afghanistanking on the other, a benevolent father figure who was working tirelessly
to bring a nation of ungrateful, ignorant and fanatical people into the
modern world. As for his brutal suppressions, the Amir argued that the
end justified the means.
Under the Iron Amir, as the British press referred to him, Afghanistan
became a closed and increasingly inward-looking country. The British
reinforced this isolation by insisting that anyone wishing to visit, or travel
through, Afghanistan had to have official permission. The Amir did employ
a number of Indians and a few British technicians, the latter mostly as
advisers for his munitions and leather factories. Dr Alfred Gray and subse-
quently a British woman physician, Dr Lilias Hamilton, were appointed as
the Amir’s personal medical advisers, while Kate Daly, a British nurse and
companion of Dr Hamilton, opened Afghanistan’s first modern medical
clinic. The Amir, however, refused to employ any foreign military advisers
to train his army.
Contact with European culture and ideas was mostly through the Urdu
and Persian press, or imported luxury goods. Visitors to the Amir’s new
palace, the Dilkusha, noted that the place was cluttered with expensive
bric-a-brac and novelties, including mechanical toys, carriage clocks and
a vast collection of European glass and tableware. Many of the women of
the royal household bought the latest French fashions. Remarkably, in his
advice to his heirs, which appears at the end of his autobiography, ‘Abd
al-Rahman Khan advocated the introduction of women’s education, but
only at some very distant point in the future. The Amir himself did noth-
ing to improve the nation’s medieval education system or address endemic
illiteracy, other than to translate a few military manuals into Persian and
Pushtu. As for Afghan scholars or officials, they were discouraged from
studying abroad.
One of the Amir’s grandest civil engineering projects was the construc-
tion of a new palace complex on the site of the old Shah Bagh. 48 Known
today as the Presidential Palace, it was designed by a British architect
and even included a clock tower. The palace was also an arg, or citadel,
fortified with a double line of walls, punctuated by bastions for artillery
and surrounded by a dry ditch. South of the arg, and outside its walls, lay
a complex of palaces. The Bastan Sarai, originally designed to entertain
guests and foreign dignitaries, eventually became the Amir’s mausoleum
and his son, Amir Habib Allah Khan, later added a dome and mosque.
Another royal residence, the Zarnegar Palace, was pulled down in 1964
to make way for the park of the same name. The Gulistan Sarai, located
between these two palaces, was the residence of the Amir’s favourite wife,