afghanistanand Orientalist perceptions of Afghanistan and the Afghan tribes. The
Elphinstone Mission reports, both published and unpublished, remain
an important source for the early politics, history and ethnology of
Afghanistan, but many scholars now take a far more critical approach to
the ‘Elphinstone episteme’. 30
Elphinstone was the first British government official to employ the
term ‘Afghanistan’ to describe the Durrani kingdom as a whole, a decision
that was pragmatic and a matter of convenience, since the mission found
there was no official designation for the kingdom. The bulk of the mission’s
reports focus on the history of the Durrani kings, Pushtun ethnology and
analysis of their tribal territories. One reason for this was that there were
a large number of informants available in court circles to inform about the
Afghan tribes, while there were very few officials who came from other
regions or who had more than a superficial knowledge of the Hazarajat,
Herat, Balkh, Badakhshan, or the Central Asian Khanates. More often than
not data on these more distant and remote regions was anecdotal, gleaned
from one or two sources, usually merchants. The outcome was a skewed
depiction of the Durrani kingdom as being more Afghan and Pushtun
than it was in reality.
Elphinstone found defining the frontiers of the kingdom, and the
degree of Durrani sovereignty, both confusing and complex. The realm, or
daulat, of Shah Shuja‘ consisted of a plethora of autonomous fiefdoms and
independent tribes, and while the king claimed sovereignty over them, in
fact he had only token authority with some merely according him the right
of khutba. One particularly problematic issue was Elphinstone’s attempt
to define accurately the northern frontier of this Greater Afghanistan. A
close reading of the Mission’s published and unpublished reports reveals
much confusion and many contradictory statements on this matter, while
the map Elphinstone published in his Account was inconsistent with his
own and other mission members’ findings, and differs markedly from the
original, unpublished chart drawn up by Lieutenant John Macartney, the
mission’s official cartographer. 31
Macartney locates all the Uzbek city-states west of Aqcha and
Shibarghan, including Sar-i Pul, Andkhui, Maimana, Bala Murghab
and Panjdeh, within the Khanate of Bukhara, while all territory from
Talaqan eastwards is placed within the frontiers of the independent mir
of Badakhshan. Yet Elphinstone’s published map includes Talaqan, the
Chahar Wilayat and the Panjdeh oasis within the Durrani kingdom. This
is despite Elphinstone noting in his book that ‘the only actual posses-
sion of the Afghauns in Toorkistan’ in 1809 was ‘the district immediately