AfghanistanPub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2023.0102
Neela Hassan
{"title":"Why Parents Sent their Daughters to School: A Qualitative Study of Girls’ Schooling in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan in 2018","authors":"Neela Hassan","doi":"10.3366/afg.2023.0102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2023.0102","url":null,"abstract":"Afghanistan's history suggests that women's rights are integrally connected to cultural norms and political power. Known as the worst place for women and having the highest level of gender inequality in education, Afghanistan and its people are often portrayed in the Western media as passive and backward individuals with sexist and uncivilized cultural values. This study examines the questions of women's access to education in post-2001 Afghanistan based on the narratives and accounts of schoolgirls and their parents in one of the most insecure provinces of Afghanistan. The study was conducted in the summer of 2018. It draws on 18 semi-structured, in-depth qualitative interviews with schoolgirls and their parents in Kandahar, a southern province of Afghanistan that was the battlefield for the Taliban and American forces for over twenty years. The findings suggest that pragmatic reasons such as security, poverty, and access were the most significant barriers to girls’ education, challenging the traditional assumptions that perceive Afghan cultural values as the only obstacle to girls’ education. I argue that contrary to the stereotypical depiction of Afghanistan and its culture, local actors and cultural values played a vital role in promoting girls’ education.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48960722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AfghanistanPub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2023.0104
Hakeem Naim
{"title":"The Genesis of the Afghan Mashrūṭah Movement","authors":"Hakeem Naim","doi":"10.3366/afg.2023.0104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2023.0104","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies the global and transnational history of the Afghan constitutionalist (mashrūṭah) movement in the early twentieth century. It aims to contribute to the intellectual history of Afghanistan and examine it within the history of modernity, Islam, and reforms in the region, particularly in the late Ottoman Empire. It rejects the notion that the Afghan mashrūṭah movement was an indistinct group of people with a unitary ideology and argues that the Afghan mashrūṭah was an intellectually, socially, ethnically, politically diverse and complex movement, the product of intellectual, political, religious, and economic interactions of Afghans with multifaceted global ideologies such as colonialism, nationalism, Ittihad-i Islam, and top-down modernization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44209330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AfghanistanPub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2023.0101
B. Auer
{"title":"Marriage, Political Alliance, and Imperial Polities in Early Ghaznavid History","authors":"B. Auer","doi":"10.3366/afg.2023.0101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2023.0101","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers how marriages were utilized in early Ghaznavid history to forge political alliances, establish relationships of power and to bind together different royal family households. Marriage was employed as a diplomatic tool to ease political tensions and to strengthen coalitions. The Ghaznavid ruler Maḥmūd (r. 388–421/998–1030) utilized marriage alliances with great success to consolidate and expand his territories. In 391/1001, he forged a coalition with the Karakhanids through a marriage to the daughter of Naṣr b. ʿAlī (d. 403/1012–3). In 406/1015–16, Maḥmūd married his own sister Ḥurra Kāljī to the Khwarazmshah al-Maʾmūn II (r. 399–407/1009–17). This paper attempts to answer unstudied questions concerning the role of marriage and the influence of female royal family members in the construction of imperial polities of the medieval period in Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan. It shows that the effective creation of strategic marriage alliances was a key factor in the success of the early Ghaznavid empire.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48341786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AfghanistanPub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2023.0107
{"title":"Abbreviations used in Afghanistan","authors":"","doi":"10.3366/afg.2023.0107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2023.0107","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47821150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AfghanistanPub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0092
A. Karimi
{"title":"Information Control in Afghanistan, 1901–1946","authors":"A. Karimi","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0092","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the history of information control in the first half of the twentieth century in Afghanistan. This was a period of great turmoil. The world fought two devastating wars and Afghanistan went through major political and social transformations that included several violent regime changes. Despite being a neutral state, the Afghan capital attracted European rivals who campaigned for the hearts and minds of Afghans. In addition to foreign intrigues, the Afghan rulers, too, used certain information practices as part of their surveillance regimes to suppress political dissent and public unrest. A contribution to media history in Afghanistan, this article looks into how the state tried to control the flow of information in this period through surveillance, censorship, and the spread of misinformation. This was an era when print and other media technologies gained significant popularity in Afghanistan but people continued to use mostly word-of-mouth to communicate information. Despite its best efforts, which often involved brute force, the article argues, the state was not always successful in preventing people from talking with each other.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44648360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AfghanistanPub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0095
A. Shihadeh
{"title":"Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Ghūrid Self-Fashioning","authors":"A. Shihadeh","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0095","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the intellectual production of the celebrated scholar Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) during the decade or so he spent in the service of the Ghūrid sultans, from ca. 591/1195 to 602/1206. Operating exclusively within religious disciplines—theology, law and Qurʾān exegesis—and displaying pronounced rhetorical and dialectical features, this production contrasts significantly with his earlier and later production, which most notably exhibits much closer engagement with philosophy. It is argued that this “Ghūrid interlude” in al-Rāzī’s production reflects his role in spearheading the sultans’ project of divesting from the socially and culturally peripheral Karrāmiyya and fashioning themselves as champions of a sophisticated and cosmopolitan orthodoxy, and is furthermore aligned with his patrons’ transregional policies, including their pro-Abbasid stance. Al-Rāzī was in return invested by the Caliph al-Nāṣir with the title “he who summons people to the True One” (al-dāʿī li-l-khalq ilā l-ḥaqq), more commonly attested as “he who summons to God” (al-dāʿī ilā llāh). The article also offers a new examination of al-Rāzī’s Ghūrid-period intellectual biography and oeuvre.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42478396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AfghanistanPub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0091
Ali Abdi
{"title":"Bachah-bāzī: A Socio-Erotic Tradition","authors":"Ali Abdi","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0091","url":null,"abstract":"This article looks into the tradition of bachah-bāzī, namely, showing interest for or having liaison with beardless young males, and contextualizes it within Afghan society and culture (and beyond). Complicating some widely held accounts of bachah-bāzī, the article suggests that the “unavailability of females” alone cannot adequately account for the persistence of the tradition in Afghanistan, and that bachahs (beardless young males) are not necessarily “underage boys” but have historically been perceived as distinct gender figures in addition to women and men. More broadly, the article reveals that studying the practice of bachah-bāzī will open up discussions on a range of related subjects, from male friendships and power play among men to gender and family relations and the construction of male desire and (homo)sexuality in Afghanistan. Studying bachah-bāzī may also lead to conversations about the aesthetics of male dance-forms, regional folk songs, music and musical creativity, Sufism and (homoerotic) poetry, histories of war and militarism, and state-building and development and reconstruction projects.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43931780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AfghanistanPub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0093
R. Khan
{"title":"Deconstructing Afghan Historiography: A Case Study of Hazara History Writing","authors":"R. Khan","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0093","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Hazara history writing, exploring how Hazara authors highlight the community’s formerly low socio-economic status and stigma attached to “being” Hazara. It also shows how in the 1980s and 1990s a shift in ethnic consciousness among Hazaras led to a new sense of pride and confidence, which continues to the present. The analysis focuses on two websites, Hazara.net and Hazara International, which are key social spaces for engagement with Hazara historiography. These websites are central to the ongoing production of an indigenous community history. These online spaces allow for the documentation, preservation, and propagation of Hazara history from a community-oriented lens.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45177711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AfghanistanPub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0094
R. Mcchesney, A. Tarzi
{"title":"Translation and Transformation: The “Autobiography” of ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan","authors":"R. Mcchesney, A. Tarzi","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0094","url":null,"abstract":"The acclaimed “autobiography” of the late nineteenth-century ruler of Afghanistan, Amir ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan (r. July 1880–October 1901), The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.B., G.C.S.I., has had a remarkably long and influential, if unexamined, history. Published in 1900 in two volumes, it was to include in its first volume a translation of Pandnāmah-i dunyā wa dīn, a genuine composition of the amir published in Kabul circa 1304 a.h. (1886–1887 c.e.). The Pandnāmah or Book of Advice, an unfinished 140-page work, recounts his life from the age of nine to the age of thirty-seven, just before he came to the throne in the summer of 1880. The English version found a receptive audience and was itself translated very quickly into Russian and back into Persian in 1901 and 1903. The fundamental question this paper raises: is the first volume of The Life of Abdur Rahman a translation of “every word of the Amir’s own narrative of his early years” as Sultan Muhammad (Mahomed), its editor, claimed?","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48432895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}