Table Of ContentKabul: A History 1773–1948
Kabul: A History 1773–1948
By
May Schinasi
Translated by
R. D. McChesney
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Kabul, Shahr-e Naw, ca 1945. © Cagnacci Collection.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schinasi, May, author. | McChesney, R. D., 1944– translator.
Title: Kabul : A History 1773–1948 / by May Schinasi.
Other titles: Kaboul 1773–1948: Naissance et croissance d’une capitale royale
Description: Leiden : Boston : Brill, [2016] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016026009 (print) | LCCN 2016027396 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004323636 (hbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004325326 (E-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Kabul (Afghanistan)—History.
Classification: LCC DS375.K2 S3513 2008 (print) | LCC DS375.K2 (ebook) | DDC
958.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016026009
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Contents
Preface to the French Edition vii
Daniel Balland
Preface to the English Edition ix
R. D. McChesney
Acknowledgements xi
Transliteration xiii
Abbreviations xiv
List of Plates xv
List of Figures xvi
Introduction 1
1 The Garden City of Babur and the Great Mughals 16
2 The Vicissitudes of the New Afghan Capital: 1773–1879 23
The Citadel (bâlâ hesâr) 27
Chendâwol 28
The City 29
The Garden Belt 45
Shêrpur 52
3 Amir ʿAbd or-Rahmân Khân: Master Builder, 1880–1901 56
The Palace-Citadel (arg) 60
A Collection of New Palaces 67
Creation of a New City 79
The Birth of an Industrial Base: The Workshops 82
An Islam of Prestige 84
European Medicine 87
4 The Serâjiya Capital, 1901–1919 89
The Remodeled Arg’s New Style 90
Reconfigured Palaces 98
Places for Relaxation, Holidays, and Parades 102
Two Contrasting Cities 108
The Residences of Deh Afghânân 111
Public Utilities and Conveniences 114
5 Amâniya Kabul: The Dream of Modernization 120
The New Assignments of Royal Properties 124
The Royal Palace Opens Its Doors 127
vi Contents
A Municipality Conceived on Paper 129
The River Banks and the New Center-City 132
The Growth of Schools 135
Commerce, Industry, and Communications 138
Commemorative Monuments 140
Dâr ol-amân 142
6 The Emergence of Modern Urban Planning, 1930–1948 152
From Habibollâh Kalakâni’s Advent until Mohammad Nâder Khân’s Arrival 153
A Municipality in Action 158
Governmental Structures and Public Administration 161
The Urban Infrastructure 163
Two Juxtaposed Cities 167
Institutional Reorganization 174
The Commemoration of Kabul’s Past 185
Itineraries 187
Modern Kabul Destroys the Past 191
Conclusion 194
Glossary 197
Annex 1: Genealogical Tables 199
Annex 2: The Population of Kabul 203
Annex 3: The Mayors of Kabul 204
Annex 4: The Principal Buildings of Kabul: A Chronology 205
Annex 5: Panoramic Views of Kabul 212
Annex 6: Commemorative Plaques and Funerary Inscriptions 214
Annex 7: Royal Tombs 216
Bibliography 219
Index 232
Plates and Figures
Preface to the French Edition
Like some people, certain cities suffer from amne- it reminded the founder of the Mughal Empire of
sia. Not that they have no past. Rather, this past, his native town, Andijan, in Fergana (Uzbekistan
no matter how glorious it may have been, will have today) as well as being handy to his new Indian
left so few reminders, so few architectural vestiges, possessions. No other city symbolized as well as
so few visible traces, that it remains something Kabul the symbiosis of Central Asian and Indian
obscure, if not completely invisible. One of the influences which, since Antiquity, have comprised
most striking examples is undoubtedly Baghdad. an essential unifying aspect of Afghan territory,
Virtually nothing survives of the prestig ious capi- perhaps the only one.
tal of the Abbasid Empire, whose influence radi- But of Mughal Kabul, the only things that sur-
ated out for five centuries across three continents. vive, aside from Babur’s tomb, which is located
The celebrated “round city” of Caliph al-Mansur outside the city proper, are toponyms. Of the post-
was a model of urban design that left nothing for Mughal city which later succeeded Kandahar as
posterity, less than if the site had been abandoned, capital of the Afghan Empire in 1775, hardly any-
and less even than the site of its rival Samarra. thing remains now with the exception, once again,
That city preserved from its much briefer period of a tomb—that of Timur Shah, an imposing con-
of prominence some major remains among which struction which dominates the old city. More than
are the two famous minarets with the spiral exte- the natural risks represented locally by the violent
rior staircases of the Malwiya (849–851) and the earthquakes occasioned by the city’s being located
Abu Dulaf Mosque. In comparison, the oldest in a zone of severe tectonic instability, it has been
structures visible in Baghdad today go back no the hazards posed by human history which have
further than the end of the Ottoman period, when been the most important destructive factors: it is
the city was little more than a sleepy provincial enough to mention here the major impact of the
capital. destruction wreaked on the city by the British in
To explain such losses to what should have been 1842 and 1880 and the even more ravaging and hor-
a key element of the legacy of mankind, human rific bombardments of the city which ebbed and
and natural causes have certainly played their flowed with the battle for Kabul between the fall
part. In the case of Baghdad, one thinks of the sack of the communist regime (1992) and its capture by
of the city by the Mongols in 1258, the recurrence the Taleban (1996).
of devastating floods of the Tigris River, and the The urban heritage of Kabul has thus been
vulnerable nature of an architecture comprised of repeatedly laid waste, including its more recent
impermanent materials like mud brick made from elements. However, a variety of sources allow for
the alluvial clay of Mesopotamia and wood con- a partial reconstruction without always making it
stantly eaten away by termites. possible to precisely locate the buildings to which
Kabul is another of these ‘amnesiac’ cities. the sources refer. The sources are numerous but
Certainly, neither its prestige nor its splendor ever have hitherto not been subject to any systematic
rivaled that of Baghdad. However, it served as a analysis. This is the task to which May Schinasi
much appreciated summer resort of the Mughal has devoted herself for many years. She is an
emperors and was the preferred residence of the historian who lived for a long time in Kabul, fell
first of them, Babur, who chose to be buried there. in love with the city, and made and then main-
For his successors, it became the focus of urban tained a network of incomparable informants. To
planning. By its climate, its location in a high the published and often cited Western-language
intramontane basin, and its bountiful horticulture sources she has added works in Persian that are
viii Preface To The French Edition
far less well-known, notably the marvelous Kabul works on political and social history is naturally
Almanacs (Salnâma-ye Kâbol), a remarkable better known than those times which preceded
source of information for the inter-war period, a it. Still, its presentation here, which takes up the
major period of construction in an Afghanistan greater part of the work, will not be the less use-
that was then open to the outside world. She has ful, because the devastations of the last decade of
assembled an exceptional group of illustrations, the twentieth century have already caused much
only a tiny part of which could be reproduced of the evidence to disappear.
in the present work: nineteenth-century British All those who lived in Kabul before 1979 will
maps of an often staggering precision, engravings, welcome this resurrection of Kabul’s past. For
and very early photographs which save from total those too young to have lived there, it will be a rev-
oblivion buildings that have since disappeared or elation. One must hope that it will also be a guide
been thoroughly disfigured. She has also known to saving and restoring whatever has not been
how to gather the stories of the local intelligentsia, irremediably destroyed. Already many projects
often members of the widely scattered royal fam- in this regard have been proposed and some are
ily, in such a way that they neither held back on even being realized. This book then arrives just in
helping her nor failed to put their trust in her. Thus time to revitalize one of the most charming cities
many members of the intelligentsia now deceased of Central Asia and to show it the grandeur of its
survive, in a way, through their memories of the past.
city, scrupulously transcribed here. The reader must allow the author of this pref-
From this exhuming of the past, unassuming ace to conclude by emphasizing how difficult the
and thankless, nevertheless patient, persistent, process of publishing this work has been. The pri-
and concerned with accuracy in even the tiniest ority the author rightly gave to French publishers
details, there emerges the portrayal of a misunder- turned out to be wholly misplaced. Their indeci-
stood and underrated city, a picture very different, siveness ultimately convinced her to look abroad.
indeed, from the defaced Kabul emerging at the One must then welcome unreservedly the accep-
beginning of the twenty-first century. The elements tance of the book for an edition in Italy, in this
of urban design, the elaboration of which one will case in the publication series of Università degli
find in the pages that follow, belong to many strata Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” which did not hesi-
that in large part stand in each other’s place, the tate to publish a work written in French and one
destruction or dereliction of the one encourag- richly illustrated, thus continuing a tradition that
ing the emergence of the next. A chronological does honor to European scholarship.
plan was consequently called for as the only suit-
able way for presenting the successive faces that Daniel Balland
the city has shown. Moreover, such a plan has the Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)
advantage of underscoring the uneven accuracy Nawroz 1385/21 March 2006
of what we know. The pre-contemporary period (from the French)
to which the author has dedicated numerous
Preface to the English Edition
To those fortunate enough to have experienced having let the opportunity slip away to learn more
the splendid yet rather unsettling isolation of from her while I was in Kabul.
Kabul in the mid 1960s, the city was a transforma- Without over-dramatizing or over-anthropo-
tive experience. To this bacha-yi amrika’i, fresh morphizing the matter, it sometimes seems now as
out of university, but already having seen Beirut, if Kabul preferred to keep its secrets to itself and to
Damascus, and Cairo, Kabul was something preserve a certain anonymity down through time.
entirely new and different. It was compact, mostly Or as the late Daniel Balland observed in the pref-
flat, growing around and between the two moun- ace to the first edition, “like people, some cities
tains, Asma’i and Sher Derwaza, that cut through [like Kabul] are amnesiac.” Without visible guide
it. It was ideally suited to the bicycle. From our posts (architecture, books, documents) to the past,
home in Shahr-i Naw to Kabul University, which I the city’s history, however remarkable, has come
rode many many times, the route traversed an area to be forgotten or if not wholly forgotten some-
embedded with half a millennium’s worth of his- how misplaced, at least as far as the world outside
tory but unlike Cairo and Damascus the past did Afghanistan is concerned. What May Schinasi
not unfold before my eyes as I traveled through the has done to resurrect that past is nothing short of
streets. This bacha in particular was mostly oblivi- miraculous. She has meticulously scrutinized and
ous to it, anyway, concerned more about his own interpreted seemingly every record—chronicles,
safety amid the often heedless traffic and whether journals, biographies, travel accounts, memoirs,
the tawildar, the bagman with the monthly sti- maps, official papers (farmans, nizamnamas, usul-
pend, would show up at the university or not. namas), and almanacs, not to mention paintings,
Kabul did not wear its history on its sleeve. photographs, films, and oral reminiscences of the
Although the Bala Hisar (closed to tourists at the way the city was before 1948, when the municipal
time), the Arg or Royal Palace (also off-limits), and government opted for modernity and obliterated
the Bagh-i Babur were known and visibly historic much of the historic architectural fabric. By her
places, there didn’t seem to be much else that labors, she has produced a remarkably complete
wasn’t trying to be modern, like the broad Jade record of the city’s history as seen through its built
Maiwand pointing the way towards the future, environment, from the pleasure gardens of the
having flattened much of the past. But gradually, 16th and 17th century Mughals to the efforts of the
thanks to the real bookseller of Kabul, Abdos- Saduza’i and Muhammadza’i rulers to turn this
Samad Maymanagi, and his dedication to finding one-time resort town into a thriving capital city at
books on the period that I was there ostensibly the center of a country of enormous diversity.
to research, this bacha began to scratch below The first edition of her work Kaboul 1773–1948:
Kabul’s surface. More importantly, through the Naissance et croissance d’une capitale royale (Naple,
bookseller I came to know May Schinasi, also one 2008) was a masterpiece but it is as if the aura of
of Abdos-Samad’s clients and deeply engaged then amnesia invoked by Balland continued to linger.
in her research on the Afghan journal of the early Despite the first edition’s handsome publication
twentieth century, Serâj ol-akhbâr and on the his- in an oversized and richly-illustrated format by
tory of Kabul itself, although I was probably oblivi- the University of Naples, for reasons best known to
ous to that at the time, as well. Only much later did that institution’s governing body, Kaboul has never
I begin to appreciate what a phenomenal resource been widely distributed. It as if Kabul’s appar-
she was for the history of Kabul and to regret ent desire to remain unknown and anonymous
