geography]
AFGHANISTAN
strip of territory which now intervenes as a buffer between British India and Afghanistan. Zabul includes Sistan, and, although well enough known to Afghans, the name has been superseded in colloquial English by Kandahar. It may be said to include the Helmand basin. Herat is, broadly speaking, the basin of the Hari Bud ; and Afghan Turkestan includes the plains of Balkh and Badakshan. Chief Cities.—The political and commercial activity of Afghanistan centres about the three cities of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat, notices of which occur elsewhere in the Ency. Brit. Of other well-known cities of Afghanistan, Balkh (the mother of cities), and Ghazni are cities of the past, Mazar-i-Sharif is a religious, and Tashkurghan a commercial centre for the Oxus provinces of Afghan Turkestan. Maimana, Andkhui, Khanabad, and Faizabad are all places of note—walled towns, with local commandants, or governors, and busy, well-filled bazaars. There are, indeed, more widespread signs of general industrial activity in Afghan Turkestan than there are in the Herat and Kandahar provinces of Southern Afghanistan, where wide spaces exist which do not include a single town of importance. This is especially the case towards the western frontier, where, however, such local centres as Farah and Sabzawar, and such smaller industrial communities as Adraskand, Kin, and many other frontier villages, would undoubtedly develop into significance if encouraged by a railway. Independent Tribes.—Collaterally with Afghanistan the political geography of that independent strip of territory which intervenes between the Afghan frontier and British India requires notice, for some of it formed part of the Afghan Durani empire, together with a large portion of the Punjab and Sind. It is only since 1896 that this independent “buffer” territory has become a political entity by the creation of the present Afghan boundary. Whether it long survives beyond the red line of the Punjab or not, assuredly it will never form part of Afghanistan again. From the central water-divide of the Hindu Kush there reaches southwards a wide strip of mountainous country, formed by its elevated and intricate spurs, to the borders of the Peshawur plain. On the west this mountain district is bounded by Afghanistan ; on the east it stretches beyond the Indus to the Khagan valley and Kashmir. This great wilderness of mountains includes the Chitral basin north of Arnawai; the valleys of Yasin, Karambar (or Ashkuman), and Hunza (the last known as Kanjut), all forming part of the Gilgit basin ; a considerable section of the Indus valley, in which lie the forts of Chilas and,Takot; together with the peaks of Kohistan, Darel, and Tangir; the valley of Buner ; the valleys of the Swat, Panjkora, Dir, Bajaor, and a part of the Mohmand country. Some of these valleys are connected by political ties with Kashmir ; others are quite independent (see Gilgit). It is nothing but a broad waste of mountains intersected by narrow rock-bound valleys, and traversed by routes which here and there are hardly distinguishable from the crudest goat - tracks. The southern part of this region, so full of geographical surprises and thorny political problems, is usually termed Yaghistan (the country of the independents) by the frontier people, and throughout these southern tracts the dominant race is that of the Afghan Yusufzai. Amongst this vast array of minor ranges, all of them offshoots of the Hindu Kush, the dividing ridge between the Gilgit drainage and the upper Chitral and Panjkora basins, which is called Shandur, is perhaps the most prominent feature. It shuts off Chitral from its base at Gilgit by a barrier which is over 12,000 feet in altitude. The alternative approach to Chitral from the south by Dir leads to no altitude greater than 10,500 feet—the height of the Lowarai pass leading from Dir to Kala Drosh. Yaghistan and the Chitral and Kanjut mountains separate British India effectually from the highlands of the Pamirs. Across that independent mountain waste no irruption into India has ever spread from the north. It forms a barrier which is practically as effective as that of Kafiristan on its western flank, and will continue to form a barrier so long as the glacier-bound passes and byways of the Hindu Kush are not improved into high-roads. Immediately south of the Khaibar route the band of independent territory is continued by the Afridi uplands of the eastern
119 spurs of the Safed Koh. Then occurs the Kuram valley and the irregular mountain belt occupied by the Shiah Turis and Jajis. Here once more, as at Lundi Khana, British India touches Afghanistan on the Peshawur spurs, the valley of the Kuram being held by British levies. Next there intervenes a rough independent mountainous district drained by the Kaitu, between the Kuram and Tochi, where again the British line of occupation penetrates the frontier to the Afghan boundary. Beyond this, to the south, lies the Switzerland of the frontier, Waziristan forming a separate geographical and ethnographical division from the rest of the frontier. From the Khaibar to the Gomul the characteristics of the borderland are wide, flattish valleys, with comparatively gentle gradients filling in the open spaces between hills which are gradually being lowered by processes of denudation. There is little of that marked regularity of parallel flexures which is the prevailing feature south of the Gomul. Ethnography.—The term Afghan really applies to one section only of the mixed conglomeration of nationalities which forms the people of Afghanistan, but this is the dominant section. The predominance of the Afghan in Afghanistan dates from the middle of the 18th century, when Ahmad Shah carved out Afghanistan from the previous conquests of Nadir Shah, and called it the Durani empire. The Afghans claim to be Ben-i-Israel, and insist on their descent from the tribes who were carried away captive from Palestine to Media by Nebuchadnezzar. Yet they claim to be Pukhtun (or Pathan) in common with all other Pushto-speaking tribes, whom they do not admit to be Afghan. The bond of affinity between the various peoples who compose the Pathan community is simply the bond of a common language. All of them recognize a common code or unwritten law called Pukhtunwali, which appears to be similar in general character to the old Hebraic law, though modified by Mahommedan ordinances, and strangely similar in certain particulars to Rajput custom. Since their national independence the Afghans of Afghanistan have styled themselves Durani. They are settled principally in the Kandahar country, extending into Sistan and to the borders of the Herat valley. Eastward they spread across the Afghan border into the Toba highlands north of the Khojak, where they are represented by Achakzai and Sadozai clans. They exist in the Kabul districts as Barakzai (the Amir’s clan), and as Mahmundzai (Mohmands) and Yusufzai they occupy the hills north of the Kabul river, Bajaor, Swat, Buner, and part of the Peshawur plains. All the newly-demarcated independent provinces north of the Peshawur, and south of the Chitral and the Gilgit basin, are peopled with Afghans who are thus outside the frontier of Afghanistan. After the Afghan the dominant people are the Pukhtun, or Pathans, who are represented by a variety of tribes, many of which are recognized as being of Indian origin. These nonAfghan Pathans occupy the hilly .regions on the immediate British frontier. The Afridi, Jowaki, and Orakzai clans hold the highlands immediately south of the Khaibar and Peshawur. The Turis of the Kuram (of the Shiah persuasion), the Dawaris of Tochi, and the Waziris of Waziristan fill up the intervening Pathan hills north of the Gomul. In the Kohat district the Khattak and Bangash clans are Pathan, so that Pathans are found on both sides of the border. Pathans are probably the Pactyii or Pactyse of Herodotus, who also mentions the Aprytse or Afridi. In the utter absence of written history or of trustworthy genealogical evidence, the origin of most of the Pathan clans is likely ever to remain a mystery. It is enough that we can trace their existence in the regions they now occupy, or in contiguous districts, from the days of Herodotus. The immediate connexion of Britain with the Pathan of the Indian border makes him an important item in frontier ethnography ; but he is not (within the limits of Afghanistan) to be considered as a political factor of anything like equal importance with the Ghilzai. The Ghilzai is reckoned a Pathan, and he is connected with the Afghan ; but he is of an entirely distinct origin, and he only claims ties of faith and affinity of language with other Afghan peoples—he does not admit kinship. The popular theory of the origin of the Ghilzai traces'*him to the Turkish tribe of Kilji, once occupying districts bordering the upper course of the Jexartes, and affirms that he was brought into Afghanistan by the Turk Sabaktegin in the 10th century of our era. However that may be, the Ghilzai clans now rank collectively as second to none in strength of military and commercial enterprise. They are a fine, manly race of people, and it is from some of their most influential clans (Suliman Khel, Nasir Khel, Kharotis, &c.) that the main body of povindah merchants is derived. These frontier commercial travellers trade between Ghazni and the plains of India, bringing down their heavily-laden khafilas at the commencement of the cold weather, and retiring
