262 DESTINY DISRUPTED
Confusingly enough, they settled dose to an Iranian town also called
Asadabad, which has given rise to a long-standing dispute about where Ja-
maluddin-i-Afghan was actually born and which country, Afghanistan or
Iran, can claim him as its native son. Afghans point out that he always called
himself Jamaluddin-i-Aj-han-"Jamaluddin the Afghan" -and on this basis
consider the matter dosed. Iranian historians say he only called himself "the
Afghan" to hide the fact that he was Iranian and allude to documentary evi-
dence that they say settles the question quite definitively. On the other hand,
when I was growing up in Afghanistan, lots of people in Kabul seemed to
know his family and relatives, who still had land in Kunar at that time. To
me, that seems to settle the matter, but maybe that's just because I'm Afghan.
One thing is certain. Today, many Muslim governments see Sayyid Ja-
maluddin as a prize to claim. In his day, however, every Muslim govern-
ment eventually came to see this fellow as a troublemaking pest and threw
him out. Let me present a brief outline of his amazing, peripatetic career.
Wherever he may have grown up, no one disputes that he went to India
when he was about eighteen years old. Anti-British sentiment was rising to a
fever pitch in India just then, and Jamaluddin may have met some Muslims
who were cooking up anti-British plots. He happened to be in Mecca on pil-
grimage when the Great Indian Mutiny broke out, but he was back in time
to witness the British reprisals that shocked the Muslim east so deeply. It was
during that first journey to India that Jamaluddin probably developed a life-
long hatred of the British and a lasting antipathy to European colonialism in
general. In any case, from India, he went to ...
- Afghanistan. There he gained the confidence of the king whom the
British had tried unsuccessfully to unseat. The king hired Jamalud-
din to tutor his eldest son, Azam. Jamaluddin was already formulat-
ing ideas about the need to reform and modernize Islam as a way of
restoring Muslim power and pride, and he saw the job of tutoring
the country's heir apparent as an opportunity to shape a ruler who
would implement his vision. He steeped Prince Azam Khan in his
reformist ideas and trained him to lead Afghanistan into the modern
age. Unfortunately, Azam succeeded his father only briefly. One of
his cousins quickly overthrew him, with British backing. The British
probably moved to unseat Azam in part because they didn't want any