Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:25:06.604Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Bazaar, the State, and the Struggle for Public Opinion in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2020

ALI KARIMI
ALI KARIMI*
Affiliation:
McGill [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Public opinion is formed by the information that the public consumes. The state, whether democratic or authoritarian, employs various media of communication to influence people's opinions and behaviours. In the nineteenth century, Afghan rulers would traditionally use force and religion to gain popular support and strengthen their authority. In the second half of the century, they started to use print technology to build their relationships with the public. The state's print, however, had to compete with the institution of the bazaar that had long served as the central place where information circulated in public. This article, drawing mostly on unexamined Afghan sources, offers an account of how the bazaar operated as a source of information and how the Afghan state tried to suppress it. The history of this information conflict uncovers new aspects in the troublesome relationship between the government and the governed in Afghanistan.

Keywords

Print technologystate control in 19th Century Afghanistantaghallub
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 613 - 633
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 al-ʿAsqalani, Ahmad ibn Hajar, al-Bukhari, Fath al-Bari bi-Sharh Sahih (ed.), ʿAbd al Rahman al-Barrak and Nazar Muhammad al-Faryabi (Riyadh, 2005), xvi, p. 438Google Scholar.

2 Another version of this dictum is the “kingdom belongs to he who conquers” (al-mulk li-man ghalab.) Both, however, refer to the same principle: for the pursuit of power, the use of violence is legitimate. In 64/684, ʿAbd Allah ibn Khazim, a Zubayrid military commoner, right before launching an attack on the Umayyad-controlled city of Herat in Khurasan, used this phrase to motivate his soldiers. ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Muhammad, Tarikh al-Tabari, (ed.) al-ʿAttar, Sidqi Jamil (Beirut, 2017), iv, p. 33Google Scholar.

3 Quran, 4:59.

4 Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, Fath al-Bari, xvi, p. 438.

5 Noelle, Christine, State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan, 1826–1863 (London, 1997), pp. 1–59Google Scholar

6 Shams al-Nahar (SN, hereafter), 1 Shawwal 1290/22 November 1873, p. 25.

7 Ibid.,

8 Ibid., p. 27.

9 The quote is attributed to President Nur Muhammad Taraki (1978–9). See Kakar, M. Hassan, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982 (Berkeley, 1995), p. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Even the power of the current Taliban insurgency, which has brought the Kabul government almost to its knees, comes from the group's information war. See Johnson, Thomas H., Taliban Narratives: The Use and Power of Stories in the Afghanistan Conflict (London, 2017), pp. 16-17Google Scholar.

11 Noelle, State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan, pp. 1–59.

12 Giving land to tribal chiefs was one of the main instruments of buying loyalty for the Durrani kings. Kankufski, Yuri, ‘Maliyat va sistim-i maliyati dar ʿasr-i shahan-i Durrani’, (translation) Qurayshi, Hafiz Allah, Ariyana 45, 2 (1366/1987), pp. 50–51Google Scholar.

13 Hopkins, B. D., The Making of Modern Afghanistan (New York, 2008), pp. 85–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Barfield, Thomas J., ‘Problems in Establishing Legitimacy in Afghanistan’, Iranian Studies 37, 2 (2004), p. 264Google Scholar; Hopkins, The Making of Modern Afghanistan, p. 91.

15 The son of the second caliph, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar, for example, advised Muslims to obey whoever won the war. See ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Farra, Abu Yaʿla Muḥammad, Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya, (ed.) al-Fiqi, Muhammad Hamid (Beirut, 2000), p. 23Google Scholar.

16 Schinasi, May, Afghanistan at the beginning of the twentieth century: nationalism and journalism in Afghanistan: a study of Seraj ul-akhbar, 1911-1918 (Naples, 1979), p. 29Google Scholar.

17 Ahang, Mohammad Kazem, ‘The Background and Beginning of the Afghan Press System’, Afghanistan: Historical and Cultural Quarterly 21, 1 (1968), pp. 71–72Google Scholar; Arbabzadah, Nushin, ‘The Afghan Mediascape’, in Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands, (eds.) Bashir, Shahzad and Crews, Robert D. (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 215–235Google Scholar.

18 Perkins, C. Ryan, ‘A New Pablik: Abdul Halim Sharar, Volunteerism, and the Anjuman-e Dar-Us-Salam in Late Nineteenth-Century India’, Modern Asian Studies 49, 4 (2015), pp. 1049–1090CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on many forms of publics in South Asia see, Scott, J. Barton and Ingram, Brannon D., ‘What is a public? Notes from South Asia’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 38, 3 (2015), pp. 357-370CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Shibutani, Tamotsu, Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumour (Indianapolis, 1966), p. 57Google Scholar.

20 Ibid.

21 Bayly, C. A., Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 3-6Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 162.

23 Yang, Anand A., ‘A Conversation of Rumours: The Language of Popular ‘Mentalitès’ in Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial India’, Journal of Social History 20, 3 (1987), p. 490Google Scholar.

24 Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 325.

25 Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, 1991), p. 90Google Scholar.

26 Kim, Joohan, Wyatt, Robert O. and Katz, Elihu, ‘News, Talk, Opinion, Participation: The Part Played by Conversation in Deliberative Democracy’, Political Communication 16, 4 (1999), p. 361CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Brady, William J. et al. ., ‘Emotion Shapes the Diffusion of Moralized Content in Social Networks’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 28 (2017), pp. 7313–7318CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The role of rumour in triggering moral judgement was demonstrated in a tragic incident in 2015 in Kabul when a street mob beat a woman, Farkhundah Malikzadah, to death. A mulla had falsely accused her of burning the Quran. On her tragic death, see Fluri, Jennifer L. and Lehr, Rachel, ‘“We Are Farkhunda”: Geographies of Violence, Protest, and Performance’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45, 1 (2019), pp. 149–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ibrahimi, Niamatullah, ‘Rumor and Collective Action Frames: An Assessment of How Competing Conceptions of Gender, Culture, and Rule of Law Shaped Responses to Rumor and Violence in Afghanistan’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2019), pp. 1–23Google Scholar.

28 ‘Wazir-i Hajj-i Afghanistan: Imaman Mavzuʿ-i Khutbah-hay-i Namaz-i Jumʿah ra ba SMS Daryaft Mikunand’, BBC Persian, 26 May 2015, https://bbc.in/37lQIFK (accessed 12 November 2019). The state also keeps imams on payroll. It was recently revealed that for years the government paid at least 11 “ghost” imams in the province of Samangan. “Ghost” is a euphemism in Afghanistan for payroll corruption, when officials make up names to steal from public funds. ‘11 Imaginary Imams Paid for Years in Samangan’, Pajhwok Afghan News, 5 January 2020, https://bit.ly/2QvDm4f (accessed 6 January 2020).

29 Nasser Rabbat, ‘The Arab Revolution Takes Back the Public Space’, Critical Inquiry 39, 1 (2012), pp. 198–199. In Afghanistan, too, one historian suggests, mosques served as sites of exchanging news. Ahang, ‘The Background and Beginning of the Afghan Press System’, p. 71.

30 Adamec, Ludwig W., Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan (Lanham, 2012), p. 255Google Scholar.

31 Habermas, Jürgen, ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964)’, (trans.) Lennox, Sara and Lennox, Frank, New German Critique, 3 (1974), p. 49Google Scholar.

32 Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman Khan to Governor Saʿd al-Din Khan of Herat, 7 Rabiʿ al-Awwal 1311/18 September 1893, National Archives of Afghanistan, Kabul, Afghanistan (NAA, hereafter), Farman, No. 4635/66. Also see Amir Habib Allah Khan to Governor Ghulam Muhammad Khan and Judge Mulla Muhammad Aʿzam Khan of Ghurband, Muharram 1322/March-April 1904, NAA, Farman, No. 1869.

33 Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman Khan to Sardar Shirindil Khan and the rest of officials in Khust, 12 Shawwal 1309/10 May 1892, NAA, Doc. No. 2394, Farman, No. 237.

34 Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman Khan to Governor Saʿd al-Din Khan of Herat, Shawwal 1310/April-May 1893, NAA, Farman, No. 4627/80.

35 Faraydun Azhand, ‘Inja Ruznamah ast Khabar-hay-i sar-i Chawk’, Hasht-i Subh, 9 Jaddi 1989/30 December 2010, http://bit.ly/2cxNiXf (accessed 20 December 2019). The expression in Persian: “khabar-hāy-i sar-i chawk”. The word Chawk is Urdu for the town square. There is even a made-for-TV Afghan film called News from the Chawk (dir. Bahram Baryal), where the protagonist is a gossip-monger with the catchphrase “I'm not saying it, news from the Chawk is saying it”, using the Chawk as a stamp of credibility. The film, starring Nabi Tanha, was produced sometime after 2002 by Afghan state television.

36 Ingar, 11 Hamal 1330/1 April 1951, p. 4; Ingar, 14 Hamal 1330/4 April 1951, p. 4.

37 Fraser, Nancy, ‘Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy’, Social Text 25/26 (1990), pp. 56-80Google Scholar.

38 Rumour is defined as “a specific (or topical) proposition for belief, passed along from person to person, usually by word of mouth, without secure standards of evidence being present”. See Gordon Allport, Willard and Postman, Léo Joseph, The Psychology of Rumour (New York, 1947), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

39 Ali, Syed Mujtaba, In a land far from home: a Bengali in Afghanistan, (translated) Afroz, Nazes (New Delhi, 2015), p. 118Google Scholar.

40 For some examples, see Burdett, A. L. P. (ed.), Afghanistan Strategic Intelligence: British Records, 1919-1970 (London, 2002), iii, pp. 765–786Google Scholar. The ranking system is called The Admiralty Code.

41 Ali, In a Land far from Home, p. 118. For recent anthropological studies on the Afghan bazaar, see Coburn, Noah, Bazaar Politics: Power and Pottery in an Afghan Market Town (Stanford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Marsden, Magnus, Trading Worlds: Afghan Merchants across Modern Frontiers (Oxford, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 A Nobel laureate economist has recently (2019) published a book on the role of stories and how they shape market events, such as recessions, even in a data-obsessed capitalist society such as the US. See Shiller, Robert J., Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events (Princeton, 2019), pp. 111–113Google Scholar.

43 Sardar Nasr Allah Khan to Ghulam Muhammad Khan, Governor, District of Ghurband, 26 Ramazan 1320/27 December 1902, NAA, Farman, No. 303; Sardar Nasr Allah Khan to Ghulam Muhammad Khan, Governor, District of Ghurband, 1323/1905-1906, NAA, Farman, No. 305.

44 Kandahar Newsletters for the Year 1883 (Quetta, 1990), i, p. 51.

45 On print culture in Afghanistan see, Green, Nile and Arbabzadah, Nushin (eds.), Afghanistan in Ink: Literature between Diaspora and Nation (New York, 2013)Google Scholar; Green, Nile (ed.), Afghan History through Afghan Eyes (London, 2015)Google Scholar; Green, Nile, ‘The Trans-Border Traffic of Afghan Modernism: Afghanistan and the Indian “Urdusphere”’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 53, 3 (2011), pp. 479–508CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Qandahari, Sayyid Ab ul-Qasim, Guzarish-i Sifarat-i Kabul: Safarnamah-i Sayyid Ab ul-Qasim Qandahari dar 1286 va Asnad-i Marbuta bah an, (ed.) Fikrat, Asif (Tehran, 1368/1989), pp. 38–42Google Scholar.

47 SN, 15 Ramazan 1290/6 November 1873, p. 2.

48 Qandahari, Guzarish-i Sifarat-i Kabul, pp. 38–42.

49 SN, 15 Ramazan 1290/6 November 1873, p. 14.

50 Noelle, Christine, ‘The Anti-Wahhab? Reaction in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan’, The Muslim World 85, 1–2 (1995), pp. 25, 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman, too, published a book, Taqvim al-Din (1888), with a chapter on refuting Wahhabism, for the same reason. See Noelle, ‘The Anti-Wahhab?’, pp. 25, 48.

51 SN, 15 Ramazan 1290/6 November 1873, p. 16.

52 SN, 1 Shawwal 1290/22 November 1873, pp. 9–10.

53 Ibid., p. 18.

54 His famous story, ‘The Man who would be King’, is partly based on an American who visited Afghanistan in the 1830s. See Macintyre, Ben, The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan (New York, 2004), pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

55 SN, 1 Shawwal 1290/22 November 1873, p. 25.

56 Ibid., p. 8.

57 SN, 15 Muharram 1291/5 March 1874, p. 16.

58 Ibid., p. 18.

59 Dey, Kally P., The Life and Career of Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, With a Brief Outline of the Second Afghan War (Calcutta, 1881), pp. 54–56Google Scholar.

60 Harrison, Frederic, ‘Martial Law in Kabul’, The Fortnightly Review 159 (1880), pp. 435–459Google Scholar.

61 Intelligence Branch, Army Headquarters, India, The Second Afghan War, 1878-80: Abridged Official Account (London, 1908), p. 42; Hensman, Howard, The Afghan War of 1879-80 (London, 1881), pp. 119, 188, 241Google Scholar.

62 Great Britain Parliament, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (London, 1881), cclx, p. 1863.

63 Ibid., pp. 1863–1864.

64 Hensman, The Afghan War, p. 226. See also, pp. 294–295.

65 Ibid., p. 272.

66 Fayz Muhammad Katib Hazara, Siraj al-Tawarikh (ST, hereafter) (Tehran, 1391/2012), i and ii, pp. 414–415. A similar instance is reported in Durrani, Sultan Muhammad Khan, Tarikh-i Sultani (Bombay, 1298/1881), pp. 258–259Google Scholar.

67 Dalrymple, William, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 (London, 2013), pp. 224, 500Google Scholar.

68 ST, i and ii, p. 415.

69 The original poem in Persian: “Sikkah zad bar sim va zar, ravshan-tar az khurshid va mah / nur-i chashm-i durr-i durran, Shah Shujaʿ al-Mulk Shah”. The parody in Persian: “Sikkah bar sim va tala zad Shah Shujaʿ-i Armani / Nur-i chashm-i Lard va Birnis, khak-i pay-i Kampani”. See Durrani, Tarikh-i Sultani, p. 273.

70 On Macnaghten's death, see Dalrymple, Return of a King, pp. 351–354.

71 Dey, The Life and Career of Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, p. 98.

72 ‘The Massacre at Cabul’, Times, 28 October 1879, p. 4.

73 Dey, The Life and Career of Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, p. 126.

74 The poem in the original Persian: “Mikunam divanagi ta bar saram ghawgha shavad / Sikkah bar zar mizanam ta sahibash payda shavad”. See Kuhzad, ʿAli Ahmad, Maskukat-i Afghanistan dar ʿAsr-i Islam (Kabul, 1316/1937), p. 20Google Scholar.

75 For the full text of the proclamation, see Intelligence Branch, The Second Afghan War, pp. 656–657.

76 Ibid.,

77 Rahmani, Ghulam Sakhi, Chahar Chattah-i sar-i Chawk-i Kabul (Peshawar, 1382/2003), pp. 5–10Google Scholar.

78 Ibid.,

79 Great Britain Parliament, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (London, 1881), cclx, pp. 1863–1864.

80 Hensman, The Afghan War, p. 86.

81 Ibid., p. 136.

82 Great Britain Parliament, Précis of Official Papers: Session 1880-1881 (London, 1880), p. 304.

83 L'Univers illustré, 21 February 1880, cover.

84 Great Britain Parliament, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (London, 1880), ccl, pp. 579–580. In his letter to Parliament, General Roberts confirmed the burning of dead bodies but assured lawmakers that reports of the shooting of prisoners, with few exceptions, were not true. A journalist in Kabul, however, revealed that the practice was far more common. In one instance, he reported that the army caught five prisoners who were “shot without further parley”. The author then offered more details on the practice: “It is only by such severity, and by taking no prisoners in action, than any impression can be made upon the Afghan mind. Such prisoners as are brought in are tried by a military commission, and the great majority are shot. There is just a fear that too much leniency may be shown, as the work is rather distasteful to British officers; but as we are an ‘avenging army’, scruples must be cast aside.” See Hensman, The Afghan War, p. 49. See also, Great Britain Parliament, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, cclx, pp. 1863–1864.

85 ‘The Occupation of Afghanistan’, Times, 15 December 1879, p. 10.

86 The report is reprinted in Dey, The Life and Career of Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, pp. 166–167. Although the British were not very interested in converting Afghans into Christians, they had translated the Bible into Pashto and some copies had reached Afghanistan. It would be safe, therefore, to assume the bazaar news about the “boxes of bible” was a rumour inspired by a fact. For Pashto Bibles see Gregorian, Vartan, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946 (Stanford, 1969), pp. 68–69Google Scholar.

87 Holdich, Sir T. H.. The Indian Borderland, 1880-1900 (London, 1901), pp. 44–45Google Scholar.

88 Bayly, Empire and Information, pp. 139–140.

89 Hensman, The Afghan War, p. 425.

90 In the following two books, published under the name of the Amir himself, the author encouraged people to obey the Amir and support him in his many holy wars: Khan, Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman, Kalimat-i amir al-Bilad fi al-Targhib ila al-Jihad (Kabul, 1304/1887)Google Scholar; Khan, Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman, Nasayih Namchah (Kabul, 1303/1886)Google Scholar.

91 Kandahar Newsletters, i, p. 2.

92 ST (Tehran, 1391/2012), iii (part one), pp. 627–628.

93 Kandahar Newsletters, i, p. 6.

94 Ibid., i, p. 100. On ʿAbd al-Rahman's manipulation of bazaar news, also see Ahang, Muhammad Asif, Yad-dasht-ha va Bardasht-hay-i az Kabul-i Qadim (Peshawar, 1383/2004), p. 214Google Scholar.

95 For the full text of that ishtihar, see Shuʿur, Asad Allah, Mufahimah-i Shafahi va sayr-i Tarikhiy-i an dar Afghanistan (Kabul, 1367/1988), pp. 29–31Google Scholar.

96 Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman Khan to Sardar Shirdil Khan, Sayyid Asghar Khan, and Muhammad Nasir Khan, 26 Zi al-Hijjah 1305/3 September 1888, NAA, Farman, No. 2394/66.

97 Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman Khan to Governor Saʿd al-Din Khan of Herat, 26 Zi al-Qaʿda 1314/28 April 1897, NAA, Farman, No. 4631/146.

98 Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman Khan to Governor Saʿd al-Din Khan of Herat, 23 Zi al-Qaʿda 1314/25 April 1897, NAA, Farman, No. 4631/133.

99 ST (Tehran, 1391/2012), iii (part two), p. 589.

100 Amir ʿAbd al-Rahman Khan to Sardar Habib Allah Khan, 24 Safar 1306/30 October 1888, NAA, Farman, No: 2393/16-17.

101 Martin, Frank A., Under the Absolute Amir (London, 1907), pp. 162–163Google Scholar.