AfghanistanPub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0082
Hassan Ahmadi Karvigh
{"title":"The Chronology of Helmand Changes in Seistan","authors":"Hassan Ahmadi Karvigh","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0082","url":null,"abstract":"The Helmand River has three distinct beds in Seistan: the North Channel, the Trākun River, and the Sanā Rūd. Over the ages, the Helmand has undergone repeated changes and shifted from one bed to the other. This article reconstructs the Helmand channel alterations based on fieldwork observations, existing archeological investigation reports, and the writings of ancient geographers. It seeks to identify ancient cities, locate ancient weirs and main canals, and establish the chronology of changes of the river channel. It shows that the river flowed in the channel of the Sanā Rūd during the period c.3200-c.1800 BC, in the channel of the Trākun River during the periods c.1800-c.1300 BC, c.200 BC-AD c.400, AD c.1100-c.1700 and finally in the North Channel during c.1300-c.200 BC, AD c.400-c.1100, AD c.1700-present.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46779487","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 : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0086
William E. B. Sherman
{"title":"In the Garden of Language: Religion, Vernacularization, and the Pashto Poetry of Arzānī in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries","authors":"William E. B. Sherman","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0086","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents translations and analyses of some of the earliest known examples of Pashto literature: the poems of a figure known as Mullā Arzānī. The Pashto ghazals of Arzānī reflect a Sufi and messianic religio-cultural milieu in which Pashto is understood to be a divine language. An exploration of Arzānī’s poetry and Arzānī’s understanding of his own language use presents a strong challenge to the overly deterministic role that notions of “Pashtun identity” have played in Euro-American understandings of Pashto literature. Arzānī’s use of Pashto aimed not to express Pashtun ethnic identity. Rather, Arzānī’s ghazals position Pashto as an elite language that accords with the messianic and mystical logics of early modern Persianate cultures. Arzānī paired the cosmopolitanism of Persian and Islamic discourses with the particularity of Pashto language as a means to present Pashto as a divine and revelatory language within the messianic milieu of the Roshaniyya movement.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43527018","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 : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0085
Kevin L. Schwartz
{"title":"“Citizen Martyrs”: The Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade in Iran","authors":"Kevin L. Schwartz","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0085","url":null,"abstract":"While much is made of the military capacity of the all-Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade as an Iranian militia and proxy force in Syria, less attention has been devoted to how its fighters and their experiences have been integrated into Iranian society following deployment. As Afghans of the Fatemiyoun Brigade return to Iran – either as veterans or as bodies of martyrs – they have been incorporated into existing national frameworks of Shiʿi identity and martyrdom. Through the analysis of media reports, funeral processions, and visual iconography, this article demonstrates how state and non-state actors in Iran have used the example of Afghan “shrine defenders” as an occasion to re-invigorate the central importance of state narratives around Shiʿism and national sacrifice. Such practices have elicited new perceptions across government and media of Afghan contributions to the history of the Islamic Republic and have been accompanied by new mobilities and modalities for Afghans in Iranian society. While the experiences of Fatemiyoun fighters are not monolithic, and the reasons for enlisting varied, Afghans affiliated with the brigade are increasingly taking on citizenship characteristics, despite their non-citizenship status. In addition to fighting on behalf of the nation and Shiʿa community, Afghan members and veterans of the Fatemiyoun engage in civic acts of solidarity. Families of fallen fighters receive the financial benefits and cultural status accorded to “martyrs families.” Accordingly, the experience of the Fatemiyoun Brigade and its increased visibility in Iranian society raise questions about the future citizenship prospects of Afghans in Iran as well as notions of citizenship in the Islamic Republic more generally.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42775754","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 : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0084
R. Mcchesney, A. Tarzi
{"title":"The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.B., G.C.S.I. Composition, Reception, and Influence on the Historiography of Afghanistan","authors":"R. Mcchesney, A. Tarzi","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0084","url":null,"abstract":"The fin-de-siècle Afghan amir, ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan (r. 1880–1901), is noted for many things, among which is the two-volume work The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan (1900), promoted by its editor, Sultan Mahomed Khan, and publisher as the amir’s “autobiography.” It was also said to have represented the amir’s authentic views on numerous topics—royal succession, administrative and judicial organization, economic policy, Afghanistan’s society, and the country’s international relations. That the work contained autobiographical elements is beyond question. However, The Life of Abdur Rahman (henceforward The Life), drew only selectively on known autobiographical elements and omitted or distorted much of what it drew from its main source, a “book of advice” ( Pandnāmah-i dunya wa dīn). A great deal of the historiography relating to this formative period in Afghanistan, especially its relations with the Russian and British empires, is based not on the amir’s own words but rather on those that Sultan Mahomed Khan put in his mouth and reflect the editor’s and not the amir’s thoughts. The Life has had a distorting effect on the historiography, both Euro-American and Afghan, of this period. The object here is to establish the autobiographical legacy of Amir ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan; the writing and publication of The Life and its translations, its reception by critics and scholars, and thus its impact on the writing of Afghanistan’s history. In a separate study, we deal in detail with Sultan Muhammad Khan’s treatment of the most important autobiography of the amir’s life up to his taking the throne in July 1880, his Pandnāmah-i dunyā wa dīn. 1","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42544109","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 : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.3366/afg.2022.0083
Parwana Fayyaz
{"title":"Jami’s Rhetoric of Old Age and Aging in Salaman va Absal","authors":"Parwana Fayyaz","doi":"10.3366/afg.2022.0083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/afg.2022.0083","url":null,"abstract":"Between the years 1480 and 1484 AD, Jami wrote a long and extraordinary narrative poem, the masnavī of Salaman va Absal. At the time of its completion, Jami was about seventy years old. In this article, I discuss the significance of the poet’s age at the time he wrote this poem, while also examining the Sufi–Neoplatonic interpretations of old age embedded in the poem itself. I argue that Jami uses old age as a rhetorical device, and aging as an induction into a new mode of thinking. This allows the poet to emancipate himself from the poem’s aesthetics and its aesthetic constraints, to focus instead on its metaphysical purpose and potential. In so doing, the poet elevates his poetry to the status of a kind of perfection, which involves transforming the poetic form. Only then does Jami complete his treatise on the unity of oneness (as opposed to duality) from the perspective of an elderly poet. The unusual, passionate love between Salaman and Absal is presented as a Sufi–Neoplatonic interpretation of transcendence and sublimation. Using an interdisciplinary research methodology, this article examines these ideas through a close reading and analysis of the three chapters of the poem in which Jami draws particular attention to images of old age and aging. With this article, I hope to demonstrate the importance of old age studies within Persianate Studies more broadly. This shift in focus prompts a re-evaluation of the late works of classical and medieval Persian poets and their discussions of creativity, imagination, and memory in old age.","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45444163","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 : 2021-12-23DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.17
{"title":"The Durrani Empire and the Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, 1747–1834","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.17","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49480450","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 : 2021-12-23DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520241480.003.0002
West Virginia West, Virginia Kentucky, Michigan Monroe, W. Fulton, Defiance Paulding, Putnam Allen, Lenawee Lucas, Henry Hancock, H. Delaware, Marion Knox, Morrow Richland, Crawford Wyandot, Seneca Huron, Lorain Erie, Sandusky Ottawa, Wood
{"title":"A Geographic Overview","authors":"West Virginia West, Virginia Kentucky, Michigan Monroe, W. Fulton, Defiance Paulding, Putnam Allen, Lenawee Lucas, Henry Hancock, H. Delaware, Marion Knox, Morrow Richland, Crawford Wyandot, Seneca Huron, Lorain Erie, Sandusky Ottawa, Wood","doi":"10.1525/california/9780520241480.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520241480.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47718844","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 : 2021-12-23DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.10
{"title":"Disintegration of Greek Power in the East and the Rise of New Empires:","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42795073","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 : 2021-12-23DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.8
{"title":"The Early History of Afghanistan","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41946503","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 : 2021-12-23DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.16
{"title":"The Rise of Local Afghan States and Their Invasion of Persia, 1709–1747","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv264f9qw.16","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40186,"journal":{"name":"Afghanistan","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68803660","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}