reform and repression, 1901–19in the Bagh-i Babur for the remainder of her life. In the same year, Amir
Habib Allah cracked down on religious dissent, executing Sahibzada ‘Abd
al-Latif Khosti, head of Afghanistan’s tiny Ahmadiyya community.
The return of the Tarzi, Musahiban and Loyab familiesIn an act of reconciliation Amir Habib Allah Khan offered an amnesty to
a number of prominent Muhammadzais exiles, including descendants of
the Kandahar sardars and supporters of the former Amir, Ya‘qub Khan, and
his brother, ‘Ayub Khan. Of the returnees, three kin groups would become
particularly important in determining Afghanistan’s political and social
direction in the twentieth century.
Shortly after Habib Allah’s accession Mahmud Tarzi and his half-
nephew Habib Allah Khan travelled from Damascus to Kabul to request
permission to return home (see Chart 5). 2 Mahmud was a grandson of
Rahim Dil Khan, the Kandahar sardar, while on his maternal side he was
Saddozai. Mahmud’s father, Ghulam Muhammad Khan, had served under
both Dost Muhammad Khan and Amir Sher ‘Ali Khan, but he was best
known as a poet, writing under the pen name of tarzi, ‘stylist’, a t akhalus
that was adopted as the family’s surname. In 1866 Ghulam Tarzi had
hosted Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and became a devoted follower of
his Pan-Islamic and anti-British ideology. The Tarzis eventually moved to
Kabul and, according to the family history, after Amir Ya‘qub Khan was
sent into exile, Mahmud Tarzi’s father sent him to Charikar to tender the
family’s submission to ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan. However, following ‘Abd
al-Rahman Khan’s defeat of ‘Ayub Khan and the fall of Kandahar, the Amir
accused Ghulam Muhammad Khan of aiding the ‘Ayubids and his family
was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to India.
After three years in Karachi, Ghulam Muhammad accepted the invi-
tation of Shaikh Gailani to reside in Baghdad and even had an audience
with the Ottoman sultan, ‘Abd ül-Hamid ii. For the next two decades
the Tarzi family lived in Damascus where Mahmud and his brothers and
nephews were educated in Ottoman schools and imbibed the relatively
liberal Levantine milieu. Mahmud grew up speaking Turkish as his first
language, although he was fluent in Persian and read Urdu and some
Arabic too. Turkish gave him to access to Turkish translations of French
and German philosophical and literary works in an era when the Ottoman
Empire was undergoing major reforms and the Young Turks were embrac-
ing an ethnocentric nationalism. In 1889 Mahmud visited Paris for the
Exposition Universelle. Later he married Asma Rasmiya, daughter of