Debunking conventional narratives of Afghanistan as a perennial war
zone or marginal frontier, Faiz Ahmed presents a vibrant account of
the first Muslim-majority country to gain independence from the
British Empire, form a fully sovereign government, and promulgate
an original constitution after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Far
from a landlocked wilderness, turn-of-the-twentieth-century
Afghanistan was a magnet for itinerant scholars and emissaries
shuttling between Ottoman and British imperial domains. Tracing
Afghans' longstanding but seldom examined scholastic ties to
Istanbul, Damascus, and Baghdad, as well as greater Delhi and
Lahore, Ahmed vividly describes how the Kabul court recruited
jurists to craft a modern state within the interpretive traditions
of Islamic law and ethics, or shari'a, and international legal
norms. Beginning with the first Ottoman mission to Kabul in 1877,
and culminating with parallel independence struggles in
Afghanistan, India, and Turkey after World War I, this rich
narrative explores encounters between diverse streams of Muslim
thought and politics-from Young Turk lawyers to Pashtun clerics;
Ottoman Arab officers to British Raj bureaucrats; and the last
caliphs to a remarkable dynasty of Afghan kings and queens. By
unearthing a lost history behind Afghanistan's independence and
first constitution, Ahmed shows how debates today on Islam,
governance, and the rule of law have deep roots in a beleaguered
land. Based on research in six countries and as many languages,
Afghanistan Rising rediscovers a time when Kabul stood proudly for
anticolonial coalitions, self-determination, and contested visions
of reform in the Global South and Islamicate world.
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