afghanistanwatan is not Fatherland or Nation, but the region of one’s birth (such as
Panjshir, Herat, Wardak or Mazar), while the Ottoman concept of millat,
which embraced even the empire’s substantial non-Muslim populations,
would have been lost on all but a small clique of educated Afghans. As for
daulat, depending on its context, it could mean kingdom, realm, govern-
ment, dynasty, or even wealth and possessions, while the term daulat
dosti, patriotism, or literally ‘love of the country’, was probably coined by
Tarzi himself.
Unlike Turkey in the early twentieth century, there was no sense
of national identity in Afghanistan, at least in the European sense.
Traditionally tribal and religious leaders swore an oath of personal fealty,
or b a’ it, to the Amir on behalf of their tribe or followers, rather than to
the state or even the monarchy. As was the case in medieval Europe this
oath was renewed every time a new ruler came to power, or in the wake of
a major rebellion. In return, the Amir, as chief of chiefs, was expected to
reciprocate by the disbursement of royal patronage and uphold the leaders’
traditional right of autonomy.
As for the religious elites, they expected the Amir to rule according to
Islamic law under the guidance of a council of ‘ulama’. Serious breaches
of the shari‘a were deemed sufficient justification for rebellion and the
condemnation of the Amir and his government as kafir. Under Islamic law
it is a religious obligation on the population to overthrow any ruler who has
been formally condemned in this manner or who has committed serious
violations of Islamic law such as the sin of b i d ‘a, religious innovation or
heresy. When the country went to war, the Amir did not appeal to patri-
otism, ‘the national interest’ or ‘the defence of the realm’, but to Islam and
th e oath of fealty. Traditionally, prior to any military campaign the Amir
would secure a fatwa that gave religious legitimacy to the war. As for the
army’s tribal levies, their loyalty lay not with the nation, the government
or the head of state, but to their tribal and religious leaders.
Tarzi’s Afghaniyya was a jumble of inappropriate ideas cut and pasted
from Turkish nationalism and showed little understanding of the fluid-
ity of Afghanistan and Pushtun society. It was also shot through with
ironies. For while Tarzi was ethnically Afghan, he neither spoke nor read
Pushtu, and both his own and his father’s literary output was in Persian.
Rather than Pushtu being the language of the literate or of the nation
as a whole, the primary native speakers of Pushtu were mostly illiter-
ate peasants, the maldar nomads and the semi-independent hill tribes of
the Afghan–Indian frontier. Indeed, with the exception of the remarkable
output of Khushhal Khan Khattak and a few others, in the first decades