Afghanistan Rising

Islamic Law and Statecraft between the Ottoman and British Empires

Faiz Ahmed

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780674971943
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674982147
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Debunking conventional narratives of Afghanistan as a perennial war zone or marginal frontier, Faiz Ahmed presents a vibrant account of the first Muslim-majority country to gain independence from the British Empire, form a fully sovereign government, and promulgate an original constitution after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Far from a landlocked wilderness, turn-of-the-twentieth-century Afghanistan was a magnet for itinerant scholars and emissaries shuttling between Ottoman and British imperial domains. Tracing Afghans' longstanding but seldom examined scholastic ties to Istanbul, Damascus, and Baghdad, as well as greater Delhi and Lahore, Ahmed vividly describes how the Kabul court recruited jurists to craft a modern state within the interpretive traditions of Islamic law and ethics, or shari?a, and international legal norms. Beginning with the first Ottoman mission to Kabul in 1877, and culminating with parallel independence struggles in Afghanistan, India, and Turkey after World War I, this rich narrative explores encounters between diverse streams of Muslim thought and politics—from Young Turk lawyers to Pashtun clerics; Ottoman Arab officers to British Raj bureaucrats; and the last caliphs to a remarkable dynasty of Afghan kings and queens.

By unearthing a lost history behind Afghanistan's independence and first constitution, Ahmed shows how debates today on Islam, governance, and the rule of law have deep roots in a beleaguered land. Based on research in six countries and as many languages, Afghanistan Rising rediscovers a time when Kabul stood proudly for anticolonial coalitions, self-determination, and contested visions of reform in the Global South and Islamicate world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Maps and Illustrations
• Note on Transliteration and Usage
• Introduction
• 1. An Ottoman Scholar in Victorian Kabul: The First Ottoman Mission to Afghanistan
• 2. A Damascene Road Meets a Passage to India: Ottoman and Indian Experts in Afghanistan
• 3. Exit Great Game, Enter Great War: Afghanistan and the Ottoman Empire during World War I
• 4. Converging Crescents: Turco-Afghan Entente and an Indian Exodus to Kabul
• 5. Legalizing Afghanistan: Islamic Legal Modernism and the Making of the 1923 Constitution
• 6. Turkish Tremors, Afghan Aftershocks: Anatolia and Afghanistan after the Ottomans
• Conclusion
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Appendix A: Genealogy of Afghan Monarchs, 18th–20th Centuries
• Appendix B: Ottoman Publications on Afghanistan (1871–1923)
• Appendix C: British Publications on Afghanistan (1839–1933)
• Appendix D: Indian Muslim Publications on Afghanistan (1900–1933)
• Appendix E: Afghan Works in Islamic Law and Statecraft (1885–1923)
• Acknowledgments
• Index