghanistan and Baluchistan; while the Indo-Aryan branch is spoken by the great mass of the people of northern India. The only Semitic language is Arabic, found at Aden, where also the Hamitic Somali was returned. Gipsy dialects are used by the nomadic tribes of India, while Andamanese has not been connected by philologists with any recognized family of speech. Entry: THE
_History._--The city is not mentioned by any narrator of Alexander's expedition, nor by any ancient author so as to admit of positive recognition. But it is very possibly the _Gazaca_ which Ptolemy places among the _Paropamisadae_, and this may not be inconsistent with Sir H. Rawlinson's identification of it with _Gazos_, an Indian city spoken of by two obscure Greek poets as an impregnable place of war. The name is probably connected with the Persian and Sanskrit _ganj_ and _ganja_, a treasury (whence the Greek and Latin _Gaza_). We seem to have positive evidence of the existence of the city before the Mahommedan times (644) in the travels of the Chinese pilgrim, Hsuan Tsang, who speaks of _Ho-si-na_ (i.e. probably _Ghazni_) as one of the capitals of _Tsaukuta_ or Arachosia, a place of great strength. In early Mahommedan times the country adjoining Ghazni was called _Zabul_. When the Mahommedans first invaded that region Ghazni was a wealthy entrepot of the Indian trade. Of the extent of this trade some idea is given by Ibn Haukal, who states that at Kabul, then a mart of the same trade, there was sold yearly indigo to the value of two million dinars (£1,000,000). The enterprise of Islam underwent several ebbs and flows over this region. The provinces on the Helmund and about Ghazni were invaded as early as the caliphate of Moaiya (662-680). The arms of Yaqub b. Laith swept over Kabul and Arachosia (Al-Rukhaj) about 871, and the people of the latter country were forcibly converted. Though the Hindu dynasty of Kabul held a part of the valley of Kabul river till the time of Mahmud, it is probably to the period just mentioned that we must refer the permanent Mahommedan occupation of Ghazni. Indeed, the building of the fort and city is ascribed by a Mahommedan historian to Amr b. Laith, the brother and successor of Ya`kub (d. 901), though the facts already stated discredit this. In the latter part of the 9th century the family of the Samanid, sprung from Samarkand, reigned in splendour at Bokhara. Alptagin, originally a Turkish slave, and high in the service of the dynasty, about the middle of the 10th century, losing the favour of the court, wrested Ghazni from its chief (who is styled Abu Bakr Lawik, wali of Ghazni), and established himself there. His government was recognized from Bokhara, and held till his death. In 977 another Turk slave, Sabuktagin, who had married the daughter of his master Alptagin, obtained rule in Ghazni. He made himself lord of nearly all the present territory of Afghanistan and of the Punjab. In 997 Mahmud, son of Sabuktagin, succeeded to the government, and with his name Ghazni and the Ghaznevid dynasty have become perpetually associated. Issuing forth year after year from that capital, Mahmud (q.v.) carried fully seventeen expeditions of devastation through northern India and Gujarat, as well as others to the north and west. From the borders of Kurdistan to Samarkand, from the Caspian to the Ganges, his authority was acknowledged. The wealth brought back to Ghazni was enormous, and contemporary historians give glowing descriptions of the magnificence of the capital, as well as of the conqueror's munificent support of literature. Mahmud died in 1030, and some fourteen kings of his house came after him; but though there was some revival of importance under Ibrahim (1059-1099), the empire never reached anything like the same splendour and power. It was overshadowed by the Seljuks of Persia, and by the rising rivalry of Ghor (q.v.), the hostility of which it had repeatedly provoked. Bahram Shah (1118-1152) put to death Kutbuddin, one of the princes of Ghor, called king of the Jibal or Hill country, who had withdrawn to Ghazni. This prince's brother, Saifuddin Suri, came to take vengeance, and drove out Bahram. But the latter recapturing the place (1149) paraded Saifuddin and his vizier ignominiously about the city, and then hanged them on the bridge. Ala-uddin of Ghor, younger brother of the two slain princes, then gathered a great host, and came against Bahram, who met him on the Helmund. The Ghori prince, after repeated victories, stormed Ghazni, and gave it over to fire and sword. The dead kings of the house of Mahmud, except the conqueror himself and two others, were torn from their graves and burnt, whilst the bodies of the princes of Ghor were solemnly disinterred and carried to the distant tombs of their ancestors. It seems certain that Ghazni never recovered the splendour that perished then (1152). Ala-uddin, who from this deed became known in history as _Jah[=an]-soz_ (_Brûlemonde_), returned to Ghor, and Bahram reoccupied Ghazni; he died in 1157. In the time of his son Khusru Shah, Ghazni was taken by the Turkish tribes called Ghuzz (generally believed to have been what are now called Turkomans). The king fled to Lahore, and the dynasty ended with his son. In 1173 the Ghuzz were expelled by Ghiyasuddin sultan of Ghor (nephew of Ala-uddin Jahansoz), who made Ghazni over to his brother Muizuddin. This famous prince, whom the later historians call Mahommed Ghori, shortly afterwards (1174-1175) invaded India, taking Multan and Uchh. This was the first of many successive inroads on western and northern India, in one of which Lahore was wrested from Khusru Malik, the last of Mahmud's house, who died a captive in the hills of Ghor. In 1192 Prithvi Rai or Pithora (as the Moslem writers call him), the Chauhan king of Ajmere, being defeated and slain near Thanewar, the whole country from the Himalaya to Ajmere became subject to the Ghori king of Ghazni. On the death of his brother Ghiyasuddin, with whose power he had been constantly associated, and of whose conquests he had been the chief instrument, Muizuddin became sole sovereign over Ghor and Ghazni, and the latter place was then again for a brief period the seat of an empire nearly as extensive as that of Mahmud the son of Sabuktagin. Muizuddin crossed the Indus once more to put down a rebellion of the Khokhars in the Punjab, and on his way back was murdered by a band of them, or, as some say, by one of the _Mulahidah_ or Assassins. The slave lieutenants of Muizuddin carried on the conquest of India, and as the rapidly succeeding events broke their dependence on any master, they established at Delhi that monarchy of which, after it had endured through many dynasties, and had culminated with the Mogul house of Baber, the shadow perished in 1857. The death of Muizuddin was followed by struggle and anarchy, ending for a time in the annexation of Ghazni to the empire of Khwarizm by Mahommed Shah, who conferred it on his famous son, Jelaluddin, and Ghazni became the headquarters of the latter. After Jenghiz Khan had extinguished the power of his family in Turkestan, Jelaluddin defeated the army sent against him by the Mongol at Parwan, north of Kabul. Jenghiz then advanced and drove Jelaluddin across the Indus, after which he sent Ogdai his son to besiege Ghazni. Henceforward Ghazni is much less prominent in Asiatic history. It continued subject to the Mongols, sometimes to the house of Hulagu in Persia, and sometimes to that of Jagatai in Turkestan. In 1326, after a battle between Amir Hosain, the viceroy of the former house in Khorasan, and Tarmashirin, the reigning khan of Jagatai, the former entered Ghazni and once more subjected it to devastation, and this time the tomb of Mahmud to desecration. Entry: GHAZNI