backs to the future, 1929–33later the Charkhi family and ‘Abd al-Khaliq’s relatives were forced to watch
as the assassin was dismembered limb by limb by the Royal Guard. In all
more than twenty persons were executed in a variety of novel ways. They
included members of the Charkhi family, the principal and deputy prin-
cipal of Nejat High School and several of ‘Abd al-Khaliq’s schoolfriends,
most of whom had no idea what he was planning. 31 In addition, hundreds
of suspected Serajid sympathizers were rounded up.
Nadir Shah’s reign ended as it had started, with bloody extrajudicial
executions. Yet despite this, Fraser-Tytler, without the slightest hint of
irony, describes Nadir Shah’s reign as ‘a wellnigh perfect form of benevolent
autocracy’, while another British obituarist went as far as to claim Nadir
Shah was ‘the greatest ruler who had ever reigned over Afghanistan’. 32