afghanistanKing ’Aman Allah Khan’s Grand TourDespite the many and complex problems facing Afghanistan, both intern-
ally and externally, at the end of 1927 King ’Aman Allah Khan announced
he was to embark on a tour of India, the Middle East and Europe, which he
declared was not ‘a voyage of pleasure... but [for] study and social explor-
a t i o n ’. 42 Many high government officials opposed this Grand Tour since the
king planned to be absent for more than seven months, but he ignored their
concerns and appointed Sardar Muhammad Wali Khan, a career diplomat,
to act as his Viceroy. 43 Mahmud Tarzi, who was in Switzerland at the time,
wrote to the king to dissuade him from his venture, but instead ’Aman
Allah Khan ordered Tarzi to join the royal party in Italy. When the king
continued to disregard his advice, however, Tarzi returned to Switzerland
and later made his way back to Kabul.
After visiting India and Egypt, ’Aman Allah Khan’s first port of call
in Europe was Italy, where he publicly declared his admiration for Prime
Minister Benito Mussolini, leader of Italy’s Fascist Party, who was rapidly
turning his country into a totalitarian state. Victor Emanuel ii, Italy’s king,
then appointed ’Aman Allah Khan as a Cavaliere dell’ Ordine Supremo della
Santissima Annunziata (Knight of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy
Annunciation), the country’s highest and most ancient order of chivalry.
This too was controversial, for the Grande Collana, as it is known, is
bestowed only on Italian citizens who were baptized Roman Catholics,
while the badge of the Order was an icon of the Annunciation surrounded
by crosses and the letters fert, which may be interpreted as Latin for ‘He
[Christ] bore [our sins]’. The Christian significance of this honour was not
lost on ’Aman Allah Khan’s religious opponents, who saw the king’s accept-
ance of this honour as further ‘proof ’ that he was at heart an apostate, a
view reinforced when he had an audience with Pope Pius xi.
’Aman Allah Khan’s next port of call was Nice, where he tried unsuc-
cessfully to persuade Nadir Khan and the Musahiban brothers to return
home. In Switzerland the king was met by ‘stolid silence’ and ‘Republican
simplicity’, 44 but when ’Aman Allah Khan arrived in Germany he was
treated with all the pomp and ceremony of a European monarch, for with
the economy of the Weimer Republic in freefall, the German govern-
ment was anxious to secure a stake in post-independence Afghanistan.
During his stay ’Aman Allah Khan signed many costly contracts with
German companies, but only because the German government agreed
to a substantial loan that could only be spent on German equipment
and armaments.